In eastern Ukraine, Russian speakers juggle complex identities

Once upon a time, it was a Russian man who would walk across the border from his home into the Ukrainian village of Milove, and ring the church bells that summoned the faithful from both sides of the frontier to prayer.

But that was in the old days. Now the border is closed, demarcated by a barbed wire fence erected by the Russians that illustrates the growing rift between the two neighbors. Somewhere on the other side, an estimated 130,000 Russian troops are massing.

Not that the residents of this drab, snow-covered outpost have seen any preparations for war, other than two newly deployed Ukrainian border guards brandishing assault rifles who were strolling up and down their side of the frontier last weekend. Nor do they seem to be giving the prospect of conflict much thought; many villagers dismiss it as remote.

That might be because a Russian invasion would tear deeply at their sense of who they are. Mainly Russian-speaking, ruled from Moscow for most of the 20th century as part of the Soviet Union, and now Ukrainian citizens, the villagers of Milove – like residents of border towns the length of the Russian-Ukrainian frontier – inhabit complex, confused, and often ambiguous identities.

“No traditions separate us,” says Sergei Ivanovich, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian nationalist who says he is ready to take up arms to defend his land if necessary. But “today Ukrainians and Russians are two different peoples. I always felt Ukrainian and always will, even if I speak Russian.”

Strong bonds of friendship and kinship have endured in this rural district. Russia is not only right next door. For most people here, Russians are kin, a view rooted in a common sense of history, local industries that remained intertwined until long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and high rates of intermarriage.

The view from Peoples’ Friendship Street

The street that the border guards patrol used to be shared by both countries and is still called Peoples’ Friendship Street. But the Soviet-era parade of that name, celebrating unity between Slavic peoples, came to a halt in 2014, the year Russia forcibly annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

The sense of friendship was further strained later that year when Russian-backed separatists took over the Ukrainian border regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Fighting there has killed about 15,000 people on the Ukrainian side, according to Kyiv.

“This is not a natural divide,” insists Sergei Ivanovich. “It is politicians who have split Russia from Ukraine and Ukraine from Russia.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin does not think it is a natural divide either. In a long essay published last year, which some interpret as an intellectual justification for an invasion, he argued that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people – a single whole.” Russia and Ukraine are “parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space,” he added.

Ironically, for Tetiana Oleksandrivna, a Ukrainian national born in Russia, it was the Russian government’s actions in 2014 that made her feel more Ukrainian. “We are a Slavic people,” the agronomist says. “Putin is here today but tomorrow someone else will be in his place. I have brothers, sisters, and aunts on the other side. What should I do? See them as aggressors? No. Culturally I feel Ukrainian today, but it used to be different.”

Raised by farmers tilling land collectivized under Soviet rule, Olexandre Polyakov was schooled in Russian and spoke Russian with his parents, but says he feels Ukrainian because “my ancestors were Ukrainian.”

The owner of a liquor and candy store right on the border that used to be highly popular with Russian clients, he attributes pro-Russian sentiment in the village to nostalgia for Soviet times, when life was easier, and misunderstanding of the Kremlin’s motivations.

“Putin does not want democracy,” says Mr. Polyakov. “He uses the illusion of caring about his people here [in Ukraine] for his own personal interest.”

He is equally critical of the government in Kyiv, calling President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a liar. But he thinks war “is absolutely impossible.”

On the other hand, interrupts a customer, “we didn’t think there would be a fence either.”

Reclaiming – or rewriting – history?

Milove’s school sits in a stately 19th-century building in the center of the village of 5,500 people. Its approach to education reflects national efforts to imbue children with a strong sense of Ukrainian identity and history. Since last year, Ukrainian has been mandated as the only language in which classes may be taught in all educational establishments, and new curricula revisit chapters of Russian and Soviet history with an eye for Ukrainian national heroes.

History class might begin with a lesson on Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the supreme military commander of the Ukrainian state in the 17th century. Or it will go further back to the Middle Ages, reframing the traditionally dominant Russocentric narrative.

“The older generations here call it rewriting history,” says Nadiya Yaroslavivna, the school’s headmistress. “I can understand their views and grievances. All their lives they have been taught the Soviet ideology, and if you don’t feel yourself Ukrainian inside it is difficult to accept this new history. There are many new facts that are now known that had been kept secret in Soviet times. For them it is very hard to accept.”

