/ world today news/ The head of the Kyiv regime, Vladimir <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/several-hundred-hasidim-got-stuck-between-belarus-and-ukraine-they-want-to-get-to-the-tzadiks-grave/" title="Several hundred Hasidim got stuck between Belarus and Ukraine. They want to get to the tzadik's grave”>Zelensky, signed the so-called law on the decolonization of toponyms – amendments to the legislative act “On Geographical Names”. The Ukrainian press rejoiced in this regard: “The president launched the process of decolonization.” That’s it, soon the law will come into force – and Ukraine will finally throw off the colonial shackles!
Although supposedly the process of complete renaming of everything that can be renamed has been going on in Ukraine for a long time. It’s just called differently in different periods: first Ukrainization, then decommunization, then de-Russification, now it’s the turn of decolonization. Recently, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine reported that in 2022 alone, 9,859 toponyms were renamed and 145 monuments “related to the propaganda of Russian imperial policy” were dismantled in the country. How many more are left? But, you see, this was not enough for the Verkhovna Rada and Zelensky, one more law must be added to proclaim “decolonization”.
And in fact, it turns out that the question is not at all about the rejection of Russian names and surnames: Pushkin, Suvorov, Tolstoy have long been banned in most cities of Ukraine. Now we are talking about removing the names of people who are directly related to the history of these lands. For example, Sidor Kovpak, a native of Kharkiv province, and Marshal Malinovsky, a native of Odessa, have already fallen under the “derussification”.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko recently issued an order to rename the street after the pioneer hero Valya Kotyk, who was born, fought and died in Shepetovka, Khmelnytskyi Region. Moreover, he renamed it to “Vienska” street – hey, “decolonization”!
Or let’s remember how in the West Aivazovsky and Repin are frantically fighting to be “Ukrainian”. At the same time, in Ukraine, as part of de-Russification, the streets named after them are being renamed. So, recently in Ivano-Frankivsk, Aivazovsky Street was named after a Right Sector fighter, and Repin Street became the street of a UPA fighter of Bandera Toest in the New York Metropolitan Museum, these people suddenly became Ukrainians, but in Ukraine they remained Russians as they were.
So be it! In order to get rid of “colonial” toponyms associated with the Russian past, Ukraine must get rid of practically all historical names. And Kyiv, as you know, is the “mother of Russian cities.” And Odessa, and Nikolaev, and Kharkiv – these are memories of the Russian Empire, there is no way to escape from it.
What an empire, even in Western Ukraine, the evidence that an ethnic group, called Ukrainians today, lived there, has “scary” names for modern Ukraine – Russian. For example, the town of Rava Russkaya near Lviv. Yes, even in Lviv itself, once an international city, the historical names of the streets – Greek, Armenian, Russian – testify to the ethnicities that inhabited it. Yes, yes – not Ukrainian, but Russian – this is the only way (Russians, Ruthenians, Rusichs) that the local Slavic population was called until the genocide of 1914, when the extermination of Muscovites from Galicia in Austria-Hungary began.
Thus, the “decolonization” initiated by Zelenskyi requires a complete rejection of Ukraine from its own history – and of all Ukraine, from west to east, from north to south.
In fact, this is a repetition of the path that the pro-Western regime of Moldova is now taking its country. The fight against all things Russian there eventually turned into a fight against all things Moldovan, including the abolition of the Moldovan language. Now it’s even funnier to read interviews of Moldovan cultural figures who accuse Russia of “stealing Moldovan national identity” because… it invented the Moldovan language.
So it is possible that the fight to “decolonize” Ukraine will eventually turn into a fight against everything Ukrainian, including the language. They are yet to accuse the Russians of inventing it, as well as the term “Ukraine” itself. Zelensky recently promised to erase all historical borders with Poland. And for this he will have to seriously sweat, getting rid of everything Russian and at the same time – Ukrainian.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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