Hello, as a Ukrainian I want to thank you for your reaction to this video. It is also very nice that you already know a loro of facts about our country! I would like to share the answers and my thoughts on some of the topics you raised in the video. But I say right away that I do not claim to be 100% reliable, this is mostly based on my personal experience as a citizen of Ukraine. About language: even if you tried very hard not to use the construction "higher class", you would not be far wrong if you said that about the Russian language in the 90s and 00s. The fact is that since the days of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian language was oppressed, it was officially banned in schools, theaters, literature, it was not allowed to publish books in Ukrainian or to translate them into our language, all higher education was in Russian, etc. Of course, the same policy continued in the Soviet Union, where, in addition, it was forbidden to write scientific literature in Ukrainian, so for a long time we did not even have our own terminology. A total of 134 bans on the Ukrainian language were issued from the tsarist times until Brezhnev (not including indirect oppression and discrimination). This, as well as the propaganda and deliberate appointment of ethnic Russians to leadership positions in the cities, created an image of Ukraine and the Ukrainian language as only a provincial agrarian territory, while the cities were rapidly Russified. That is why, after the collapse of the USSR, a huge number of the population spoke Russian and had a contemptuous attitude towards their native language. However, with the restoration of independence, the Ukrainian language began to gradually return to the public space, and after 2014, a big wave of de-Russification began and many Ukrainians consciously switched to Ukrainian as the main language (including me). Now, after the full-scale invasion, almost every Ukrainian is trying to at least increase the amount of Ukrainian in their everyday life, but many give up all Russian content and language completely. I personally am 18 years old and believe me, when I was little I only heard Ukrainian at school and in the news, but now walking around Kyiv (which was often called a Russian-speaking city) I hear and see it everywhere. About Jews: I am not sure whether Ukrainian Jews are classified into a separate group, but we definitely have a large Jewish diaspora (about 300,000 people with Jewish roots), they took an active part in the history and social life of Ukraine at least since the time of the Cossacks, maybe even before. I mean even Zelensky is a Ukrainian Jew, what else can I say? By the way, Odesa is often associated with Jews, because they make up a large part of its population. About football: Don't worry, I don't know much about football either, but our team used to be very strong, and in 2012 the Euro was held in Ukraine. We had the two strongest teams - Dynamo and Shakhtar, the matches of these two teams were really big events and their fans sometimes went really crazy arguing with each other. But Shakhtar is a Donetsk team, so with the beginning of Russian aggression, it ceased to exist (as far as I know), somewhere around the same time, Dynamo began to give up positions, Shevchenko (the cool football player they talked about in the video) later became a coach, not a player, and now Ukraine is not a very formidable opponent in football, unfortunately. By the way, Shevchenko is really incredible, I'm in Italy right now and even Italian football fans know about him. ok, I should end now because I wrote some Egyptian scroll of information instead of a comment, but maybe you or one of your followers will be interested. Anyway, thanks again for the reaction to the video. Greetings to Canada from Ukraine :)
Here are a few corrections/extra info 18:05 Antonov, not Antov 22:29 Korovai, not Karovay 22:37 The national inventory of intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine includes the korovais of Sakhnovshchyna and ritual breads of Vinnytsia Oblast, meaning that only two specific varieties of korovai are classified, not all of them 25:42 The mayor of Mykolaiv is actually Korean 26:16 Some might interpret this as if Surzhyk is a specific mix of Ukrainian and Russian or even a transitional language, but that's not true. Essentially, Surzhyk arises like so: you're speaking Ukrainian, you suddenly can't remember one word or phrase, and so your brain automatically replaces this with the Russian equivalent. Surzhyk doesn't have set rules, it's just a thing that appears when both people in a conversation know two languages (in this case Ukrainian and Russian) and don't care to make sure they speak either one 100% correctly 28:27 Hutsuls are just one specific group of Ukrainians in the Carpathian region, but it's not the only one. There are also Boikos, Pokuttians, Subcarpathian Rusyns, and Lemkos. Due to their isolation in the mountains, each of these groups evolved their own cultural elements, many of which have been preserved well to this day. 29:09 Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, not Bogdan Khmelnytsky (the former is the Ukrainian spelling, the latter is a weird mix of Russian & Ukrainian spellings) 35:32 Actually, many ancient Ukrainian practices from the pagan times had been incorporated into the Orthodox Christian observances. For examples, some ancient traditions became associated with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, etc. 35:56 Opishnia, not Opishinia. Petrykivka, not Petrykyvka. There are many more different decorated ceramics in Ukraine, with different villages having their own styles. The most famous ones come from Kosiv, Opishnia, Petrykivka, Bubnivka, and Samchyky. 