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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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These claims are very odd. To point out a couple

This dichotomy lost its importance by 2016.

do you have some sort of empirical evidence of this other than your anecdote. I have seen many videos that would show contrary. For an empirical example this poll by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in (sep2022) states that "The poll showed that 57% of Ukraine's ethnic Russians" do not support making territorial concessions to Russia while almost 90% of Ukrainians do not as a whole. That is as significant difference in opinion to me. This poll did not include all of Luhansk, Donetsk, Crimea oblasts either.

I haven't been able to determine why he switched then - but it does echo popular opinion in the East too.

Again the poll by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology "At the same time, it is mostly supported by residents of the West and the Center (respectively, 79.4% and 66.2%), the least - residents of the East (38.8%, while 55.8% do not support)."

In spite of this, he surprising ended up not vetoing (middling) anti-Russian language laws.

I don't find this surprising in the least bit

Consider half the country uses Russian as their main day to day language, but not even a fifth claim it as their native language (which also means something different than in English), and 57% of that less than a fifth of "Russians" have an opinion on a poll? That's less than 10%. Of the "Ukrainians", you'd be hard pressed to find any (besides in the far West) who don't have a Russian grandparent (or 3). Along the same lines, even in Siberia or Vladivostok, half the people you find will have a Ukrainian or Polish grandparent. This does not impact what ethnic identity they write in surveys.