Imagine a public event 50 years from now in Kyiv. The convener speaks to the assembled crowd.
“Before we begin,” she says, “I just want to say that we acknowledge that we are standing on and benefiting from land that has been seized, expropriated, and stolen from the Ukrainian people. For thousands of years, this has been Ukrainian land. This is still the homeland of the Ukrainians. Their descendants are still living here among us.”
That’s what will happen if Russian leader Vladimir Putin gets his way—and gets his territory. He has never been discreet about his ultimate goal of absorbing all of Ukraine into the Russian federation, beginning with Crimea and the four provinces he has already annexed. It’s a classic colonial project, not substantially different from what settlers attempted to do to the Native Americans: seize their land and wipe them out as a people. The difference today is that Ukraine, recognized internationally as a sovereign nation, has received considerable international support for its defense. More than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainians are not just fighting for territory or for a state but for the very survival of a people.
Let’s be clear: land acknowledgements wouldn’t exist …read more
Source:: Institute for Policy Studies