36:44 Even though the Carpathian region preserved the largest number of authentic traditions, most of these traditions are local and don't apply to the rest of Ukraine necessarily. Several villages in central, northern, and southern Ukraine preserved a lot of their traditions too, but tourism is generally not well-developed there. 39:34 I can't believe that they didn't even mention Okean Elzy 39:53 Yeah, there are many super specific supersitions in Ukraine: sit down for a little while before traveling (for good luck), don't pass objects over the doorstep (to not transfer any evil spirits into the house), don't look into a broken mirror, spit over your shoulder to avoid jinxing something, don't step over a person that's laying down (or else that person won't grow), await guests if a piece of silverware fell down, don't gift knives, await bad luck if you see an old woman with an empty bucket, await a quarrel if you spilled salt, don't sit at the corner of a table if you're not married, always gift an odd number of flowers (even number of flowers is for decorating the cemetery), await luck if a bird pooped on you, bite down on a piece of thread if someone is sewing a piece of clothing that you're wearing (to not sew your memories together).... Overall though - great video! I wouldn't expect a foreigner to research and condense so much info into one 30-minute video.
in Ukraine there is a Jewish Mekah of the Hasidim. Every year in the days leading up to the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), they make a pilgrimage to the city of Uman.
Don't be shy to say that, the Ukrainian language was oppressed in some regions of Ukraine, especially big cities of the left bank Ukraine just now due to the huge russification. The Ukrainian language was perceived as rural (the common narrative of russia that Ukrainian is a rural dialect of russian and spoken only by the uneducated stratum of the population or even created artificially) and the russian language was perceived as prestigious. Many famous people and artists were oriented on russia though that obviously was abusive relations of a victim and a murderer. Many people were humiliated or even killed because they spoke Ukrainian, it was imposible to get the job in Kyiv if you don't know russian. The situation started to change in 2014 with the beginning of the war, it opened eyes to many even pro-russian people, many of us started returning to our roots and common sense and started speaking Ukrainian and rejecting russia in many ways. Considering this, it is 'funny' and ridiculous to read russian propaganda of how much the russian language is oppressed.
Regarding Chornobyl, it's state-controlled and we have certified guides. Also, you'll need to pass a radiation contamination check after visiting the exclusion zone. But, yes there is also black tourism and if you'll be caught by guards you'll need to pay a fine or you may be considered a criminal, depending on what did you do there.
27:45, I think what you're getting at might be that speaking russian was comparable to how americans tend to consider a London style british accent to be a sign of sophistication and intelligence, while speaking ukranian used to be considered similar to how americans tend to view a Southern U.S. accent as less intelligent.
Thank you for the elaboration on that one. I was struggling with that on the spot given the sensitivity of the language issue. But still, I thought it was worth pointing out
It was like that, because during the soviet times pretty much you won’t go anywhere without russian and some(mostly older) people are remembering the “good ol’ days” when everything was better(except it wasn’t. Almost every store outside major cities had severe deficiency and quality of products was worse as well as salary). Now, I don’t think you will get anywhere without Ukrainian in Ukraine, because a lot of people are just refusing to speak russian. Also Ukrainian and Russian are not even that similar. A lot of people especially from the west of Ukraine do not understand russian. I was there in school once and in the text author was deliberately using surzhyk and students just couldn’t understand those words.
not really. It was deliberately made that way to russify ukrainians and oppress ukrainian culture and identity. To get a job or do anything you had to speak russian. Also, when passports were given, they were all in russian and ukrainian names were changed to conform to russian ones and that wasn't optional. All the elites were sent from moskow and the ukrainian elites were disappeared if they refused to become "russian". Together with other things it was made so that we perceived ukrainian language as a "redneck language" if you wish. But that is gradually changing since independence. As a bonus, surzhik is a version of ukrainian, riddled with russian words. It's not really a separate language. It's what happens when you force people to speak foreign language. They start mixing in those foreign words without really changing the language otherwise.
