Dominican Professor Debunks Putin’s Ukraine Myths
In speeches and essays, Russian President Vladimir Putin has long sought to undercut Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation. In an address just days before his invasion of Russia’s neighbor, Putin made numerous false claims, including that Ukraine has perpetrated atrocities against the country’s Russian-speaking minority.
Dominican University professor Elvira Kizilova, who lived and worked in Ukraine for three decades, upended that and other myths in a Feb. 23 presentation on campus. Here is a summary of her presentation:
Myth: Putin claims Russians and Ukrainians are “one people—a single whole.”
Fact: Ukraine and Russia are separate nations with separate peoples. Ukraine enters history with the establishment of the medieval state of Kievan Rus (879–1240). Moscow would not be established for two more centuries, and when it was, it was a minor settlement deep in the forests on the distant frontier of medieval Russia.
The Ukrainian language also evolved in relative isolation from the Russian language, and the Orthodox churches in Moscow and in Kyiv developed as separate entities.
Ukraine has a long history of resistance to Russian and Soviet repression, which included a language ban, the persecution of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and the 1932–1933 famine known as the Holodomor, which killed millions in Soviet Ukraine.
Myth: Ukraine has committed atrocities against Russian speakers in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Fact: It is Russia that is clamping down on those regions in support of separatists there. Ethnic and religious groups not affiliated with the Russian government are excluded from politics and persecuted. There is no free and independent media. Pro-Ukrainian bloggers and journalists have been silenced by long prison sentences and eventual deportation to government-controlled Ukraine via prisoner exchanges.
About 1 million internally displaced people from these areas are currently living in other parts of Ukraine, and Ukraine provides a variety of programs to support them.
Myth: According to Putin, “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era. We know and remember well that it was shaped—for a significant part—on the lands of historical Russia. … One fact is crystal clear: Russia was robbed indeed.”
Fact: Long before the Soviet era, parts of Ukraine were under the rule of Poland and Lithuania (14th–16th centuries) and the Golden Horde (15th–18th century), dynastic rulers with origins in the Mongol Empire. Russia occupied the Cossack Hetmanate, the precursor to modern Ukraine, in 1654 after initially being asked by the Cossacks for protection. Fearing separatism, Russia imposed strict limits on the Ukrainian language and culture during that occupation. Ukraine emerged as a nation with the Ukrainian National Revival in the mid-18th century.
Myth: According to Putin, in 1954, the Crimean region was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet republic in what he says was a gross violation of legal norms in force at the time.
Fact: There is no evidence that the incorporation of Crimea into what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine violated any legal norms. This was done to connect the Crimean Peninsula with the continent because of “the commonality of the economy, the proximity and close economic and cultural relations between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian Soviet republic.” Crimea desperately needed restoration after Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the region’s Indigenous people, in 1944.
Watch Dr. Kizlova’s full presentation using the passcode: sdz@8tpX.
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About Elvira Kizilova
Dr. Kizilova is an assistant professor of marketing and international business at the Brennan School of Business at Dominican University. She earned her Ph.D. from West Virginia University. She also holds Master of Public Administration degrees from the University of Arkansas and the Odessa Regional Institute of Public Administration.
Kizilova was born in Russia and moved to Ukraine at the age of 10. She lived there for three decades, working for the Ministry of Health Resorts and Tourism of Crimea. She also served as a local expert for technical assistance programs, such as USAID LINK, USAID BIZPRO, and a European Union project on Crimean tourism.
Kizilova witnessed the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and assisted international media covering the conflict, including NPR, the BBC and BFM-TV. She left Crimea because of her active pro-Ukrainian position.
Contact Dr. Kizilova: ekizilova@dom.edu
Media queries: marcomm@dom.edu