More Evidence Ukraine Moves Away from Moscow

Step by step, for the past three decades, Ukrainians from East to West and along the Black Sea, senior citizens and students, have been moving away from Moscow.

And this is apparent in all segments of life, including social, civic, spiritual, intellectual and national.

Russia, in its blind age-old desire to keep Ukrainians and consequently Ukraine confined in its prison of nations, not only wants the territory and people but also their hearts and souls. If the people didn’t submit voluntarily, Moscow would certainly apply physical and mental pressure on Ukrainians to succumb to its dogmas.

One of Russia’s most telling markers of the people’s compliance to its rule is the their opinion of the Ukrainian liberation movement of all ages and specifically the recent one waged by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known by its legendary Ukrainian acronym – UPA. Ukrainian men and women in the ranks of this immortal army fought against Russia and Nazi Germany throughout World War II and later. Historical records confirm that they fought until the 1960s.

So long as Ukrainians refuted the existence and mission of the UPA, Moscow was content and safe in its misplaced belief of an assured future as the oppressor. If the people swayed from the Kremlin’s barbed wire of national imprisonment by honoring the legacy of the UPA, its hold over Ukrainians and its empire of evil would crumble.

After 30 years of independence and today’s seven-year war against Russia, Ukrainians have declared that they favor the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Stepan Bandera and despise the USSR and Stalin. Ukrainians’ national pride emboldened by Moscow’s war and crimes against humanity have pushed them irreversibly farther from the Kremlin.

The Democratic Initiatives Foundation in Kyiv, in cooperation with the Razumkov Center, published on its website on May 7 the results of its national survey about Ukrainians’ views of history that paint a very non-Russian point of view.

According to the results, 46% of the respondents replied that they support the Kyiv government’s decision to recognize the soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as legitimate fighters for Ukraine’s independence. Only 29% said they opposed the outcome, 9% said it didn’t matter and 16% didn’t reply. Significantly, half of the young respondents 18-29 said they support this decision. The largest number of advocates of this position came from Western and Central Ukraine.

This is a significant conclusion when taken in the context of the ongoing massive Russian propaganda against Ukrainian liberation fighters.

Asked about commemorating May 8 as Memorial Day and Peace and May 9 as victory over Nazism, 41% of the respondents said they favored observing both World War II events simultaneously – another infraction against Russian thinking.

In a move that certainly stung the Kremlin, Ukrainians cast doubt on the military prowess of the Soviet Union during the war with 46% of them saying they didn’t believe the USSR could have defeated Nazi Germany without the assistance of the United States and its allies.

Forty-eight percent of the survey participants said they are convinced that the war began as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement which sought to divide the world between the two allies Berlin and Moscow.

One-quarter of the respondents said Victory Day May 9 is first of all a victory of the anti-Hitler coalition of World War Two.

Another slap in the face against Moscow is Ukrainians’ scorn of Stalin, who is revered by Putin and many Russians. Sixty-two percent said the perpetrator of the famine murder of Ukrainians was a negative figure in Ukraine’s history.

As for their opinion of Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukraine’s armed resistance against Russian subjugation, 32% of the respondents said he was a positive influence on Ukraine’s history and the same total felt he was a negative impact. Interestingly, 36% of the President’s Servant of the People party said Bandera was a positive figure in Ukraine’s history.

Certainly, the road back to Russian subjugation is overgrown with weeds, thorns and fallen trees.