Bolivia (at least, its government) is in the same club as Venezuela and Cuba that has a negative view of the US and its allies and prefer Russia, Iran and China. That's why they recognize Crimea as part of Russia. The reason why people don't know it that much is because unlike the others, Bolivia doesn't get too much attention from the media (specially international one).
24:53, im about 50% ukrainian , 30-40% russian, and other 30% is ossetian(i only know about it) and others, so yeah, i lot of us are mixed, blood-wise, and because of that, i have strong accents of both Ukrainian and Russian(specifically of a moscow region where my roots are from), and even some ossetian, even tho i dont know their language, i just kinda naturally have it in some ways when i speak. And also i have two friends who have Jew's blood in them, so its probably more then 3% of others, maybe i have Jewish blood in me as well, i just dont know much more about my bloodline.
We all spoke russian because our ancestors in 18-20th centuries were forced to speak russian, because russia always tried to destroy our language, culture, etc. It was many times forbidden to speak ukrainian, forbidden to create music, literature, etc.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, our president is a Ukrainian jew. I am not exactly sure why they put it separately. Maybe just to show that there are still a lot of Jewish people living in Ukraine. Jewish people from this geographic territory are considered Ashkenazi Jews. the history of Jewish people with Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union is very complicated. Many Ukrainian cities became the Jewish Pale of Settlement because they were not allowed to live in other mostly Russian (then Soviet Union) cities. There were several big waves of immigration after WW2. But there were a lot of Jews that didn't want to leave Ukraine, a lot of them are religious, and some are not. the reasons to stay are also different.
As for language used in the past, as your friend is from Odessa then sure, in the South and East of Ukraine it was definitely a thing, however the West was always Ukrainian-speaking
Интересно что оказывается самая большая диаспора украинцев не в России, а в Канаде и США, и когда говорили о беженцах, не упомянули, что больше всего беженцев едут в Россию. Можно понять почему, но тем ни менее ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
hey guys I'm from Ukraine, you may be never heard of this county and thought that we are Russia, so now I'll quickly explain you how we are true descendants of Rus, but where are not Russia, you know, Russia is finno-turk-mongolian, we are the only true Russia but we are actually not Russia. And also Germans called Russia so, so they don't even have they own name. We've bern called rusins, and that proves that we are the only true Russia, which is not Russia actually, they are mongolians
there is no Ukrainian diaspora in Russia, it is difficult to explain, but those who are there are mostly ideological imperialists and party functionaries, it is difficult to find a diaspora among ordinary people because everything related to Ukraine was destroyed there, Russia now includes the ethnic Ukrainian lands of Belgorod, Kuban, where in 1917 the majority were ethnic Ukrainians, but the authorities of the USSR destroyed everything, they destroyed us even within the borders of our republic, the question is what kind of diaspora there can be
11:40 All Ghillied Up is the best campaign mission ever made. 10/10 would replay any day of the week.
The unexpected reference ahah but yes, it was a great campaign ! It brings back childhood souvenirs from CoD.
Every time I hear about Chernobyl, I feel a sudden inclination to say "50,000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town"
Hello, as a Ukrainian I want to thank you for your reaction to this video. It is also very nice that you already know a loro of facts about our country! I would like to share the answers and my thoughts on some of the topics you raised in the video. But I say right away that I do not claim to be 100% reliable, this is mostly based on my personal experience as a citizen of Ukraine.
