“sovereign country” - lol - you mean a puppet state of globalist money launderers and military/industrial criminals. A state that was also conducting ethnic cleansing against Russians.
Ukraine was not conducting ethnic cleansing.
“Ethnic Russians” or “Russian speakers are not “suppressed” as you claim - I am basing my conclusion on the experience I had in hosting refugees from Ukraine here in Poland — I live right next to the border, Most of the refugees I helped were escaping Kyiv but also those escaping Donetsk and Luhansk
All were primarily Russian speakers. Some identified as “ethnic Russian”, but they all said they were Ukrainian
I have asked them (we’re in contact with quite a few of them even though they moved either back to Kyiv (for the Kyiv folks) or to Krakow/Warszawa for others - anyway so I asked them if they, the Russian ethnic people or Russian speakers felt “oppressed”
The response, the overwhelming response from them regarding this was - utter bewilderment. They all said that they didn’t feel oppressed, suppressed for being Russian or /Russian speakers. They all also were P*ssed off wth putin for “saving” them by destroying their cities, their homes
Before 2014 they felt close to Russia. After Putin’s invasion in 2022, they identify as Ukrainian - and they were taking efforts to speak only Ukrainian — as a personal sign of defiance against Putin
So Putin has actually turned Russian ethnics in Ukraine against being “Russian”
Furthermore, I have colleagues who live and work in Krakow and have lived there since 2014 — Russian “ethnics”, Russian speakers who fled Putin’s 2014 invasion and came to Poland, not to Russia.
So don’t repeat the Putinist propaganda please
The longer the war drags on and the longer Ukrainian people see Russian people as supporting Putin’s actions in Ukraine, the more you are going to see them turning away from Russian culture and literature.
Putin caused that.
Until 2014 Russian was a secondary language in Ukraine and Russia had soft-power, just as English has in Ireland or Hindi in southern India.
But with Putin’s actions since 2014, and especially since 2022, he is turning Ukrainians away from anything to do with Russian culture or language or literature.