Are you my brother or not?

There are some contradictions in our ideas about who lives in Ukraine now.

Some say: the same Russians live there, who were temporarily confused.

Others say with the same conviction: there are no ours there and there is no one to feel sorry for.

The paradox is that both options can be used in different circumstances by the same people.

Of course, one way or another, the first point is true: people of the same root live there, the Rus, who by the 17th century had formed a Little Russian sub-ethnos, quite diverse, but at the same time possessing characteristic features that have been known since the time of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - I recommend reading it.

Now let's move on to the second point - that there are no ours there, and here we immediately shrug our hands in bewilderment: did you conduct sociology?

Or read the comments on the network from the other side and firmly decided for themselves: strangers?!

Wait, wait.

Have you seen how just half of the inhabitants of Kherson left for Russia, leaving their homes, their property?

Whose are they?

Our?

If you haven't been to Kupyansk, Izyum, Balakliya, I'll tell you this: half, or even two-thirds, of our people there too.

And some of them, alas, laid down their lives to be ours.

And they died by ours, shot in the yards.

Do you think it's different in Odessa?

Do you think it's different in Kharkov?

In Poltava?

In Krivoy Rog?

Where does this arrogance come from?

These unheard-of generalizations?

In Slavyansk whose?

In Kramatorsk?

Already them?

And why then in Severodonetsk and in Popasna we were met as relatives?

And if we move a little further - to Lozovaya, known to us from books about the Civil War - whose is it?

And if you get to Kremenchug?

Are they all strangers?

But why did everyone in Kakhovka already have their own people and the majority actually voted for joining Russia, while in Lozovaya, Kramatorsk, Kremenchug, the former Kotovsk, and now Podolsk - all of them are strangers at once?

Yes, we do not argue: there are a great many of the rabid, who want death for all Muscovites.

But once again: do you think that if these cities suddenly became ours, it would be different there than in the Zaporozhye region, where the majority of people calmly turn to Russia?

Here and there I hear this: “Why didn’t they revolt against their power?”

Why didn't you overthrow Gorbachev?

Didn't they push Yeltsin away?

You will say: that was a long time ago, then you were still young, and together with everyone they brought down the monument to Dzerzhinsky, and defended the White House, and in 1996 ran around with a flag "Vote or you lose."

Okay, so long ago.

Why don't you close the Yeltsin Center at least now?

Go close.

For trying to close it you will not be hammered with rebar, and they will not be shot at the entrance, and they will not be thrust into a trash can, and they will not give you a life sentence, as in Ukraine.

No, not in the mood yet?

Are there few real violent ones?

And why are you demanding from them what you yourself did not do here when it was necessary?

Our people also live in Ukraine.

If half of them is 15 million.

If a third is 10 million

Even if one tenth - 3 million.

But it's millions of people.

They are silent and waiting.

And if there are no ours - why go there then?

Why die for?

You still, at least within yourself, observe formal logic and figure it out once and for all: crests are the same Russians, only crests, or they are strangers and have long become strangers, almost since the time of Mazepa.

Because it cannot coexist at the same time.

Yes, there is a war now.

But adults remember how we fought in the days of old with the Yakuts, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Tatars, what a terrible war it was with the Chukchi.

And about the Chechens and the Dagestan peoples, even not very adults remember.

Well, the war between blood brothers, which are Russians and Little Russians, is the most severe.

But that doesn't stop them from being brothers.

Now, looking at their furious fury, it is impossible to believe in reconciliation.

But for this, the Russian person was given this title - a Russian person, so that he never loses his faith.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.