Wartime Ukraine erasing Russian past from public spaces

TL;DR

Zelenskyy visits front, Putin praises troops in KremlinBiden: US looking to strengthen relationship with EcuadorOfficial: Russia, Iran turmoil limited meddling in US voteCyprus: Plant to process Israeli gas for export an optionIf victors write history, as some say, Ukrainians are doing some rewriting of their own — even as their fate hangs in the balance.President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken to wearing a black T-shirt that says: “I’m Ukrainian.”He is among the many Ukrainians who were born speaking Russian as a first language.The eastern city of Dnipro on Friday pulled down a bust of Alexander Pushkin — like Dostoevsky, a giant of 19th century Russian literature.Volodymyr Prokopiv, deputy head of the Kyiv City Council, said Ukraine’s “de-Communization” policy since 2015 had been applied in a “soft” way so as not to offend sensitivities among the country’s Russian-speaking and even pro-Moscow population.Andrew Wilson, a professor at University College London, cautioned about “the dangers in rewriting the periods in history where Ukrainians and Russians did cooperate and build things together: I think the whole point about de-imperializing Russian culture should be to specify where we have previously been blind — often in the West.”Wilson noted that the Ukrainians “are taking a pretty broad-brush approach.”He cited Pushkin, the 19th century Russian writer, who might understandably rankle some Ukrainians."

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