About language: even if you tried very hard not to use the construction "higher class", you would not be far wrong if you said that about the Russian language in the 90s and 00s. The fact is that since the days of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian language was oppressed, it was officially banned in schools, theaters, literature, it was not allowed to publish books in Ukrainian or to translate them into our language, all higher education was in Russian, etc. Of course, the same policy continued in the Soviet Union, where, in addition, it was forbidden to write scientific literature in Ukrainian, so for a long time we did not even have our own terminology. A total of 134 bans on the Ukrainian language were issued from the tsarist times until Brezhnev (not including indirect oppression and discrimination). This, as well as the propaganda and deliberate appointment of ethnic Russians to leadership positions in the cities, created an image of Ukraine and the Ukrainian language as only a provincial agrarian territory, while the cities were rapidly Russified. That is why, after the collapse of the USSR, a huge number of the population spoke Russian and had a contemptuous attitude towards their native language. However, with the restoration of independence, the Ukrainian language began to gradually return to the public space, and after 2014, a big wave of de-Russification began and many Ukrainians consciously switched to Ukrainian as the main language (including me). Now, after the full-scale invasion, almost every Ukrainian is trying to at least increase the amount of Ukrainian in their everyday life, but many give up all Russian content and language completely. I personally am 18 years old and believe me, when I was little I only heard Ukrainian at school and in the news, but now walking around Kyiv (which was often called a Russian-speaking city) I hear and see it everywhere.
About Jews: I am not sure whether Ukrainian Jews are classified into a separate group, but we definitely have a large Jewish diaspora (about 300,000 people with Jewish roots), they took an active part in the history and social life of Ukraine at least since the time of the Cossacks, maybe even before. I mean even Zelensky is a Ukrainian Jew, what else can I say? By the way, Odesa is often associated with Jews, because they make up a large part of its population.
About football: Don't worry, I don't know much about football either, but our team used to be very strong, and in 2012 the Euro was held in Ukraine. We had the two strongest teams - Dynamo and Shakhtar, the matches of these two teams were really big events and their fans sometimes went really crazy arguing with each other. But Shakhtar is a Donetsk team, so with the beginning of Russian aggression, it ceased to exist (as far as I know), somewhere around the same time, Dynamo began to give up positions, Shevchenko (the cool football player they talked about in the video) later became a coach, not a player, and now Ukraine is not a very formidable opponent in football, unfortunately. By the way, Shevchenko is really incredible, I'm in Italy right now and even Italian football fans know about him.
ok, I should end now because I wrote some Egyptian scroll of information instead of a comment, but maybe you or one of your followers will be interested. Anyway, thanks again for the reaction to the video. Greetings to Canada from Ukraine :)
Thank you for the Egyptian scroll of information and adding more facts to the video :) I appreciate it!
Wow! You've done great job!😊
Shakhtar is pretty much alive
Italians knows Shevchenko beacause he used be playing in Milan FC and he was a star there at that time.
Here are a few corrections/extra info
18:05 Antonov, not Antov
22:29 Korovai, not Karovay
22:37 The national inventory of intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine includes the korovais of Sakhnovshchyna and ritual breads of Vinnytsia Oblast, meaning that only two specific varieties of korovai are classified, not all of them
25:42 The mayor of Mykolaiv is actually Korean
26:16 Some might interpret this as if Surzhyk is a specific mix of Ukrainian and Russian or even a transitional language, but that's not true. Essentially, Surzhyk arises like so: you're speaking Ukrainian, you suddenly can't remember one word or phrase, and so your brain automatically replaces this with the Russian equivalent. Surzhyk doesn't have set rules, it's just a thing that appears when both people in a conversation know two languages (in this case Ukrainian and Russian) and don't care to make sure they speak either one 100% correctly
28:27 Hutsuls are just one specific group of Ukrainians in the Carpathian region, but it's not the only one. There are also Boikos, Pokuttians, Subcarpathian Rusyns, and Lemkos. Due to their isolation in the mountains, each of these groups evolved their own cultural elements, many of which have been preserved well to this day.
