“Our children will smash your children's faces”

Nitsoy calls for beating Russian-speaking children. Photo: KyivFM

The well-known children’s writer and staunch defender of the state language, Larysa Nitsoy, declared on a television broadcast that Ukrainian-speaking children will “smash the faces” of Russian-speaking ones, and that true patriots are raising them this way:

“We are raising them to smash the faces of Moscow-leaning children. And this is not a signal for the children. I want the parents of those Moscow-leaning children to finally hear this signal. We are warning that their children will face problems – from our children, from our grandchildren… We are saying: ‘And we will smash your children’s faces’… We are simply warning you that the conflict will continue into your children, and no one will endure it anymore. Ukrainians will not endure it. They will not.”

One could dismiss this as the private opinion of one not particularly refined woman. Unfortunately, it is not. For the past 11 years, figures like Nitsoy have been deliberately elevated by the authorities into positions of public influence. They are invited onto TV channels, published in the media, and their words are promoted as correct and patriotic.

This has led to a country effectively divided into “patriots” and “vatniks,” the “right” people and the “wrong” people, the “Aryans” and the “Untermenschen.” And the demarkation line is not always the language. Among believers of the “FSB-controlled” UOC there are countless Ukrainian-speakers who speak more purely and correctly than the most ostentatious “patriots.” Yet they too are treated as second-class people – ones who today may be humiliated and discriminated against.

One can easily recall, for example, the call of OCU cleric R. Hryshchuk to kill the parishioners of the UOC cathedral in Chernivtsi, who on June 17 had driven out the OCU thugs from their holy place.

Both Hryshchuk and Nitsoy – and many others – openly incite violence without the slightest fear. No criminal case for incitement to hatred will ever be opened against them, for they have received an unspoken mandate from the authorities. And Nitsoy has now voiced something crucial – that the supposed “right” of “first-class” Ukrainians to commit violence against “second-class” Ukrainians will be passed down to their children.

That the “Aryan” children will have the full right to beat the “Untermenschen.” This logic may even extend into religion: children of OCU members will oppress the children of UOC believers. Such is the “bright future” being drawn for us.

But the question remains – how long can a “united Ukraine” endure under such an ideology?

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