Ukrainians are not Russians with Olha Bilobran
Description
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I turned to a Ukrainian friend to ask her what we, the Americans, need to understand about the conflict. Olha's response came down to this: Ukrainians are not Russians. They have their own history, their own language, their own culture, their own country. But Russian leader Vladimir Putin has predicated his war on a rewritten history, in which the Ukraine is the little brother to Russia, and the people there are just Russians with a dialect. The stakes can't be higher for the people of Ukraine, as their lives and very identity stand to be lost. I really appreciated this talk, the personal stories Olha shared of the Orange Revolution in 2004, the quest for independence, and the never-dying belief that Ukraine can be i's own place, and the Ukrainians, their own people.
United States
