“Ukraine is being divided not by Russian speakers, but by those in Western Ukraine who rented housing to refugees at inflated prices,” – blogger

What divides Ukraine is not the Russian language, but those who rented out housing to refugees “at the price of apartments in Paris.”

This was stated by Ukrainian blogger Oleksandr Parubok on the social network TikTok.

He was responding to a comment claiming that Russian-speaking Ukrainians “divide society and play on the enemy’s side.”

“And when Russian-speaking residents of Kharkiv sought refuge in Lviv and Uzhhorod, and the locals rented them apartments at the price of apartments in Paris, without paying attention to the language — and then, after renting out their apartment, went abroad to receive aid from Poles, Czechs, and Germans? Doesn’t that divide society? Does that unite it? Or did they think that people from the east wouldn’t find out? Around the world, Ukrainians were provided housing for free at the beginning of the invasion, while their own fellow Ukrainians in their own country rented to them for money. Is that a unifying factor? So a Lviv resident rents out his apartment to a resident of Donetsk for a thousand dollars, ignoring the language, and already that same evening in a café he criticizes Ukrainians from the east for not speaking Ukrainian? Do you really think people from the east don’t notice this?” the blogger said.

According to him, “society is divided by those who pour their hatred onto their own people. Those who bully and humiliate their own because of language. It’s divided by those who believe they already have the right to label Ukrainians as enemies or patriots. It’s divided by those who laugh at those who drowned in the Tisza River. It’s divided by those who believe that those who went abroad should be stripped of their citizenship and deprived of their right to vote.”

He also called for honoring not only the dead, but also to “love and respect the living Ukrainians.”

Earlier, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Oleksandr Alferov, expressed outrage that Ukrainian refugees in Europe speak Russian and do not attend pro-Ukrainian rallies. In his opinion, they are not “ambassadors” of Ukraine abroad.