"I Am a Ukrainian" is an Internet viral video, first posted on YouTube in 2014 featuring a young Ukrainian woman supporting the protestors in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. It was directed by documentary maker Ben Moses. By late March that year the video has been viewed about 8 million times...The professional production values have led some to suspect that the project is an outgrowth of an American think tank or the CIA.
The video has received a mostly positive reception, with the majority of the tens of thousands of comments in support. A February 21 count on YouTube gave the video about 70,000 "likes" and 4,000 "dislikes." A minority of voices, primarily those opposed to the revolution, argued that it is too one-sided.
I'll defer any commentary and hope for some comments from the Ukranian readers of this blog (139 visits in the past month, mostly from Kyiv city and from Ternopil's'ka, Lviv, and Odessa oblasts).
I've lived in Ternopil for 21 years and often travelled to Kiev, speak Ukrainian and Russian, so let me say that the Ukrainian woman's English is exactly the way they speak it here. It's silly to think that it's too professionally done to be a local product. Ukraine has its own TV and movie industry, even if it does use mostly American technology (who doesn't?) As far as it being "one-sided," they didn't start calling it World War II until 1942. Up till then it was the Japanese war against Manchuria, Hitler's war against Czechoslovakia, Hitler's war against Poland, Mussolini's war against Ethiopia, Hitler's war against Holland,Hitler's war against Belgium, Hitler's war against Norway, the Japanese war against China, Hitler's war against France ... We are in a similar position today. Putin's invasion of Crimea will become Putin's invasion of Georgia, Donetsk, Odessa, Moldova, central Ukraine, Byelorussia.... Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia ... Someday they may call it World War III, but it's just the old sausage game. They only want one slice at a time, and eventually you're left with only the string and they want that too.
ReplyDeleteThis film wasn't even propagandistic. If it were they would have shown people like Lesya Zhukovska, the nurse (we visited in the hospital; I first met her 18 years ago) who was wearing a huge Red Cross on her clothing when a Russian sniper shot her in the neck. It was a miracle she survived, the bullet somehow missed both carotids and her vocal chords.
Thank you for the insight.
DeleteThey didn't like their previous president. What are they hoping to get now? They removed him without having a replacement in mind. Even without the revolution. Ukrainian has a corruption problem.
ReplyDeletehttp://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/
They need to fix this from within.
They will, if they are given the room by Putin, who was certainly behind the take over of Crimea, who is almost certainly behind the unrest in eastern Ukraine, and who may have been behind the corruption (at least to a certain extent, if nothing else, looking the other way while his cronies did the actual corruption) of Ukraine.
Delete