Anastasia Piliavsky

Kyiv has stripped the Russian language of its protection under Europe’s Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Culture warriors at home and abroad have hailed this as a victory; in truth, the move strikes out at millions of Russophone Ukrainians, divides the country and confirms some of Putin’s claims about Ukraine. In a war of survival, splitting Ukraine and feeding Putin’s propaganda is not a cultural sideshow. It is suicide. With his slight frame and warm, modest face, Pavel Viktor looks more like a parish priest than a political firebrand. In reality he is a physics teacher in Odessa, known to millions of Ukrainian schoolchildren for his experimental YouTube lessons. He remains in Odessa under bombardment and at 71 is still teaching.

In a single week, Kyiv has launched a triple attack on Odesa: on its language, history, and elected government. The city, which for almost four years has endured relentless bombardment and held Ukraine’s maritime front, now finds itself besieged by its own capital. With growing calls for an election, Zelensky appears to be clearing the field of rivals The most startling of these moves against Odesa is president Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to strip Gennady Trukhanov – the city’s three-times-elected mayor – of his Ukrainian citizenship and office. The charge is that Trukhanov holds a Russian passport, which the mayor flatly denies. Yet without a court hearing or any due process, the president signed a decree removing his citizenship.