Two weeks ago, Hanna Hopko, the chairman of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada’s foreign affairs committee, called on the international community to come to the defense of the ethnic and civil rights of the peoples of the Middle Volga. Now, Moscow has responded by putting her on its sanctions list.
In mid-October, she issued an appeal to the international community concerning the peoples of the Middle Volga.
As a fellow victim of totalitarianism, Ukraine knows what they are up against.
The peoples are located only 5000 kilometers from Kharkiv and thus are very much part of Europe.
In response, Hopko says, Moscow has sanctioned her.
And so she says she is not at all surprised that Moscow has put her on the list.
Of course, she acknowledges, her other positions, including active defense of Ukraine’s territorial integrity also likely played a role and her authorship of the law on de-communization and de-Sovietization of Ukraine. But clearly any talk about Russia’s oppression of the nations within its borders is what angers Moscow most of all.
Further Reading:
- Free Idel-Ural Movement takes shape in Kyiv
- Left-wing radicals in Urals see Russia on verge of a revolution like 1991
- By 2050, eight Russian regions will be submerged under water, Urals researchers say
- US, Ukraine said behind efforts to split Russia by reviving Urals Republic
- ‘If a bourgeois revolution is to start in Russia, it will begin with Tatarstan,’ Kazan historian says
- Non-Russian nations of Russia to defend themselves from Putin because their elites won’t
