When Ukrainian civil society proclaims its love for the EU and Putin interprets that as a hostile gesture directed at Russia, its members take Putin’s side against Europe. When Putin justifies his claims to Crimea and Donbas by dredging up linguistic nationalism (Russians are all those who speak Russian), his apologists in Europe – where the Nazis used the same strategy in the Sudetenland (Germans are all those who speak German) – consider it a matter of simple common sense.
C’est le parti qui, quand il va chercher, pour justifier son coup de force, les thèmes d’un nationalisme linguistique (est russe qui parle russe… est allemand qui parle allemand…) que l’on pensait discrédités par la lointaine affaire des Sudètes et le nazisme, trouvent la démarche frappée au coin du bon sens.