Many peoples of Eurasia have tales about how a family saves from trouble and helps to overcome evil. One of the modifications of this story is the “tale of the three sisters”. It is told in Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic.

Russian propagandists overlaid the instructive fairy tale plot with the thesis that Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are part of one people. With methods about this, they come to the occupied territories and promote them there in education. In the Russian interpretation, the West is setting Ukraine, Belarus and Russia against each other. They say that Ukraine could succeed in peace with the “sisters”, but the United States wants to break the greatness of Russia, which lies in the agreement between the “sisters”.

Such formulations are toxic. The peoples of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are Slavic. They are part of the world's history. But now they are developing in three independent states. And each of them has its own characteristics. Belarus is ruled by a dictator dependent on Russia. Russia, too, is dominated by an undemocratic regime that is trying to expand the borders of its state by returning to its control the countries that became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine, on the other hand, is building democracy, preparing to join the European Union and resisting Russia's armed aggression.

The “cultural proximity” of the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian peoples was imposed  when the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands were part of the Russian Empire and the USSR. At that time, cultural proximity served as an instrument of oppression and destruction of the identity of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples.

With stories about “three sisters”, propagandists justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, because this is how Russia looks like an “elder sister” who admonishes and saves the younger one. They also parasitize on the image of the Soviet past, but they fail to remember that in the USSR the unity of peoples was served along with repressions and a shortage of basic products.

The appeal of propagandists to fabulous and mythical stories should not obscure the facts that Russia attacked Ukraine and continues to commit terrible crimes and violate international law.