29:09 Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, not Bogdan Khmelnytsky (the former is the Ukrainian spelling, the latter is a weird mix of Russian & Ukrainian spellings)
35:32 Actually, many ancient Ukrainian practices from the pagan times had been incorporated into the Orthodox Christian observances. For examples, some ancient traditions became associated with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, etc.
35:56 Opishnia, not Opishinia. Petrykivka, not Petrykyvka. There are many more different decorated ceramics in Ukraine, with different villages having their own styles. The most famous ones come from Kosiv, Opishnia, Petrykivka, Bubnivka, and Samchyky.
36:44 Even though the Carpathian region preserved the largest number of authentic traditions, most of these traditions are local and don't apply to the rest of Ukraine necessarily. Several villages in central, northern, and southern Ukraine preserved a lot of their traditions too, but tourism is generally not well-developed there.
39:34 I can't believe that they didn't even mention Okean Elzy
39:53 Yeah, there are many super specific supersitions in Ukraine: sit down for a little while before traveling (for good luck), don't pass objects over the doorstep (to not transfer any evil spirits into the house), don't look into a broken mirror, spit over your shoulder to avoid jinxing something, don't step over a person that's laying down (or else that person won't grow), await guests if a piece of silverware fell down, don't gift knives, await bad luck if you see an old woman with an empty bucket, await a quarrel if you spilled salt, don't sit at the corner of a table if you're not married, always gift an odd number of flowers (even number of flowers is for decorating the cemetery), await luck if a bird pooped on you, bite down on a piece of thread if someone is sewing a piece of clothing that you're wearing (to not sew your memories together)....
Overall though - great video! I wouldn't expect a foreigner to research and condense so much info into one 30-minute video.
36:19 Lesya UkrainKa, not Lesya Ukraina
36:32 Maria Prymachenko was painter
Arkhypenko was sculptor
38:07 GolodoMOR
in Ukraine there is a Jewish Mekah of the Hasidim. Every year in the days leading up to the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), they make a pilgrimage to the city of Uman.
Don't be shy to say that, the Ukrainian language was oppressed in some regions of Ukraine, especially big cities of the left bank Ukraine just now due to the huge russification. The Ukrainian language was perceived as rural (the common narrative of russia that Ukrainian is a rural dialect of russian and spoken only by the uneducated stratum of the population or even created artificially) and the russian language was perceived as prestigious. Many famous people and artists were oriented on russia though that obviously was abusive relations of a victim and a murderer. Many people were humiliated or even killed because they spoke Ukrainian, it was imposible to get the job in Kyiv if you don't know russian. The situation started to change in 2014 with the beginning of the war, it opened eyes to many even pro-russian people, many of us started returning to our roots and common sense and started speaking Ukrainian and rejecting russia in many ways. Considering this, it is 'funny' and ridiculous to read russian propaganda of how much the russian language is oppressed.
Regarding Chornobyl, it's state-controlled and we have certified guides. Also, you'll need to pass a radiation contamination check after visiting the exclusion zone. But, yes there is also black tourism and if you'll be caught by guards you'll need to pay a fine or you may be considered a criminal, depending on what did you do there.
27:30 that's true. We had 4 lessons of Russian and only 1 lesson of Ukrainian at schools in 1970-1990 in Ukraine.
I enjoyed! Thank you!
27:45, I think what you're getting at might be that speaking russian was comparable to how americans tend to consider a London style british accent to be a sign of sophistication and intelligence, while speaking ukranian used to be considered similar to how americans tend to view a Southern U.S. accent as less intelligent.
Thank you for the elaboration on that one. I was struggling with that on the spot given the sensitivity of the language issue. But still, I thought it was worth pointing out
It was like that, because during the soviet times pretty much you won’t go anywhere without russian and some(mostly older) people are remembering the “good ol’ days” when everything was better(except it wasn’t. Almost every store outside major cities had severe deficiency and quality of products was worse as well as salary). Now, I don’t think you will get anywhere without Ukrainian in Ukraine, because a lot of people are just refusing to speak russian. Also Ukrainian and Russian are not even that similar. A lot of people especially from the west of Ukraine do not understand russian. I was there in school once and in the text author was deliberately using surzhyk and students just couldn’t understand those words.
not really. It was deliberately made that way to russify ukrainians and oppress ukrainian culture and identity. To get a job or do anything you had to speak russian. Also, when passports were given, they were all in russian and ukrainian names were changed to conform to russian ones and that wasn't optional. All the elites were sent from moskow and the ukrainian elites were disappeared if they refused to become "russian". Together with other things it was made so that we perceived ukrainian language as a "redneck language" if you wish. But that is gradually changing since independence.
