As Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine has entered its sixth month, Russia has not yet resolved the contradictions of its view of Ukraine. Is Ukraine the enemy or a country held hostage by narcotic addicts and Nazis that will return to brotherly relations with Russia or even join Russia, once Russia’s forces have achieved victory. This contradiction resurfaces in a debate in the Duma reported by Moskovskiy Komsomolets columnist Andrei Kamakin. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the ultranationalist “Liberal Democratic” Party founded by the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky was incensed by Ukraine’s policy of renaming streets associated with Russia. In retaliation Kabanov proposed renaming Moscow’s Kyiv rail station. He received pushback on his proposal. One reason being that the names were not alien names but Russian names, and Kyiv itself was the mother of all Russian cities.
Kamakin’s article follows below:[1]
Moscow’s Kyiv rail station (Source: Howtotravel.ru)
“Arguably, no one has yet described a representative of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (hereafter – LDPR) leadership with such insulting words. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, commenting on the proposal by Vasili Vlasov, First Deputy Chairman of the LDPR faction in the Duma, to rename Moscow Kyievsky railway station, said: ‘Such proposals put us on a par with these embittered, brainwashed humanoid-like creatures. It’s even more offensive that Kabanov is far from alone in this assessment.
“‘Stupid and unoptimistic,’ wrote Vlasov’s colleague, the [State] Duma deputy from the CPRF party, Mikhail Matveev in his telegram channel, ‘It’s the lot of peoples with national psychological complexes to rename everything to get back at their neighbor. Russians, on the other hand, are a great nation and aren’t afflicted with this. All the ‘Ukrainian’ names [i.e., the ones associated with Ukraine] must remain, including ‘Kyiv cake’ and ‘Chicken Kyiv’ cutlet (not to mention the names of railway station and of streets). These aren’t foreign names; they are our names because Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities.’