I knew a Ukrainian in ~2016 who was SUPER into Russia. He and his family all spoke Russian more frequently than anything else and would talk about Russia all the time. I didn't understand it, but kind of assumed it was the norm. The last couple of years have made me very curious about him

[–] volodymyr 23 points 1 year ago

Plenty of ukrainians speak russian at least sometimes. Even now. Freely. It is possible to speak russian in Ukraine more freely than to speak russian in totalitarian Russia.

Some ukrainians liked russia, most of them stopped. Some might still do, but out of hundreds I know, from east and west, north and south, not a single one does.