Anti-Ukrainian Sentiment - Russia

Russia

In a poll held by Levada Center in June 2009 in Russia 75% of Russian respondents respected Ukrainians as ethnic group but 55% were negative about Ukraine as the state. In May 2009, 96% of Ukrainians polled by Kyiv International Sociology Institute were positive about Russians as ethnic group, 93% respected Russian Federation and 76% respected Russian establishment.

Some Russian media seem to try to discredit Ukraine. Media like Komsomolskaya Pravda seem to try to intensify the bad relationship between Ukraine and Russia. A series of Russian films used anti-Ukrainian slurs without any criticism from their government. Anti-Ukrainian attitude persists among several Russian politicians, such as the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Ukrainians form the third largest ethnic group in Russian Federation after Russians and Tatars. In 2006, in letters to Vladimir Putin, Viktor Yushchenko and Vasily Duma, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Bashkortostan complained of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia, which they claim includes wide use of anti-Ukrainian ethnic slurs in the mainstream Russian media, television and film. The Urals Association of Ukrainians also made a similar complaint in a letter they addressed to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2000.

According to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Bashkortostan, despite their significant presence in Russia, Ukrainians in that country have less access to Ukrainian-language schools and Ukrainian churches than do other ethnic groups. In Vladivostok, according to the head of the Ukrainian government's department of Ukrainian Diaspora Affairs, local Russian officials banned a Ukrainian Sunday school in order not to "accentuate national issues"

According to the president of the Ukrainian World Congress in 2001, persistent requests to register a Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate or a Ukrainian Catholic Church were hampered due to "particular discrimination" against them, while other Catholic, Muslim and Jewish denominations fared much better. According to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, by 2007 their denomination had only one church building in all of Russia.

Some Russians mass-media continues their policy of turning the population of Ukraine against its government and trying to convince of non-existence of the Ukrainian culture, such as some Alexei Itsenkov from Gazeta 2000 who posted his article under domain's name litvin.com.ua. In his article Mr.Itsenkov gives an impression of being an expert of ethnography, implying that the Ukrainian ethnicity never existed and is simply an invention of the Motherland's deserters who emigrated to Poland, United States, and Canada. Interestingly that his name can also be traced to the pro-presidential website of the Russian Federation.

In 2008 Nikolai Smirnov released a documentary in which he claims that Ukraine is part of one whole Russia that was split away by different western powers such as Poland, particularly.

In November 2010, the High Court of Russia cancelled registration of one of the biggest civic communities of the Ukrainian minority, the “Federal nation-cultural autonomy of the Ukrainians in Russia” (FNCAUR). According to the author Mykhailo Ratushniy Ukrainian activists continue to face discrimination and bigotry in much of Russia.

Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Konstantin Zatulin identifies Ukrainians as the Russians who live in Crimea.

The anchorman of a news program "Sunday Time" on the Channel One (Russia) Pyotr Tolstoi announced on July 8, 2012 about the enforced Ukrainization in Ukraine, 20 millions Russians, an invented genocide about Ukrainians, and the distortion of the Russian historiography.