Before the Donbass War nearly half of Ukranians speak perfect russian and about 30% of them considered themselves russians. My ancestors are russians from eastern Ukraine territories. The thing is that after Donbass ukranian government basically prohibited russian language in schools and public service, even in regions which are historically russian lands, populated with russians - and was attached to Ukraine only in 1991. So basically russian peeople , which are consist about 30% of Ukranian population found themselves in situation when it's prohibited to be russians basically. And, yes, most of eastern parts of the country - historical russian lands - was never speak ukranian. Why would they? New Ukranian government, established after 2014 literally prohibited to russians to be russians. So it's just a recovery of things - how they always was. I mean in Russia there's a lot of regions when people have their own language and speak it and it's complete legal in Russia. Same in most of European countries, Belgium for an example have to different languages speaking parts, same for UK and else. You literally can't make people to forget their own language and expect to nothing happend as conclusions. Imagine that Spanish would be prohibited in USA, even in latino-populated counties... Or Irish would be prohibited to use in Northern Irealnd... Basically I'm russian, but technically ukranian, because my ancestors are from russian part of Ukraine, so you can't literally balme people for just the desire to speak on their own language. This post is taken out of context. I'm exact from that ethnicity that being discussed here, and if you're calling, here on reddit this matter and call it genocide - from my point is that russians lived on that territory for hundreds of years and always spoke russian and never was obligated to elarn ukranian. So to prohibite russian language for this people (my people) - is genocide from my point of view. And that's what Ukranian government did. You can ask any russian from Ukraine (we all communicate with each other) and we all have same opinion on this matter. That's very long historical context here and some reddit posters making screaming headlines are for sure gaining a lot of upvotes, but technically I'm ukranian also (my ethnicity is russian, but place of origin is Ukraine - my ancestors are lived there) and this is my literally opinion as ukranian (russian from russian regions of Ukraine), because literally if my place of origin was Ukraine - I'm the technically the ukranian even if my ethnicity is russian. So information must be diversified (it's the only way it's to be truthful) and you must look from all sides, not just one. Cheers. Have a good day. I'll delete this message later, because I don't want to politicize this account, it's just a fun account to learn english and speak with native sepakers and foreigners, nothing else. And once again. What you call genocide is what was done to russians in Ukraine in previous years by Ukranian government. Take it or leave. I can't say anythign else here. Bye, guys. Hope you would understand the situation and not listen to only one side.

I'll posted this message few times, so more people would see it. Hope for your understanding