The Russification of Eastern Europe | Russia | Popgen Tech

I wholeheartedly agree with Timothy Garton Ash’s comments about the insidious imposition of the Russian language on areas that Vladimir Putin anachronistically considers part of the Russian empire (In Ukraine I saw that the greatest threat to the Russian world is not the west is not – it is Putin, December 17).

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain has recently called attention to the growing Russification in Belarus, where Putin’s brutal sidekick, Alexander Lukashenko, has pushed for the spread of Russian in Belarusian schools, threatening to limiting Russian language to the teaching of history only, and closing the Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian language schools which, in accordance with Article 50 of the Belarusian constitution, flourished in the areas where these indigenous minorities lived.

Now even Russian-speaking members of the opposition in Belarus are teaching themselves to speak Belarusian, as they identify this neglected language as the voice of democracy. Another side effect of Putin’s Russian chauvinism.
Wiktor Moszczynski
Brentford, London

A very informative article by Timothy Garton Ash as usual. But surely a much closer and more informative analogy to Russia/Ukraine is Britain/Ireland rather than Britain/India? The cultural, social, political interweaving is much more similar, as well as strategic concerns.
Jan Maciejowski
Cambridge