Ukraine PM Tells Germans: Russia Toppling Hitler Was Aggression

[Igel]

24. Full text, untranslated, released yesterday afternoon.

Here's the bit. What I can hear on my cheesy laptop is either necessarily Ukrainian or ambiguous between Russian and Ukrainian (there's some overlap in words, and when there's a choice many bilinguals opt for the Russian variant; some even fairly well-spoken bilinguals lapse into a kind of low-grade surzhyk, with extensive code-switching and even language mixing--it's not always easy to tell since the pronunciation systems of S. Russian and Ukrainian are closer than of standard Russian and Ukrainian).

Російська військова агресія проти України - це посягання на світовий порядок, і це посягання на європейську безпеку. Ми добре з вами пам'ятаємо радянську invasion як в Україну, так і в тому числі - в Німеччину. Цього треба уникнути. І нікому не дозволено переписувати результати Другої світової війни, що намагається зробити президент Росії пан Путін
(http://ua.112.ua/politika/zmi-povidomlyayut-pro-netochnosti-perekladu-interv-yu-nimeckomu-telekanalu-yacenyuka-171463.html)

"Russian military aggression against Ukraine was an assault on world order and this assault (was) on European security. You and I well remember the Soviet invasion both in Ukraine, including Germany, as well. This we have to avoid. And nobody should to rewrite the results of the Second World War (sic) as the president of Russia Mr. Putin is attempting to do.

Yup, the word "invasion" doesn't need to be translated into English. Simultaneous translators really nenavidiat when people decide to cambiarse de lengua in the middle of an interview comme ca. Explains the pause in the przeklad. Gotta think, "Not the L2 I'm expecting, what the f**k was that, is it really English... Okay, it was, but it's missing all the grammatical bits, how do I make it make sense, why didn't he use the word in his language--does it not mean what the Ukrainian word would mean?--should just say screw it and repeat the foreign word ... because I'm getting behind and have to catch up!"

I put (sic) after Second World War because it's telling: Had a Russian been speaking I'd have defaulted to the same translation in this context but the Russian would have said "Great Patriotic War." Yats is using the general European term, not the Soviet/Russian term.

The bit in italics is the problem. I don't have an answer for that. If I code switch it's for a reason: the other word is tres chic, perhaps; often it's because the word expresses my intent better. And, if I'm code-switching with somebody who knows the same languages I do, it's often for neither reason but because I've mostly been exposed to that idea or that utterance in that language. (If you go to school in English and live at home in Spanish, you naturally tend to use English words in discussing school--even if you know the Spanish words. You match your language to the content's original language.) I have no intuition or suggestion as to why he used the English word. The exegesis I've seen strikes me as forced: It must mean something, so out of the range of possibilities it must mean this. Why?

There was Russian military aggression against Ukraine. There was a Soviet invasion of Germany and Ukraine. An "invasion" isn't the same as "an attack." If there hadn't been an invasion, then the Soviet troops never would have entered Germany. The whole "it was easier to invade Ukraine instead of going around it" claim is a waste of space--with the "go south of Ukraine" alternative being goofy if not subversive.

The "aggression" is only said to be "Russian"--current, not pre-1991--against Ukraine even if commentators are trying to make it refer to Soviet aggression against Germany. Lots of countries were invaded by Russia, some ex parte and some in search of retreating enemy troops. It's the results of WWII that can't be rewritten, re-edited, though. After the invasion there wasn't a full redeployment or consensual bilateral treaties. There was some annexation. Some colonialism. Some oppression and domination as part of a "sphere of influence". There was a splitting of East Germany from West, a Soviet annexation domination of part of Ukraine and occupation of E. Germany that was oppressive, leading to a cold war that hurt everybody. The "rewriting" is that this wasn't domination and everybody was happy except fascists. The USSR under Stalin and Brezhnev was a happy, prosperous place. The only discontent was from the CIA and Western agents. Some want to make Ukrainians fascists and pretend that what the USSR did--territorial annexations, ethnic cleansing, resettling populations, despoiling the territories, purges, human rights violations, etc., etc., never happened or was a good thing. (Try that discussion with a Palestinian. Typically they switch sides immediately. Good when Russians did it, horrible when Jews do it.)

That's a bit strained. But it's less strained than trying to make this into a defense of Nazi Germany and saying that Russia unilaterally attacked a poor innocent Hitler. Even if it is a defense of Germany that doesn't make it into a defense of Nazi Germany--it's far from clear that E. Germany deserved any greater punishment under Stalin and the Soviets than West Germany did. (I mean, even JFK was in solidarity with the Germans, and that just 15 years after the war.)

Making what I say a bit less strained is that it's part of the standard rhetoric from the Ukrainian side. It's not a digression, it's not a new addition to the discourse. It's more of the same.