To justify its invasion of Crimea, the Kremlin and state-run media went into full fabrication mode this days. Russian mass media seeking to make sense of Ukraine’s complex identity issues continue to latch onto language as a shorthand way of understanding the rival geopolitical sympathies in the country. However, in reality, a person’s mother tongue is simply not an accurate guide to their political affiliation in today’s Ukraine. International coverage of Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution and Russia’s subsequent military invasion has been badly hampered by the highly inaccurate assumption that all of the country’s Russian speakers want Ukraine to remain in the Russian orbit, while Ukrainian speakers are universally pro-EU. This is not merely overly simplistic – it is dangerously misleading.

The truth is - there are actually millions of Russ ... Read more »