O historické jednotě Rusů a Ukrajinců – Putin Vladimir Vladimirovič (2024)

The publication you have in your hands is a translation of texts written by Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, which were published in the Russian press. The topic of the text is a very controversial issue today, namely the relationship between the Ukrainian and Russian nations. In Czech society and media, there are many half-truths, lies, and disinformation regarding not only the nationality problem of Ukraine and Russia but also the attitudes of the Russian leadership towards this issue. It was precisely the effort to make the Russian stance on this topic accessible to the Czech public that led me to decide to have translated the text written on this subject from the perspective of Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Although it is his personal text, it largely adopts arguments contained in the thoughts and works of scholars such as A. I. Sobolensky, S. K. Bulič, and partially N. S. Trubecký, according to whom the Ukrainian languages are merely dialects of the Russian language. Thus, Ukrainians are just a subgroup of the Russian nation. This is somewhat similar to how in the Czech Republic, Moravians are considered Czechs. It is curious that Putin's and his associates' attitude towards Ukrainians is very similar to the stance of the founders of the Czechoslovak Republic, namely primarily Masaryk and Beneš, towards the Slovak nation, when...