As a bonus, surzhik is a version of ukrainian, riddled with russian words. It's not really a separate language. It's what happens when you force people to speak foreign language. They start mixing in those foreign words without really changing the language otherwise.
Bolivia (at least, its government) is in the same club as Venezuela and Cuba that has a negative view of the US and its allies and prefer Russia, Iran and China. That's why they recognize Crimea as part of Russia. The reason why people don't know it that much is because unlike the others, Bolivia doesn't get too much attention from the media (specially international one).
Thanks for the content! Btw you might like Langfocus “how different are Russian and Ukrainian” if you want to know more about the language
24:53, im about 50% ukrainian , 30-40% russian, and other 30% is ossetian(i only know about it) and others, so yeah, i lot of us are mixed, blood-wise, and because of that, i have strong accents of both Ukrainian and Russian(specifically of a moscow region where my roots are from), and even some ossetian, even tho i dont know their language, i just kinda naturally have it in some ways when i speak.
And also i have two friends who have Jew's blood in them, so its probably more then 3% of others, maybe i have Jewish blood in me as well, i just dont know much more about my bloodline.
We all spoke russian because our ancestors in 18-20th centuries were forced to speak russian, because russia always tried to destroy our language, culture, etc. It was many times forbidden to speak ukrainian, forbidden to create music, literature, etc.
38:06 because they did this in previous separate video (10 minutes duration one)
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, our president is a Ukrainian jew. I am not exactly sure why they put it separately. Maybe just to show that there are still a lot of Jewish people living in Ukraine. Jewish people from this geographic territory are considered Ashkenazi Jews.
the history of Jewish people with Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union is very complicated.
Many Ukrainian cities became the Jewish Pale of Settlement because they were not allowed to live in other mostly Russian (then Soviet Union) cities.
There were several big waves of immigration after WW2. But there were a lot of Jews that didn't want to leave Ukraine, a lot of them are religious, and some are not. the reasons to stay are also different.
As for language used in the past, as your friend is from Odessa then sure, in the South and East of Ukraine it was definitely a thing, however the West was always Ukrainian-speaking
every Ukrainian who was abroad. knows that they don't make delicious bread like we do.
Интересно что оказывается самая большая диаспора украинцев не в России, а в Канаде и США, и когда говорили о беженцах, не упомянули, что больше всего беженцев едут в Россию. Можно понять почему, но тем ни менее ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've read somewhere that Manitoba has more Ukrainian speakers than French speakers.
Slava Heroam, Slava Videoliv
damn, I do understand that
jew is both a religion and a race
hey guys I'm from Ukraine, you may be never heard of this county and thought that we are Russia, so now I'll quickly explain you how we are true descendants of Rus, but where are not Russia, you know, Russia is finno-turk-mongolian, we are the only true Russia but we are actually not Russia. And also Germans called Russia so, so they don't even have they own name. We've bern called rusins, and that proves that we are the only true Russia, which is not Russia actually, they are mongolians
there is no Ukrainian diaspora in Russia, it is difficult to explain, but those who are there are mostly ideological imperialists and party functionaries, it is difficult to find a diaspora among ordinary people because everything related to Ukraine was destroyed there, Russia now includes the ethnic Ukrainian lands of Belgorod, Kuban, where in 1917 the majority were ethnic Ukrainians, but the authorities of the USSR destroyed everything, they destroyed us even within the borders of our republic, the question is what kind of diaspora there can be
Я украинец в России, вопросы?
Poland their best friend... Well, maybe 2 a Ukrainian. But maybe not to the Poles