Russia
Dig deeper between Russians and Ukrainians
Russia sends conciliatory signals in the direction of Kiev, but many Ukrainians are skeptical. A return to the old friendship seems to be difficult.
Damaged houses after Fighting in Donetsk in the summer of 2015
Even the giant rainbow made of metal on the hilly right Bank of the Dnipro river in Kiev. The Soviet-built monument commemorates the “reunification of Ukraine with Russia” in the year 1654, when Ukrainian Cossacks protection of the Muscovite Tsar looked. Since the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian Peninsula of Crimea and the war in the Eastern Ukraine reminds the monument to something no longer there: friendship.
Today, adorn obscene swear words – directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin – the Base of a sculpture, a collaboration between a Russian and a Ukrainian. Sergiy Zelowalnik would arc like to be interrupted. “What is this for a friendship, if Russian troops with tanks has come to us?” outraged the former chief architect of the Ukrainian capital, in an Interview in September 2015. However, the Kiev authorities have probably decided that the monument – popularly referred to derisively as “the yoke” – first on the table. In ostukrainischen Kharkiv, however, was in November, a pillar dismantled, the Russian-Ukrainian friendship symbolize.
Conciliatory messages from Moscow
It sends the Russian side since weeks more signals of reconciliation in the direction of Kiev. “At the end of the normal relations between our countries is certainly restored,” said Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian security Council and a close Putin Confidant, on Tuesday in a newspaper interview. Similar messages were also from the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of foreign Affairs to hear: “Moscow is to engage in a constructive dialogue with Kiev.” On the core issues remained in Russia, however, hard: The Status of the Crimea is non-negotiable.
At the end of December went down in Russia a “hand of friendship” online. Already the URL suggests, Russians and Ukrainians are one people (www.we-are-one.ru) and if there is any conflict forget. The site wants to be as a platform “without politics and Propaganda” to understand and for a direct civil dialogue on promoting. Who’s behind the project, is unclear – an imprint there is not.
Screenshot of we-are.one.ru
Experience of war shape the Ukraine
In the Ukraine encounter Russian embassies so far with great distrust. “What for a friendship with Russia?” was indignant at the beginning of January, a popular Ukrainian blogger. “Look at our guys in, the arms and legs in this war have lost! Listen to to Russia to look at and of a ‘Brudervolk’ to speak.”
Not a few in Ukraine share, obviously, the opinion of the young Kievan poet Anastassia still Dmytruk. After the Crimean annexation and written to the Russians directed poem “We will never be brothers” is until today very popular in the country. The Video with her presentation of the poem was on YouTube more than six million Times viewed.
Volodymyr Paniotto does not believe that the Ukrainians have the Russians again may be. “This is a very difficult process,” said the Director of the Kiev International Institute for sociology (KMIS). Too much porcelain was shattered. The positive attitude of Ukrainians to Russia is on the surveys of his Institute since the annexation of Crimea dramatically crashed: from 78 percent in February of 2014 to 30 percent in may, 2015. The beginning of autumn, this number grew slightly to about one-third of the respondents. “That was after the cease-fire agreement from Minsk,” says the expert. However, slightly more than half of Ukrainians (53 percent) describe their relationship to Russia is still as “bad” or “very bad”.
Paniotto explained for this is that many Ukrainians have a direct experience with the war against Pro-Russian separatists in the East have made. “There are more than one Million internally displaced persons, the mobilization of the army has many concerned”, says the sociologist from Kiev. “For Ukraine it is a serious war, while the majority of Russians only on TV have followed”.
Enmity and antipathy in Russia
The more astonishing it may appear at first glance that the negative attitude towards the other side in Russia is more pronounced than in Ukraine. In a recent survey of the Moscow Lewada-center gave 59 per cent of the Russians that the Ukraine negatively stereotyped. Only 27 percent were of a different opinion. This number was stable, said Lew Gudkow, head of the Lewada centre. The reason for this is the Russian Propaganda against Ukraine and the people who live there. The tone of this Propaganda was from the summer of 2015 although become quieter, but she was not gone.
“We have never seen so much hostility and animosity against the Ukrainians”, says Gudkow. “This is even on the Alltagsebene become tangible.” There is in Russia, meanwhile, prejudice against Ukrainians as a spouse, co-workers or neighbors.
The recent Russian advances in Ukraine keeps Moscow sociologist for a tactical maneuver: “I think these signals are a game, an attempt to Western sanctions and pressure on Russia to soften,” says Gudkow. A real help for Ukraine in the solution of the conflict was not.