Dear Readers:
This story is from the Ukrainian Gossip Kitchen, with a secondary shout-out to the Russian language for its ancient custom of generously borrowing foreign words to plump up the Slavic vocabulary.
Let’s get started: A few days ago, June 16, a Ukrainian blogger named Miroslav Oleshko, posted this on his Facebook, a tweet highly critical of Ukrainian President Zelensky:
TRANSLATION into English: These ultimatums [put forward by Russia] are the fault of Zelensky. In 2022 the Russian troops were supposed to be pulled back to the borders of February 23, but Zelensky reneged on these agreements. Two years later, now it’s the other way around: Russia demands that our troops pull back from our own territory. The problem now is that, if Zelensky agrees to this, then it is guaranteed that his power will come to an end. We have become hostages to an endless war.
Oleshko’s post was quickly removed, but the Ukrainian media made note of it. Oleshko was obviously referring to Putin’s recent peace proposal, whereby Ukraine must give up 4 Oblasts (not counting Crimea) in return for peace: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhie, and Kherson. Along with other conditions, such as Ukraine’s de-militarization and de-Nazification, and never joining NATO.
Oleshko himself is considered an outcast in Ukraine, the SBU went after him in November of 2023, on the charge of forging medical documents to get out of the draft. Fortunately for him, these forged documents seemed good enough to get him out of the country. He currently lives somewhere else, probably in Europe, and is relatively safe. Although, if he ever returns to Ukraine, he might have to serve 8 years in jail, on the forgery charge.
Zaluzhny “Liked”
I deliberately dropped the lead there (or “lede”, as journalists spell it), in order to first fortify ourselves with the backstory. Students of the Russian language know that Russians, traditionally, eagerly borrow words from other languages. German, French, English… In our era, it’s all about English/American words. Being somewhat conservative (and anti-American) in my views, I really don’t approve of all the Americanisms, but I am willing to make a few exceptions, this next bit being one of them, as I shall explain. I don’t see anything wrong with borrowing a word to fill a real need.
First of all, Russian doesn’t really have a good analogue to the English word “like”, especially when it comes to “liking” tweets. The verb l’ubit’ (“to love”) is too strong. The closest thing is an expression like mne nravitsa (“This pleases me”), but that’s more than one word. And so Russian borrowed the English word “like” which is actually easy to pronounce in Russian, because the vowel/dipthong is the same as the Russian /ai/ as in the name of the dog Laika (lai means “bark” in Russian). So, all Russian had to do to incorporate this English word was to add the verbal infix –nu– to create the new verb лайкнуть (laik-nu-t’ – “to like”). Those who study Russian as a foreign language, heroically struggling with the unfamiliar concept of “verb aspect”, perfective versus imperfective, know that the infix -nu makes a verb perfective while injecting a semantic element of completion of the action: Залужный лайкнул пост, the article states. Zaluzhny laiknul post. “Zaluzhny liked the post”. Thumbs up and done. [“Post” also being a borrowing from American – before long it will get to the point where Americans don’t even need to learn Russian, they can just jabber away in American English, but with a Russian accent!]
I am focusing on vocabulary here, but once again dropping the lede. Which is that Zaluzhny liked Oleshko’s post! He liked it. He really liked it! You can see it right there in the screenshot: Oleshko trashes Zelensky, and then you see that little thumbnail of General Zaluzhny giving the thumbs up!
Zaluzhny’s “like” is what caused the scandal, more than the actual post/tweet. When asked why this post was subsequently deleted, Oleshko explained that it was “blocked” because of all the complaints flooding in.
Awful Avalanche 
Has Zalu actually taken up his Londonistan ambassadorship yet? Otherwise, as he’s still under 60 he might find himself in the position of being cannon fodderised for the meat grinder.
Like at least one German former general who ran afoul of der Führer found himself serving as a private in the Volkssturm in 1945.
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As far as anyone knows, Zal did NOT go to London. There were rumors that he was in the pokey. But if that were the case, then he probably would not have a computer to peck at.
