This is me and my Black Ukrainian friends hanging out at my house years ago, you racist, Kremlin-loving fucktard. Black Ukrainians date back at least to 1800s and maybe earlier. I know you’re a troll, but some people will actually believe this shit.

Thead https://t.co/JzcLM24VI0 https://t.co/LAIWJRaX4O

First off, this notion that a Black kid can’t, conceivably, be Ukrainians is PR is inconsistent with the fact that Black people have been coming through the Russian Empire since at least Catherine the Great’s reign.
Source: Allison Blakely’s “Russia and the Negro.”

It’s important to bring up the Russian Empire because Blacks were introduced into the region via the Ottoman Empire; Russia didn’t participate in the Black slave trade. It’s not clear when Black folks started populating Ukraine. @ksvarnon may know.

But what’s interesting is that there is a history of Black people traveling through Ukraine. In fact, national poet Taras Shevchenko and Black American actor Ira Aldridge shared a close bond. This was in the 1850s-1860s!
Source: https://t.co/mBwgpByGFC

Aldridge visited Ukraine at least 3 times. Lots of backstory to Shevchenko and serfdom, but the point is that there is a history of Black presence in Ukraine, no matter how small it was. Here’s a painting Shevchenko did of Aldridge. https://t.co/ISigqxO1iq

The highest number of Black people who entered the USSR, after the Empire fell in 1917, slowly started in the 1920s in small numbers as students, special guests, technical workers etc. Numbers blow up in the late 1950s during the decolonization of Africa. Mostly students.

Anyway, Moscow was the first place they went and then they were sent off across the USSR. Ukraine was one of those destinations. It was the second largest republic, lots of technical schools. Now, here is the interesting part: those black students were mostly men.

They weren’t supposed stay. They were supposed to go back to Africa and start communist revolutions. (It worked to “some” extent, but that’s another thread that @ksvarnon is more qualified to discuss than me.) anyway, those dudes made babies with 🇺🇦women, thus Black Ukrainians🤷🏿‍♀️

How many Black Ukrainians are here? Who knows. Data is hard to come by. When @ksvarnon and I find out, we’ll let you know. Anyway, you walk around Odessa, Kyiv and elsewhere, you’ll see plenty of Ukrainian-speaking black folk born and raised here.

I’m reporting on this very subject, so stay tuned for that. But seeing a Black kid being taught how to use a gun to defend HIS country is only propaganda if you think a black Ukrainian can’t exist. That would be indicative of YOUR racism, not Ukraine’s!

Anyway, here’s me with my best friend, a Black Ukrainian woman who teaches Ukrainian language. ✌🏿 https://t.co/laihCtQRAb