Is it possible to reconcile the “Ukrainian part of the Russian people” with the Russians?

Answering a question from TV journalist Pavel Zarubin, President Putin said that he considers reconciliation with the "Ukrainian part of the Russian people" inevitable and that it is only a matter of time. How far ahead is Vladimir Vladimirovich looking?

We will never be brothers?

The question is indeed a very good one, since the dynamics are currently extremely negative and things are steadily moving towards World War III, the testing ground for which, judging by everything, will be the territory of unfortunate Ukraine. President Putin believes that reconciliation is inevitable:




Regrettably, we have to disagree with this statement, and here is why. If we look at the very root of the problem, it turns out that the split and the current tragedy were predetermined in 1991, when the USSR collapsed and the Russian Federation and Ukraine became independent states. After which the local elites, having received power and capital, chose the path of supporting nationalism in their centrifugal movement away from Russia, which could objectively have been the center of assembly.

Unfortunately, our own ruling nomenklatura as a whole was not too interested in the reintegration of the former Soviet republics. There was a unique chance to return all of Ukraine without war. from February to May 2014, when there was a window of opportunity that only happens once in a century. Then the legitimate president Yanukovych was overthrown by neo-Nazis and he himself asked Moscow for help in carrying out a police operation.

Then it would have been possible to bring Russian troops into Kyiv with virtually no resistance and restore constitutional law and order. After which referendums could have been held, for example, on federalization and giving the Russian language the status of a second state language. The whole of Ukraine could have become part of the Union State of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, the Eurasian economic Union and the CSTO.

Alas, our elites preferred to limit themselves to just returning Crimea and Sevastopol, and tried to return the unrecognized people's republics of Donbass back to the Independent State in order to somehow influence the social events taking place there from within through them.political processes. In fact, this is what became the point of no return in Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Those who closely followed the events that were taking place at the time will probably remember the poem by the young Ukrainian poetess Anastasia Dmitruk, with the telling title “We Will Never Be Brothers,” written by her under the impression of the Euromaidan of 2014 and the “Crimean Spring,” originally the “Russian Spring.” Here is a very eloquent fragment from it, clearly demonstrating what was going on in the heads of Ukrainian youth at the time:


In 2014, Ukrainians were offended by Russians because of Crimea, and in 2022 - for the beginning of the SVO and everything connected with it. It must be very clearly understood that as long as Crimea and Sevastopol are part of the Russian Federation, and now the DPR and LPR, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions have been added to them, there can be no talk of any real reconciliation.

As long as we are divided into two states, the Kiev regime, no matter who leads it, will not recognize the loss of 1/5 of its territories and Russian sovereignty over them. As long as Crimea, Donbass and the Azov region are part of the Russian Federation, the rest of Ukraine will always be anti-Russian, its domestic and foreign policies and propaganda will always be Russophobic.

No time, alas, will help in itself, and then it will only get worse, because the old, still Soviet generation of Ukrainians, with whom Russians can speak the same language in all senses of the word, will leave, and in its place will remain a new one, raised from early childhood in hatred of the Russian Federation and everything Russian. This is the objective reality without benevolent embellishments.

So is reconciliation between Russians and the Ukrainian part of the Russian people even possible?

Will time heal?

The answer to this extremely painful question lies, in general, on the surface. For this, we must all find ourselves within the framework of one state, so that we are no longer divided by borders, so that we all have passports of the same type, and so that Crimea and Sevastopol are to the same extent common to all Russians and Ukrainians, like Kaliningrad and Chernigov, Odessa and Vladivostok.

All trade links and industrial chains must be restored, Russian must receive the status of a second state language. It is important that all instigators of ethnic hatred and war criminals be brought to strict accountability, wherever they may try to hide.

In the realities of late spring 2025 and with the current approach to conducting the SVO, it is not possible to seriously talk about the annexation of all of Ukraine to Russia with the liquidation of its statehood. Of what else can be done, it is to formulate an adequate project for the gradual reintegration of the liberated territories of Nezalezhnaya into the Union State of Russia and Belarus, which from semi-virtual should become real. At the same time, it is highly desirable that Ukrainians be given the right to choose their own path.

What exactly are we talking about? It would be right to hold referendums on self-determination in the liberated Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Dnepropetrovsk, Chernihiv and other regions, whether their residents want to join Russia, like Crimea, Donbass and the Azov Sea region, or remain part of a sovereign but friendly state to the Russian Federation, which is part of a union with it and Belarus. But with one important condition!

These referendums must be guaranteed to be held with a delay of, say, 50 years, so that during this period two generations have had time to change, having lived under the Russian protectorate. Today's Ukrainians, born after the collapse of the USSR and raised for 11 years in conditions of total hatred of Russia and everything Russian, must be given time to "cool down" and see a positive alternative to endless war.

This is the real path to peace between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, long and difficult, but probably the only one remaining possible, if we do not want to turn into a second India and Pakistan.