The Sun is Rising Over Kyiv on the 1260th Day of the Full-Scale Invasion. Western democracies are only starting to grasp the true stakes of Ukraine’s fight — and their own blind spots.

by Ukrainer_UA

5 comments

  1. Western democracies are only starting to grasp the true stakes of Ukraine’s fight — and their own blind spots.

    Catherine Fieschi, a leading international expert on populism and a guest of Ukraïner’s “Decolonisation” podcast, explained why many in Western Europe and the US still view Ukraine through a Soviet lens — undermining life-saving support at a critical moment in the war.
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    Find our podcast on:

    Apple: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decolonisation/id1771071510](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decolonisation/id1771071510)
    Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRsghAWbRbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRsghAWbRbA)

  3. Exacerbating this egregious blind spot in among too many Westerners about the longstanding unequal dynamic between the Ukrainians and the Russians, [is the very fact that Russians themselves are too arrogant or cowardly to see themselves as colonizers because of colonialism’s frequent link to racism](https://eurasianet.org/russias-colonial-allergy). Through their open genocide in real-time, they still simply do not and cannot see the Ukrainians as more than long-lost or second-rate Russians who “naturally” need “salvation” and “protection” from the “benevolent” ~~heirs~~ *usurpers* of the heritage of Kyivan Rus’.

    In line with their hostility to Europe, and The West™ in general, the Russians routinely treat the concept as a **non**-Russian affectation specific to Western Europeans and their quasi-descendants in North America (i.e. Canadians & Americans). To pile onto their arrogance and social cluelessness, the Russians instead try to qualify or even downplay the heinousness of their colonialism (when acknowledged at all) by playing up how Russian colonialism touched on social class unlike elsewhere because poor Russians were treated just as badly as poor Ukrainians, poor Tatars, poor Tuvans, etc. This is akin to defending Stalinism as less heinous than Nazism because the former nailed you for being born in the “wrong” class, whereas the latter nailed you for being born with the “wrong” DNA.

    Even the Russians’ own smart-assed quote about Russian colonialism as being a case of “Russia colonizes itself” insidiously (but deliberately) de-legitimizes all of the non-Russians whom the Russians subjugated or exterminated in [their centuries-long rampage eastward and southwards from the swamps of Muscovy soon after the self-coronation of Ivan the Terrible in 1547](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russia#Table_of_changes). Their quote encapsulates a deep-seat conceit that the Russians settled on land that was ultimately “theirs” all along.

    No one rational would ever apply the Russians’ absurdly chauvinistic thinking to the Americans who expanded westward south of the 49th parallel by concluding that “America colonizes itself”, but here we are in the 21st century with the Russians still dressing up their Моngоlеѕquе imperialism and colonialism with a cheeky quote.

  5. Слава Україні героям слава 💙💛🇺🇦

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