Thread by @EosPengwern

Some thoughts on Ukraine and Wales - from a Welshman who's married to the daughter of a WWII refugee from L'viv.

I'm glad that the vast majority of Welsh people are fully in support of Ukraine's army as they repel the Russian aggressors.

1/23

I'm glad the UK government is at the forefront of the West's support to Ukraine in terms of military materiel, intelligence, and everything else that can be done short of full-scale involvement in the war. I'd like to think an independent Welsh government would do the same.

2/23

There are some people who make out that it was wrong of us to want to see Ukraine's football team defeated on Sunday - that we should somehow have backed down to give them a free run.

3/23

But that's an insult to them. By that logic, everyone should back down and they should just be handed the World Cup on a plate. But no, they played their best, we played our best, and everyone left the field with their heads held high.

4/23

Perhaps not all Ukrainians understand how important this is to us. I don't for a moment want to detract from the Ukrainians' heroism in standing against Russia today, but consider this:

5/23

When our overbearing, violent, primitive, but very large neighbour attacked us, there was no-one to help.

They'd already seized most of our territory during the 5th-8th centuries, but we'd still held together as a coherent nation in what was left of our land.

6/23

But our violent neighbours were insatiable. Whether you look at the original full-on invasion in the 13th Century, or the crushing of our last major military rebellion in the 15th, we stood alone. No-one came to our aid.

7/23

Our ancestors fought like lions. To subdue them, the English had to build a series of castles and fortifications unlike anything else in Europe. Most of them still stand today, along with those we built ourselves to defend our territory where we could.

8/23

But ultimately we were overwhelmed. Our land was overrun and colonised, and the English state spent seven centuries doing everything within its power to obliterate any remembrance of us from the face of the earth.

9/23

Such was its cultural dominance that even when a partly Welsh dynasty (the Tudors) deposed the English monarchy in 1485 and reigned in its place, the Tudors became English rather than the English becoming Welsh.

10/23

It was only the remarkable works of God during the 16th and 17th Centuries, in the Reformation and the subsequent Puritan era, that tamed the English so that they became a far more benign power than Russia, or indeed most European empires.

11/23

Even so, the pressure that was placed on Wales to simply cease to exist - to become an indistinguishable part of England - was relentless. That pressure reached a crescendo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when two things happened simultaneously:

12/23

Firstly, the English state launched a concerted campaign to stamp out the Welsh language, by forcing all Welsh children to learn English and to be beaten for speaking Welsh; and persuading them that retaining any knowledge of Welsh at all would hinder their life chances.

13/23

Secondly, the rate of colonisation was stepped up, with hundreds of thousands of English settlers - more people than settled in the United States or Canada - flooding into Wales to extract our natural resources for the benefit of the English exchequer.

14/23

We were so nearly overwhelmed. One thing alone allowed us to resist: the fact that repeated visitations of God's Holy Spirit between the early 18th and early 20th Centuries had created a Welsh-speaking religious civilisation.

15/23

This had made Wales the most literate nation in Europe. We had books, songs, poetry, newspapers, but most of all preachers, who kept our language and culture alive; a civilisation which was at its most powerful at exactly the time when the pressure upon it was greatest.

16/23

By the mid-20th century, that civilisation, alas, was waning; but so also was the power of the English state itself, beleaguered by two World Wars and rebellions by many of its overseas possessions.

17/23

Since then we have slowly, falteringly, started to regroup. Even as our religious civilisation has waned, we've benefitted from the institutions that it created - our universities, our national library and museums, and not least our rugby and football associations.

18/23

Against all the odds - despite everything that might have obliterated a lesser nation - despite everyone and everything that has been against us, we're still here.

Or in Welsh - er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth, rŷ'n ni #YmaOHyd.

@dafyddiwan

19/23

We still have a long way to go: between the descendants of English settlers in the 19th and 20th centuries, and those of Welsh descent who were cowed into submission at the same time, we have all too many people within our borders who are *still* content to buckle down.

20/23

But the Ukrainians inspire us. To see those in places like Kharkiv and Mariupol, Russian-speaking Ukrainians akin to the English-speaking Welsh, nevertheless standing firm against Russian aggression, thrills our hearts and shows us what can be achieved.

21/23

Playing in the football World Cup as the *only* qualifying nation which has not yet regained its independence, gives us an unparalleled opportunity to tell the world who we are and galvanise our national movement.

22/23

@EosPengwern
So we honour Ukraine's struggle even as we pursue our own.

#СлаваУкраїні
#YmaOHyd

23/23