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If you are interested in this as a future topic, it was recently reported that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are destroying the ozone layer again because of the chemicals that burn up in the atmosphere. I know the Pentagon and the Ukrainians put so much of their future hopes in this project.
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Oh joy! Well, who needs ozone anyhow?
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I think we are all hostages to DC/London’s vainglorious attempt to dismember Russia into digestible vassal states. This ill begotten war has awakened the world to the threat posed by the Anglo-American form of neocolonialism.
And what the 3LA-controled-anglo-world media says about this war is nothing but lies, endless lies. These damnable lies have murdered well over half million prime age men in a vain attempt to outperform Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. And all for not, as DC/London’s plans for Russia will lie next to their foolish predecessor’s plans…in the same dust bin of history.
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i think all languages get bastardized… all the slang that has become part of the english language of late, is a case in point and the print version is even more prone to this – lol, rof and all the abbreviated 3 word sayings have become part of the written language… well – no oxford scholar would approve, but they don’t get to ultimately decide!!
as for zaluzhy liking this, it implies he has a sense of humour as i see it… you think the green man can like anything at this point?? he is a real sicko running the insane asylum thanks the wests authors! of course i am waiting for this bozo zelensky to exit stage right any time now.. the fact he hasn’t highlights the target on his back that is sending a stronger and stronger signal to the cia that – hey – time’s up! either they get rid of him and blame russia, or they better find another bozo to fill the role… this guys past due date is long gone.. i always thought zaluzhy could be the guy, but – apparently not…the cia is taking a long time to find a replacement!!
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If I were CIA, I’d just off Zelensky pronto and put in that moron that Putin said he’d talk to, namely, Ruslan Stefanchuk.
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lol – you’d never get the gig at the cia… you are too smart!
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I’d take a dumb pill first, before going for my interview!
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Japanese had the same problem with online likes, so they created a loanword: “raiku” is the noun form; raiku-suru is the infinitive verb form. Japanese /r/ is somewhere between English /r/ and /l/, and its pronunciation depends on its position in a word, so I won’t go into it. Gradually this loanword also came to be used in daily life. Japanese has many words that express emotions, but the basic rule in Japanese when it comes to emotions is the more nuance the better. Generally loanwords are more abstract, so if someone likes someone of, say, the opposite sex, a lot, he/she might feel shy at first to use “suki desu,” the older expression for “(I) like (you)” (note that Japanese relies on context and doesn’t use personal pronouns much) and instead use “raiku shite iru,” which is newer and lighter and more abstract, so it’s easier to use for shy people. Some young Japanese are said to be so shy that they can only express intimate emotions online and not in person.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E3%80%80%E6%84%8F%E5%91%B3&sca_esv=fa335a0bd99248c0&sca_upv=1&ei=74N0ZsOTAp3M2roP97OfmAw&ved=0ahUKEwiDx5iR9uqGAxUdplYBHffZB8MQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E3%80%80%E6%84%8F%E5%91%B3&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiGOODqeOCpOOCr-OBmeOCi-OAgOaEj-WRszIIEAAYgAQYogQyCBAAGIAEGKIEMggQABiABBiiBDIIEAAYgAQYogRIv4UBUPYNWLNccAF4AZABAJgBiAGgAeEHqgEDMi43uAEDyAEA-AEBmAIJoAK9B8ICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAgoQABiABBixAxgEwgIHEAAYgAQYBMICBRAAGIAEwgIGEAAYBRgewgIKEAAYgAQYRhj_AcICFhAAGIAEGEYY_wEYlwUYjAUY3QTYAQHCAgUQIRigAcICBhAhGAoYKpgDAIgGAZAGCroGBggBEAEYE5IHAzMuNqAHuxc&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
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Thanks for that educational explanation,cc, I raik that very much!
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Great. Just be careful of the Third and Fourth Raiks in Germany and the US.
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Haha! good one..
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Japanese distinguishes between suki [好き], ‘like’, daisuki [大好き], ‘big like’, a common euphemism for love because everyone is too damn shy to just openly say it, and outright saying it, aishiteru [愛してる], ‘I love you’, which in practice is seldom used, but does exist and hits hard when someone can bring themselves to use it.
