Applebaum: ‘Ukrainians reject Russian values after Putin’s war’

Ukraine Today correspondent sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning author, international journalist and expert on Eastern Europe Anne Applebaum about the development of Ukrainian nationalism over the past century and how the country's EuroMaidan protests in late 2013/early 2014 led to a civil society drive.

“I would like to recapture the word ‘nationalism' and give it the old, positive meaning which is closer to the word we call patriotism. In order to have a democracy, you need some kind of patriotism, whether you want to call it nationalism or national identity or something else, you need people to feel some responsibility for and link to the state in which they live,” said Applebaum in an interview with Ukraine Today. “If they don't have that, why would they participate in elections or participate in public life?”

“The Russian invasion has made people very aware that they want to live in a country with different values from those of Russia, whether or not they feel that their cousins are Russian, their grandmothers are probably Russian and so on but they are associating their patriotism with a kind of state, we are not the kind of state that does this kind of invasion and we would like to resist that, so that has given (some) people a sense of identity,” she said.

Read more on UNIAN:http://www.unian.info/society/1162028-applebaum-ukrainians-reject-russian-values-after-putins-war.html