A quick post to highlight the current political troubles in the Ukraine where the Russian Federation’s attempt to reassert control of the former Soviet state has entered the arena of language and culture. Russian chauvinism towards its Slavic and non-Slavic neighbours is a reoccurring source of conflict throughout the modern history of Eastern Europe and no more so than in the assumed superiority of Russian “civilization”. Now Putin’s Moscow is once again flexing its colonial muscles and Ukraine is but the latest country to succumb, giving the Russian language official status and almost certainly ensuring the erosion of Ukrainian as the majority tongue in the Black Sea state. Viktor Tkachuk in The Kyiv Post has more.