In 1648, thanks to a Cossack uprising, an independent state emerged on the territory of present-day Ukraine, which was divided in 1667 between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Dnieper River served as the border. By the end of the 18th century, the Kingdom of Poland was partitioned by Germany, Russia (which gained most of Ukrainian territory), and Austria (which acquired Galicia). During World War I, 3.5 million Ukrainians from Russian-controlled Ukraine fought on the side of Russia, while 250,000 Ukrainians from Austro-Hungarian Western Ukraine fought for Austria-Hungary.

After the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Bolsheviks managed to win Ukraine over to their side only after they began redistributing land confiscated from the nobility to Ukrainian peasants and promised that Ukraine would join a federation with Bolshevik Russia as a formally independent state, with Ukrainian as its official language. In February 1920, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was thus established. Russia effectively gifted most of Ukrainian territory to the western Ukraine in exchange for the promise that it would remain part of the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Soviet Union took Volhynia from Poland and annexed it to Ukrainian territory, and in 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, gifted Crimea to Ukraine. Thus, the majority of Ukrainian territory consisted of land that had been given to it by Russia.

In 2001, Russian was the native language of 38% of Ukrainians. Over the next decade, Russian remained the language of instruction in 53% of schools in Odessa, 55% in Zaporizhzhia, 83% in Luhansk, 86% in Donetsk, and 99.2% in Crimea. In 2000, 65% of printed newspapers, 88% of magazines, and 90% of books were still published in Russian. Russian also dominated radio and the Internet. Only Ukrainian state television broadcasted in Ukrainian, but Russian television channels were watched by at least as many viewers (A History of Ukraine the Land and its Peoples p. 739-743).

According to a public opinion poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology on November 26, 2013—just before the outbreak of the Maidan protests—39% of Ukrainians supported joining the European Union and 37% supported joining the Russian Customs Union. In western Ukraine, 69% of respondents supported joining the European Union and 11% supported joining the Customs Union; in central Ukraine, 43% favored the EU and 27% favored the Customs Union; in southern Ukraine, 51% favored joining the Customs Union and 29% favored joining the EU; and in eastern Ukraine, 61% favored joining the Customs Union and 15% favored joining the EU.

A Czech Television program about life in the Czech lands following the German occupation in 1939 reported that Germany expected German to be spoken in the Czech lands only 300 years from then. When residents of western and central Ukraine staged a coup in Kyiv in 2014, overthrowing the duly elected government and steering Ukraine toward EU and NATO membership, the people of eastern Ukraine and Crimea rose up in opposition. The illegitimate Ukrainian government sent the army against eastern Ukraine and, with EU support, conquered part of its territory. After five years, the Ukrainian government banned the local population in the occupied territories of eastern and southern Ukraine from speaking Russian in government offices, and after seven years, in stores as well. In schools, instruction in Russian was permitted only through the fourth grade.

From a linguistic perspective, the Ukrainian government thus imposed a harsher occupation regime on the pro-Russian territory ceded by Russia than Germany had imposed on occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939; in effect, the European Union was expanding its territory eastward in a manner similar to Germany’s expansion during World War II. It should come as no surprise that Russia did not accept this move by Western Europe into its historical territory, which resisted this action of western Ukraine, and declared war on Ukraine.

The European Union is currently demonstrating its expansionist ambitions by opposing the U.S. attempt to broker a peace agreement in the Ukrainian conflict under which Ukraine would cede the Donbas region and Crimea to Russia. Thus, 80 years after the end of the World War II, Europe faces the threat of another large-scale war over the same territory as did 80 years ago Germany.

A caricature of these European expansionist efforts was provided by a survey conducted by the Ukrainian Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language in 2024 and 2025, which showed that one in five children considers the Ukrainian language unsuitable for everyday communication.

“20% of respondents said they prefer Russian because of the prejudiced attitude toward Ukrainian in their environment… And that is an indicator for all of Ukraine,” said Sergey Syrotenko, deputy head of the secretariat of the plenipotentiary for the protection of the state language, to the Ukrainian online television channel Hromadske.

“Young people mirror their parents’ attitudes. But this isn’t limited to the family. Today, this alignment takes place through the internet and social media. Teenagers’ values, particularly regarding language, are either undeveloped or hostile toward the Ukrainian language,” Syrotenko explained.

During a survey of students at Kyiv schools, the students reported that they themselves communicate in a non-state language (i.e., Russian) during class (66%) and during breaks (82%). Generally, these figures are lower in Ukraine: 40% during class and 52% during breaks.

The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology reported:

“From late January to mid-February 2026, there was a significant decline in the proportion of those willing to endure the continuation of the war for as long as necessary. While 65% held this view at the end of January, by mid-February that figure had dropped to just 52%.”

According to the British Gallup Institute, in August 2025, 69% of Ukrainians supported peace at the cost of ceding territory.

By seeking to conquer historically Russian territory, Western Europe is thus contradicting its own democratic values and tacitly supporting the implementation of an occupation policy there. If it renounces these intentions, it will benefit the entire European continent. The war in Ukraine has already claimed the lives of more than two million people, and forward-thinking politicians should (to put it mildly) not seek to increase that number.

Reports of violent conflicts continue to appear daily in the Ukrainian press, accompanying the mobilization of men of military age into the army on the streets and in public spaces (stabbings, shootings, and grenade attacks are used by those being mobilized to oppose the mobilization).

Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in  communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since 1981 until 1988 lived in emigration in the USA. Since 1996 he has published articles on different subjects mostly in the Czech and international alternative media.

In 2010, he published a book on the 9/11 attacks in the Czech language. Since the 1990‘s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).