The bustling streets of Lvivthe most monumental of the ukrainian citiesThey emptied on Saturday afternoon. A missile attack hit the outlying neighborhoods of the city raising a black cloud over the horizon. “Stay in the shelters. Don’t walk down the street. Don’t take photos of anything. Do not read information from anonymous Telegram channels or spread it & rdquor ;, the city governor asked alarmed. The first information indicated that the salvo was directed against a industrial area where fuel is stored. The anti-aircraft alarms, hitherto largely ignored in Lviv, took on a new dimension. It was the first attack against this architectural diamond of the west countryone of the cradles of the ukrainian nationalismlocated just 90 kilometers from the polish border.
It may be that the attack – which left at least five wounded – was just a welcome poison message to the President of the United States, Joe Bidenwho at the same time was visiting ukrainian refugees in Warsaw. Or maybe it was a turn in strategy from Vladimir Putinwho is watching as his brutal offense bogs down to make way for a war of attrition. Because until now, with few exceptions, all the efforts of its military have focused on the eastern, southern and northern regions of the country. The closest to its borders, but also the most Russophile in the country. It is one of the paradoxes of this contest. Putin is destroying the cities where more Russian is spoken and where the narrowest are the cultural links with the homeland of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
The ukrainian identity It was until recently a project under construction. Not because it didn’t exist, but because it old nation absorbed piecemeal by numerous empires and never independent until 1991 has always lived straddling two worldsthe western european and the east russian. Two very visible souls until recently in their electoral maps. The East and the south of the country voted mostly for the pro-Russian candidates; the West and the Northfor their peers pro-western. “Until the 2014 elections, the country was almost exactly divided along the Dnieper River. But everything began to change that same year with the Russian annexation of Crimea and the donbas warwho helped forge a ukrainian national identity&rdquor ;, says the researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi.
to bite
History helps explain those two sensitivities that fought politically for control of the country until Putin began to bite into it in 2014. “The western part, from the Dnieper River to Poland, belonged to the astro-hungarian empire. And, later, the Lviv region It was Polish until Stalin annexed it during World War II & rdquor ;, affirms the specialist in the post-Soviet world. “The east, on the other hand, a part belonged to the tsarist empire and another was awarded to Ukraine by the Bolsheviks”.
Today Ukraine is a ethnic salad, where Ukrainians make up nearly more than 70% of the population. The russians are the main minority, about 17% of its inhabitants, but there are others such as Poles, Belarusians, Tatars, Romanians, Gypsies or Hungarians. And even if Putin launched this war under the declared pretext of protecting the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Donbas, not even tongue neither him ethnic origin have been among the main concerns of Ukrainians since independence.
Sociologist Alona Liasheva is bilingual, like the bulk of his compatriots. “I went to a Russian school and then to a Ukrainian school. Part of my family speaks one language and the rest the other & rdquor ;, he says in a cafeteria in Lviv. “It is true that the linguistic and cultural differences have sometimes been exploited by politicians to win votes, but for a long time nobody cared what language you spoke & rdquor ;. Liasheva considers that the predicament that the pro-Russian candidates had in the east and south is not only explained by the geographical and historical proximity to Russia, but also for a speech that affected the region’s own concerns. “They talked about pensions or labor rights, important issues in those regions so industrial”.
Nostalgia for the Soviet Union
For the director of the National Library of Lviv, Vasyl Kmet, this pro-Russian inclination is more rooted in nostalgia for the Soviet Union than in sympathy with modern Russia. “A lot of people there don’t remember the terror and cruelty of those years and it’s over idealizing the soviet era&rdquor ;, he assures from his office. In the basement of the hall camouflage nets are woven for the Ukrainian resistance in this war. “To this we must add that, starting in the forties of the last century, after Stalin’s famine, a large Russian population was transferred to the industrial zones from the east of the country”.
Since 2014, however, the invisible line between the two Ukraines it has been erased by forced marches with the great events that have shaken the country. Beginning with the Maidan revolution and continuing with the Russian annexation of Crimea and the separatist uprising in Donbas, backed from Moscow. In the first elections held since then, Volodymyr Zelinsky won in 2019 with more than 70% of the votesa support that none of his predecessors had obtained, who won by narrow majorities and almost always marked by the East-West, Russia-West divide.
Related news
Now this war has finished destroying the pro-Russian sensibilities of part of the Ukrainian population. And it is that Putin is martyring the great bastions of him. From Mariupol to Khersonfrom Kharkiv to Melitopol. “Putin captured Crimea without any resistance. He has been led to believe ever since that he could take eastern Ukraine just as easily. He thought people would welcome him with open arms&rdquor ;, says Kmet, the director of the National Library.
Still, it is hard to understand why he is treating the regions closest to Russian culture so cruelly. “When he saw the fierce resistance from the Eastern Ukrainians, he proceeded to behave with the rage of an injured animal& rdquor ;, Kmet thinks. “All this has served to definitively destroy the Russian myth, but it is being done at the expense of rivers of Ukrainian blood & rdquor ;.