Ukraine's Independence Day - August 24th 2026

August 24th 2026

On Ukraine’s Independence Day, Yuriy calls the celebration “nice but strange” as the country keeps fighting for freedom from the enemy in the north. He admits that he mostly says “Russians” only on the podcast; in real life and even on Ukrainian media he uses two older Ukrainian slur names - words that don’t mock appearance, but preserve lived history.

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TRANSCRIPT

  Today is August 24, Ukraine's Independence Day. It is a nice but strange holiday. This year it is already 35 years old. And yet we are still fighting for our independence from a terrifying bloodthirsty enemy from the north. By the way, I recently realized that I use the enemy's usual name "Russians" only here on this podcast. In everyday life when talking to our military personnel or even when appearing on Ukrainian media, which happens to me from time to time, I use a completely different name. Or rather, names. I call Russians by one of two slur words that exist in the Ukrainian language for describing them. We share one of these words with Belarusians, while the other comes from the Crimean Tatars, and both of them tell you a great deal about Russians. Russians themselves have a great many slur words for describing different nations, races, and peoples. They are usually based on stereotypical ideas about appearance- offensive words referring to skin color, eye size, typical hairstyles, and all sorts of other things. But the Ukrainians slurs for Russians have absolutely nothing to do with their appearance. One of these two words is the same word that was once used to refer to soldiers. You have to understand that despite Ukraine's long military history, even in the early 18th century, there were no soldiers in Ukraine, people whose entire lives were subordinated to their commanders, who could not simply go home, who were tied to barracks, and who were deprived of many other rights. There were no soldiers in Ukraine. Again, there were Cossacks who choose their own commanders, gathered into military forces only during campaigns or to repel enemy attacks, always received their share of the military spoils, and spent most of their lives at home working in agriculture or practicing a trade. Ukrainians encountered a soldier in the conventional sense of the word after the Russian occupation of Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries, and one of the two main slurs used to describe Russians dates back to that period. The word was used to refer to soldiers of the occupying army, powerless men, often beggars, who did not shy away from theft and robbery and were essentially slaves to their commanders. Incidentally, Belarusians, who were also occupied at roughly the same time, have the very same word for Russians. The second word came from the Crimean Tatars. Today, the Crimean Tatars are part of a larger Ukrainian nation. For centuries, they were neighbors of the Cossacks, with whom they had a very complicated relationship. Sometimes they were allies and would go together to burn Moscow. At other times, they'd fall out spectacularly and start fighting each other. The Crimean Tatars had several words for the Russians who had spent years destroying and humiliating them. One of those words made its way into the Ukrainian language as well. Translated from Crimean Tatar, it means butcher or reaper. I'm not a great fan of slurs, but I have to admit that these two have stood the test of time and proven themself to be remarkably accurate.