This is an unfounded accusation but it comes up very regularly in Vladimir Putin's mouth to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine: the Russian-speaking populations there are victims of "Russophobia" and even, in the words of the Russian president, of a "genocide".
Behind these outrageous remarks hides a cultural and identity battle between Kiev and Moscow.
It has been raging since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but its origins date back to Ukraine's independence in 1991.
To assert its identity vis-à-vis its powerful Russian neighbour, Ukraine has in fact adopted, throughout its history, laws aimed at promoting the use of Ukrainian.
After decades of repression and forced Russification under Soviet rule, Ukrainian has been the country's only official language since 1989.
A political and diplomatic issue, these tensions around the language are however largely absent in the daily life of Ukrainians.
Russian is indeed ubiquitous in everyday life, and an overwhelming majority of the population understands it.
As for Russian speakers, many of them reject the propaganda of the Kremlin, which regularly presents itself as the liberator of populations who would be oppressed by Kiev.
Why does Moscow consider that the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine rightfully belong to it?
How can we explain the link established by Vladimir Putin between spoken language and national belonging?
Answers with Patrick Sériot, honorary professor of Slavic linguistics at the University of Lausanne.
France 24: How can linguistics help us understand the conflict unfolding in Ukraine
?
Patrick Sériot:
Linguistics is like geography.
It is also used for war.
It is used to make war for people who consider that individual identity exists only through language.
This is not very understandable for French speakers, for whom the language does not pose a problem.
For French people, the fact that French-speaking Swiss speak French does not imply that they want to invade Switzerland;
the same for Belgium.
In contrast, in Russia and other Eastern European countries, a distinction is made between "citizenship" and "nationality".
From this point of view, it is obvious that the French-speaking Swiss are Swiss citizens of French nationality.
For Putin, therefore, Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens are Russians before being Ukrainians.
One can only draw the parallel with Hitler in 1938 and the case of the Sudetenland border region.
According to Hitler, the Sudeten German-speaking Czechoslovak citizens were German before they were Czechoslovak.
Linguistics is perverted here by the idea that the individual exists only through his ethnicity.
It is not racism, in the biological sense, but an ethnicist ideology.
This ideology has a history.
It dates back to the end of the 18th century, when Germany did not exist as a state.
It was then a multitude of micro-states separated by customs and institutional barriers, but for German intellectuals, the German Nation existed because there was a German language.
The language thus becomes the soul of the Nation and no longer depends on the State, but on the territory.
Conversely, with the French Jacobin revolutionaries, it was the Nation, in its construction, which imposed the French language.
During the Revolution, only a third of the French population spoke French [the other two thirds spoke local patois].
How is the importance of the Russian-speaking presence in eastern Ukraine explained
?
There has always been a native Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.
It is mainly located in the east of the country, because there are iron and coal mines in this territory.
In the 19th century, the country was mainly agricultural, but it was industrialized in the east from the Second World War with a huge influx of Russian-speaking immigrants from all regions of the USSR.
Among these Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens, some are loyal to Kyiv, while others see themselves as Russians first.
In this regard, the Ukrainian government has made a serious mistake by imposing Ukrainian as the sole state language and giving Russian foreign language status along with English or German.
This was blessed bread for the demagogic propaganda of Vladimir Putin, who then claimed that his "compatriots" were oppressed.
Overall, what is the relationship of Ukrainians to the Russian language
?
Most Ukrainian citizens are bilingual, or understand Russian very well.
It is therefore impossible to make statistics on the languages spoken, because many people, depending on the situation or the interlocutor, will switch from one language to another.
Nevertheless, there are ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine who have a holy horror of Russian and who would like to force all Ukrainians to adopt the Ukrainian language.
It is hate speech that has added fuel to the fire.
If we follow Russia's logic, should other Russian-speaking regions in Europe be integrated into its territory
?
Obviously.
Moldova, which is not a member of NATO, is on the front line and part of its territory is already occupied by separatists in Transnistria.
There is also [in the north] a large Russian-speaking minority in Latvia, which for the moment is quiet, but it would be easy to find a few individuals willing to call on Vladimir Putin for help.
This ideology, according to which language makes it possible to link populations to a State, is the very negation of democracy and the right of peoples to self-determination.
The individual no longer has any personal choice here.
It is a huge danger.
However, it should be kept in mind that the language issue is a pretext.
In my opinion, Vladimir Putin does not care at all about the fate of Russian speakers in Ukraine.
For him, it is a question of getting his hands on the entire Ukrainian territory and above all of preventing the contagion of a democratic system in Russia that could jeopardize its political survival.
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