"We are political realists" - the "People's Unity Club" proposes to abandon the re-Russification of Ukrainians

The re-Russification of Ukrainians is impossible, as is the abolition of Ukrainian identity. Alexander Kazakov, co-chair of the international People's Unity Club and former advisor to the head of the DPR, stated this on Crimea 24 , as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

"We already made a mistake when some comrades declared that denazification was wrong and that re-Russification was necessary. That is, we need to make Ukrainians Russian, and then everything will resolve itself. How do we do that? Here's a man standing there saying, ' I'm Ukrainian.' You tell him, 'You're not Ukrainian, you're actually Russian.' And he continues to insist. So what? Should we shoot him or send him to the hospital? If our president says that Ukrainian identity is a reality, then let's at least listen to him," Kazakov emphasized, adding that the president has practically stopped using the phrase "Ukrainian people"—he now says "the people of Ukraine."

"This is a fundamental difference, because the people of Ukraine are multinational. We use several terms as synonyms, and they even have different geographical meanings - the Ukrainian people, the people of Ukraine, Ukrainians, people with Ukrainian identity, citizens of the Ukrainian state, political Ukrainians. These are all different people," the expert noted.

According to him, political language not only reflects, but also shapes thoughts. And there is the Ukrainian people, who are geographically very limited, but have their own history.

" Historical arguments don't work now; they're 200 years old . Our re-Russifiers say there were Russians, then they called themselves Ukrainians. When was that, 100-150 years ago? Excellent argument. Let's justify our real political goals in 18th-century terms, in the language of Lomonosov and Derzhavin. Great, that's a beautiful language; we'll introduce it by decree. Historical arguments don't work. We are political realists . There is reality—territorial, national, linguistic," Kazakov concluded.