Does Russian really not have something that means ‘appreciate’, or can not a compound be constructed signifying ‘mild love’ or similar?
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Sometimes Japanese use “Japanese English” and say “rabu” for “love” and say “Ai rabu yuu.” When they say this to a would-be English-speaking-country lover-candidate, they are often misunderstood, since Japanese “rabu” sounds more like English “rub” than “love.” Actually, there are dozens of subtle, indirect ways you can express love or many other emotions in Japanese using both Yamato Japanese (like Anglo-Saxon) and Sino-Japanese characters (like Norman English). Love poems have been an important part of Japanese literature since the seventh century.
Yes, I hope Yalensis will very briefly lay out the full repertory of love-words in Russian. What verb does Putin use when he says, “I love this horse”? Or when he says, “I was quite fond of my first wife, but now I’m totally in love with my wonderful second wife”?
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If I ever go to Japan, I will try to restrain myself from approaching a stranger and trying out, “I rub you!” Unless I was disguising myself as Scooby-Doo. Maybe: “I ruff you! […] Ruh-roh!” [being chased down the street by dogcatcher…]
As for Putin, well, I have no idea exactly how he feels about his horse, but maybe he would start by quoting the first line from that famous Pushkin poem (“Ya vas liubil” – “I loved you”):
Я вас любил: любовь ещё, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам Бог любимой быть другим.
Loose Translation:
I loved you, and perhaps I still do in a way, but I don’t want my love to creep you out nor upset you in any way. I loved you silently, hopelessly, tormented first by timidity, then by jealousy. I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly, as I pray you will someday be loved by another man.
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Well, there is always the standard “mne nravitsa” (“this pleases me…”), that would be the closest I can think of to liking a post. But it’s 2 words, that’s the problem. Well, come to think of it, I suppose it could just be shortened to nravitsa.
Wracking my brains, there are lots of ways to say, for example, that you find somebody “sympathetic” (literally simpatichny) which is similar to liking them (or just finding them cute) but something short of Romeo-Juliet passionate type love….
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Not sure why this post should have been removed, it was no more damaging to the Ukrainian side than any of the other shit he has up there. Because of Zaluzhny? Who in the Ukraine still cares about him?
He has selfies of himself with Poroshenko, Dumenko, Turchinov, that hijabi woman and Avakov. The faggot and his faggot fan club in the comments are moaning about getting what they asked for.
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Oh fuck me this is the best one:
Irina Lelichenko
дякуючи Мінським Україна відродила з нуля армію, запустила ракетну програму, замінувала Чонгар, відрізала Росію від дніпровської води, створила міжнародну антипутінську коаліцію. А дякуючи рагулям, які проголосували в 2019 році за шапіто, отримала повномасштабну війну.
‘thanks to Minsk Ukraine revived an army from scratch, launched a missile program, mined Chongar, cut off Russia from the Dnieper , created an international anti-Putin coalition. And thanks to the raguli who voted in 2019 for the circus, received a full-scale war’
Yes lady, it’s Zelensky’s fault that you’re at war. Happy is the nation with lobotomites like you to make these brilliant observations.
Unsalvageable. Nothing can be ever made of these people. One should read their Facebook drivel more often, without it you forget what they’re really like.
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Clearly a Poroshenko fan! I mean, she has a point. Under Poroshenko things were much better for the Bandera crowd. They could do whatever shit they wanted, totally get away with murder, and never had to go out into the actual trenches to die. Zelensky and his circus is like a curse to them.
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Indeed, they were all having great fun jumping off the cliff until some bastard made them hit the ground.
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In other news: Lemmings protest the shortage of cliffs!
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🙂
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What a magnificent photo you have chosen to illustrate this post about everyone’s favourite Nazi-adjacent ex-general! If some science-fiction writer was to conceive of a tuber-based life-form, this image would be its face. The oblong head shape, the indentations and irregularities, the chinfuzz that resembles the roots that result from leaving a spud for too long on your storage shelf — this guy is the personification of potatociousness!
