karacunt

american comment:

albanian comment:

Tenna art by @9Aaaalt29 on twt

But despite understanding all of this, I still find it emotionally difficult not to react when someone from abroad — someone who barely knew anything about Ukraine before 2022 — starts repeating claims they read "in some tumblr post", "on reddit" and so on, while never checking who exactly wrote it in the first place.

What also makes it worse is when these people do not understand the historical context of Ukraine's relationships with neighboring states, and, most importantly, the formation of people's identities across all of these countries, yet still project their own historical perspective onto someone else's history without any understanding of the differences.

For some reason, this can be incredibly fucking difficult for me emotionally. Because on top of the stress of Russia's genocidal war, you also feel that the world is constantly examining both you and your country piece by piece, freely criticizing and reshaping it according to its own views, pressuring you to see yourself the way they want you to see yourself, constantly weighing whether you are "a good nation or not" — all while knowing that they have this privilege over you, where their opinion of you can genuinely affect matters related to your protection and even your ability to stay alive.

It's Ukraine's actions that, by definition, can be called a retaliation. Not the other way round.

Instead, I will say this: next time you want to read a book from russian literature or praise russian culture, think about how much culture we will never get to experience because of russians.