they also have a co-mingled army, as in not just joint drills but belarus soldiers taking orders from russian generals. in fact, in case of a war, the agreement is russia commands the belarussian forces.
so, dictatorship notes aside, it would absolutely be proper and expected for putin to help the government of belarus, as per their agreements.
source: am russian, went there for work for several years as an adult, have been to belarus, have friends from belarus.
along with the rest of the comment, this passage nicely emphasizes the common russian colonialist attitude towards belarus
Just like Poland, Slovak, Czech, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, right? This is BS, I've been there and it does not fit "East Slavic languages are brothers, others are not". Each language is quite different yet similar, just like Ukrainian vs Russian. A lot of shared vocabulary, but base is not the same - sounds, stress, short-long vowels, hard-soft consonants
доброе утро (RU)
добрий ранок (UA)
dobré ráno (SK)
dobro jutro (HR)
Authentic language is beautiful [1], interviewer language is bastardized. They should catch pronunciation not vocabulary.
same as to the french (and me) canadian french sounds uneducated. same as canadian english sounds bad, eh?
the other languages you list, outside of your cherrypicked examples, are very different. how do i know? with ukrainian and belorussian, i can just have a coversation in the language. i take a russian word and i say it with a ukrainian accent -they understand me, and i fully understand them. in the ones you list, it's not canadian french vs france french. it's like spanish vs french. i can kinda understand the general idea of what they're saying, if i focus. they sound foreign -like when i hear spanish, only knowing french.
it's southern china vs redneck north china mandarin. your examples are mandarin vs cantonese.
and while most of ukraine and belarus don't even speak their own language, when they do it's not clean. they speak суржик, which is a mix of russian and their language. so it literally is bastardised russian.
and btw, i lived in kiev for almost 2 years, and have visited every country in europe. i really do know what i'm talking about 1st hand. so i didn't watch your youtube video. it would be like you posting a link explaining why water is dry.
When I've been in Europe it was Ukrainian which was close to these languages, not Russian.
Sure people understand when you speak Russian with Ukrainian accent - they speak Russian, they would understand without accent too. They speak Russian in Croatia and Slovak too - not a lot, but some do, it proves nothing.
The truth is language division is political, it is dialects all around. You believe in narrative that suits Russia politics. But the story works both ways - one can argue that Russian is redneck language, not a proper Kievan Rus descendant, its people can't even communicate with other Slavs.
I've been to Moscow, funny accent. I've been to Russian village (under Kursk), they speak Russian there, as Ukrainian speaker I should know.
So you know 1st hand, I know 1st hand, how about I don't say shit about Russian and you don't say shit about Belarusian and Ukrainian?
You aren't speaking Ukrainian, you are speaking a creole, surzhik, with people that aren't obnoxious enough to point out your mistakes. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to draw conclusions from either.