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 Russian-speaking Ukrainians who are proud of to be part of the greater Russian cultural world, while at the same time also favoring European integration. They are proud Russian-speakers, and proud Ukrainians. Nowadays Vladimir Putin is attempting to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine by claiming that he is rushing to the rescue of the country’s oppressed Russian-speaking minority. However, it is becoming increasingly clear than many members of this supposedly oppressed minority neither welcome nor support Putin’s military intervention. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolds, more and more Russian-speaking Ukrainians are taking to social media and joining public protests in a bid to declare their opposition to the Russian aggression and express their contempt for the distortions being promoted by the Kremlin in order to justify Putin’s military aggression. This increasingly strident and vocal opposition from Russian-speaking Ukrainians undermines Moscow’s publicly stated justification for war, and poses serious questions about the true motives behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Taking in to consideration the following issues the Association of journalists «Independence House» has made a decision to provide full coverage of all the issues brought in this letter and make all the efforts to spread its it’s newspaper «Pravo na Pravdu» in the area of Ukraine’s Crimea to publish stories otherwise suppressed by the Russian censors.

All our work and activities are currently based on non-profit journalism. It’s an immense privilege for us to consider you, among those, who might care about situation in Ukraine now. Therefore we want to ask you for monetary donations to support our further journalistic efforts and publications in order to uncover the truth.