Originally Posted by
etudiant
There is considerable evidence that the recent Ukraine leadership seeks to eliminate the substantial Russian minority, evidenced by the hard fought decision to prohibit Russian language instruction \in the primary schools.
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Ah, yes, that"s just what the Russians did in the Soviet era but they did it in a much larger scale: move big portions of (or entire) ethnic people to somewhere else and replace them with ethnic Russians. A very striking example is the deportation of Crimean tatars. Then Russian was made mandatory in schools. The exact reasons why so many ex soviet countries have issues with ethnic russians nowadays are lying in soviet era.
The human suffering caused and crimes commited by russians during the entire existence of USSR are well remembered throughout ex soviet countries from Crimea to Carelia and Katyn to Kabul. With Putin being nostalgic about it and annexing parts of sovereign countries scares everyone else.
The famine caused by USSR in Ukraine combined with mass deportations of the era gives reason enought to stand against any Russian increment of influence.
You are saying that there is evidence of Ukrainian leadership trying to eliminate Russian minority. Well, Russian leadership HAS ELIMINATED ukrainians throughout the history and there are proof of it, too.