A Kyiv tech startup founder I know married to a woman from Kryvih Rih told me that people in central and eastern Ukraine hate the Bandera cult and that it's declining. This view jives with this 2019 post on Quora by a Ukrainian from Kyiv on the Bandera cult as an electoral liability more than an asset, similar to removing the genocidal, slaveholding Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill in NY and CA vs SC and AL.
“Politicians should be changed often, like diapers. And for the same reason”.
If Zelensky really supported Bandera, it would mean his undoing. Zelensky is a comedian, speaking mostly Russian, and a Jew, they say. For Bandera those are enough reasons that Zelensky must not exist in Ukraine.
As far as I remember the poll of early 2019 or late 2018, a bit more Ukrainian citizens dislike Bandera than like him. Bandera support never wins you majority of Center, South, and East of Ukraine. They never needed Bandera, he is nothing for them at best, rather an enemy. Most of my family, except one insane alcoholic, never said a good word about Bandera or his followers. More to it, to stand for Bandera means to be at odds with every neighbor country of Ukraine — what most Ukrainians need not.
The more you support Bandera, the less votes you win in all-Ukrainian elections, as only in the West majority is really supportive of Bandera praisers.
Zelensky faces an impossible job: he tries to win support in different ends of Ukraine, which were and are antagonists in their political choices. He may say that he likes Bandera, but that will cost him votes, and if he really supported Bandera, he wouldn’t win the elections.
P.S. Disclaimer: I voted for Zelensky in presidential elections, but just to bring down Poroshenko. I don’t like Zelensky and I’m not going to vote for his party in the parliament elections.
If I believed that Zelensky really supports Bandera, I wouldn’t vote for him in any case."
You're looking in the wrong place for genocidal exterminationists:
"We aren't coming to kill you, but to convince you," Gubarev said. "But if you don't want to be convinced, we'll kill you. We'll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you."
Gubarev, a Ukrainian, is a pro-Russian activist and self-proclaimed "people's governor" of the Donetsk.
Then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev quoted in a conversation with an industry watchdog official – “Russian Prime Minister: Ukraine Has ‘No Industry, or State” (April 5, 2016)
There is “neither industry, nor a state there” in Ukraine. In 2013, there was “industry there, but there was no state even then.”
Russian economist and pundit Mikhail Khazin remarks – “They need to be partially eliminated” – YouTube video (December 27, 2016)
Ukraine has “several million people [not loyal to Russia]” who “need to be partially eliminated and partially squeezed out.”
“New Russia,” or the territories from Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhye, and Dnepropetrovsk, “should be joined to the Russian regions, with full denazification, deukrainization.”
Russia should institute a “complete ban on Ukrainian fonts, Ukrainian texts, programs on [the] Ukrainian language, on teaching Ukrainian – ie completely.”
These implementations will cause a “surplus population – let the surplus population go to the [Russian] Far East.”
Former Putin aide Vladislav Surkov in Q&A – Surkov: “I’m Interested in Acting Against Reality” – Actual Comments website (February 26, 2020)
Surkov’s “vanity is forever satisfied by the fact that [he] put [his] hand and head into the building of a new Russian state.”
There is “no Ukraine,” although there is “Ukrainianism” – a “specific mental disorder. Surprisingly brought to the extreme degree passion for ethnography. Such bloody lore. Muddle instead of the state. There is borscht, Bandera, bandura. But there is no nation.”
Donbass “does not deserve such humiliation” of returning to Ukraine. Ukraine “does not deserve such honor.”
Putin – “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” – Kremlin (July 12, 2021)
The incorporation of “western Russian lands into the single state” was the product of “common faith, shared cultural traditions, and – I would like to emphasize it once again – language similarity.”
There is “no historical basis” for the “idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.”
Ukrainization was “often imposed on those who did not see themselves as Ukrainians.”
Modern Ukraine is “entirely the product of the Soviet era” shaped on the “lands of historical Russia.” Hence, Russia “was robbed.”
Ukraine’s leaders “began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united [Russia and Ukraine], and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation.”
The “slogans, ideology, and blatant aggressive Russophobia” of “radical nationalist groups” have become “defining elements of state policy in Ukraine.”
Ukraine “peddle[s] Russophobia” and prefers to “exploit the image of the ‘victim of external aggression.’”
Russia and Ukraine together have “always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For [they] are one people.“
Medvedev op-ed – “Why Contacts with the Current Ukrainian Leadership are Meaningless” – Kommersant (October 11, 2021)
Ukrainian leaders are “people who do not have any stable self-identification. Who are they, what country are they citizens of, what is their historical identity, ethnic component, what gods do they pray to?”
There are “no fools to fight for Ukraine. And it is pointless for [Russia] to deal with vassals. Business must be done with the suzerain.”
Putin in press conference (February 8, 2022) and in official remarks (February 21, 2022) – An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent – Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy
“‘Like it or not, take it, my beauty’” references a “vulgar Russian rhyme about necrophiliac rape, implying an intention to inflict similar destruction on Ukraine and a view of Ukraine as a corpse.”
Modern Ukraine is considered to be “entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.”
Russia is “ready to show what real decommunization would mean for Ukraine.”
