MOSCOW, December 13. /TASS/. Historically, the language spoken in Ukraine was much closer to Russian than the "hollowed out" modern Ukrainian (mova), Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in his article "On national identity and political choice: the experience of Russia and China."
He pointed out that attempts by "enemies" to artificially create differences between the Ukrainian language and Russian deliberately rip apart the "fabric of centuries-long traditions."
"The true dialect of Malorossiya, which has its roots in Church Slavonic literature, was much closer to the Russian language prior to the 18th century (not the modern literary language). There are many remaining historical sources from that era, both Malorossiyan and Galician, including Cossack orders of the Zaporozhye Army, Lvov chronicles and so on. Their language is very similar to the language of documents written during the Mikhail and Alexey Romanov era," the official said.
In his opinion, this makes the "hollowness of the theory behind the modern mova, which is based on the ‘Poltava dialect’ of Taras Shevchenko" all the more obvious.
"And all the more obvious is the foolishness of the idea that the true Ukrainian language, which exists ‘somewhere out there’ in Western Ukraine is so far removed from Russian," Medvedev concluded.