Crafting a sense of Ukrainian identity, buttressed by the Ukrainian language, is a cause close to her heart, says Ms. Yaroslavivna. Any sense of kinship that she felt with Russia, growing up as a Russian speaker, was shattered when she witnessed the takeover of Luhansk, where she was teaching in 2014.

“Until age 35, I spoke fluent Russian,” she recalls. “It was a conscious decision to opt for the Ukrainian language because there was an understanding that this was important for raising children, both in the schools and my own. 

“I believe identity starts from the language,” adds Ms. Yaroslavivna. “If I don’t speak the Ukrainian language, how will I transmit to the next generation all the folklore and traditions from Ukraine?”

It troubles her that some in the community still do not see Russia as the aggressor, but she pins her hopes on the next generation.  

“When I first arrived, seventh graders would tell the same [Soviet-era] nostalgic tales of their grandparents,” Ms. Yaroslavivna says. “Now, when they finish school, they say ‘Glory to Ukraine!’”

The classes seem to be having at least some of the desired effect on three Russian-speaking girls sitting in the village’s sole cafe, a mostly empty establishment garishly decorated in lime green and yellow. They note with pride that their village was the first to be liberated from the Germans by Soviet fighters in World War II.

The youngest two, 14-year-old Liza and Oksana, consider themselves Ukrainians, but they still struggle to name any Ukrainian national heroes and Oksana is uncomfortable with the language switch. “It is not pleasant for us, because not all of us speak good Ukrainian,” she admits. 

Veronika, a 21-year-old university student, considers herself a culturally Ukrainian Slav, but says she “does not like to distinguish between people on the basis of their nationality.

“If you’d ask me a couple of years ago, I would have told you the old Russian ways were preferable,” she adds. “Now I think, well, we live in Ukraine so we should speak Ukrainian.”

She and her sister, Liza, use the Moscow-approved nomenclature for the separatist border enclave, the Luhansk People’s Republic, but it does not appear to carry much weight with them.

“Young people are more respectful when it comes to political differences and differences in opinion,” says Veronika. “Older people get very heated about politics and try to impose their authoritarian worldview.”

Discussions about identity indeed turn heated at the offices of Word of the Breadmaker, a local newspaper first published in 1932 that today prints 800 copies a week. The building sits on a snow-covered street that Google Maps still identifies as Lenin Street but locals now know as Peace Street.

The newspaper is published primarily in Ukrainian although it does make room for an occasional Russian-language article. Financed by the municipality, coverage tends to steer clear of Russian and Ukrainian politics but takes deep dives into local history and agricultural astrology, and updates citizens on new regulations that concern them. 

“We are fed up with all this identity stuff,” says Ukrainian-speaking bookkeeper Larysa Volodymyrivna. “We are fed up with all this war. Nobody invited Russian troops to come here and kill our people. For me it is clear: I am Ukrainian. But it is not like that for everyone here. If you hate Ukraine, go to Russia.”

Layout specialist Kateryna Anatolivna says it is not as simple as that. Nostalgia for the Soviet era does not necessarily imply approval of Russian policy in Ukraine, she points out. It is largely rooted in economic and social grounds, she says, such as care for older people, decent pensions, and good playgrounds for children at the region’s collective farms that the Soviet government provided.

“I do have a sense of nostalgia,” she says. “I feel Slavic.”

Since the church in Milove opened in 1995, the villagers and their neighbors from the adjacent rural Russian village of Chertkovo, just across the border, had always celebrated Sunday services and celebrations such as Easter together as one community. That is no longer possible, and Archpriest Igor Zakharkin of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate blames politicians.

“There has been a purposeful effort ... from both sides to disrupt brotherly ties here,” he says. “Every political effort has been made to make Ukraine and Russia quarrel. Politicians and the mass media take part in this. Here we accept people as they come. We don’t check their passport.” 

But the old Russian bell ringer cannot come anymore. Today it is Sister Yelisaveta, a Ukrainian nun, who rings Milove’s church bells in the tower overlooking the border fence. Russian bells, they say, ring back each Sunday in what remains a cordial conversation. 

Vyacheslav Ageyev contributed research and translation assistance in the reporting of this article.