But seriously — OK, semi-seriously — I had to re-read this post closely because my first thought was “How can this happen? I thought Elmo had eliminated the ability for other people (aside from the Twaat-originator) to see who had liked a post. On further examination, I note the troublesome “like” happened on Fakebook. Which illustrates why fElon did what he did. Because there have been too many times when someone has been splattered with opprobrium because they have enjoyed some shit that would strike non-vile people as being sick. “I might not want to blort this racist or Nazi crap under my own name, but I think it’s keen-o!” Five minutes later — “Why are you saying I should be fired from my job as a child protection officer because you saw I was supportive of that guy who says it’s just GREAT to introduce 13-year-old girls to the joys of sex?!?” How long before the Zuckerborg follows in the footschleps (sic) of Xusk? Because if the billions of simoleons you get from your platform depend on millions of simpletons signing up for it, only they get spooked that they might be outed as sicko-symps if they do, there goes the user base.
As an intentional Luddite who’s never had anything to do with (anti)social meeja (aside from reading it) I cannot wrap my head around the whole “likes” business. The emotionality of it all, I mean. My Spock-logic brain can see how it’s a points-scoring thing in sports, and the more Likes you get, the more Winning! you have. But from what I’ve read, it’s all-caps IMPORTANT to a huge number of people.
(I emphasise “read” because I’ve never TALKED to anybody about their emotional dependence on Likes. #1, nobody in the groups I belong to where we discuss Big Topics is a Fakebook/Twaater devotee. #2 in other real-world conversation situations, social media doesn’t come up. It’s as irrelevant to those scenes as commenting on characteristics of the carpet underfoot. #3, anybody who knows me would have quickly picked up on my distaste for those platforms, and they’d know better than to engage with me on it. Just as a steakhouse lover wouldn’t talk about food with a militant vegan. My daughter and her BF, who DO use social media, change the convo flow when I start ranting. “Dad, I hardly use Facebook at all.” On the bright side, she did hip me to a book titled “The Chaos Machine” which is all about the social ills caused by that media, and she appears to have absorbed its message, so she’s not a total SM zombie.)
Now where was I? Yeah, this zeitgeist of getting and giving Likes. People don’t feel like they’re worthwhile human beings without it. “I have __ number of Likes on that thought-fart, so I am not a friendless loser!” And when there’s something that brings you pleasure, where you can return that pleasure to someone else with nothing more than the click of an on-screen button, it’s human nature to reciprocate. Unless you’re a sociopath. The “like” function is the same as a reach-around when you’re butt-fucking somebody. (or so I would imagine, never having been in that position…) So the fact that Gen. Potato-Head hit that “like” button for the now-disappeared post says he’s not a socio. A stone-cold Banderanazi who has sent thousands of men to their pointless deaths, but he’s got a warm heart!
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Or maybe General Spud was just trying to stick it his Nemesis, Zelensky? In that classic “reach-around” position of which you speak?
See, maybe General Spud is shut away in Zelensky’s palace dungeon, like the Man in the Iron Mask, but then a secretly sympathetic Nazi guard smuggled in a burner phone for him, with just enough juice in it to find an anti-Zel twat and “Raik” it, as the Japanese say… The last act of a doomed hero….
Because just a few seconds later, General Zod himself, having received the Twat alert from Elon, comes swaggering into the room in full bondage gear wearing orgy pants (with no underpants), whips and chains, the whole 9 yards, to punish the mutinous prisoner.
Who only grimaces up at him from his chains, with that fuzzy-potato sneer on his face. “Whatcha gonna do to me, Clown?”
“I dunno, Spuds. Ya feelin’ lucky today?” [the rest of the scene just writes itself…]
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This post got me off on a bit of tangent about why journalists use the spelling “lede”. Apparently it’s because lead (the metal) is (or at least was mid-century) an important component of printing presses, so in the context of newspapers, it was helpful to use a spelling that couldn’t be confused with the name of the metal. Anyway, burying the lead sounds environmentally unfriendly, so I’m glad people aren’t doing that.
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I always wondered about that myself! Thanks for the explanation.
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