Btw, I thank the Ukraine fiasco. I was learning Russian language half-heartedly before but this drama forced me to really read Russian language Cyrillic script to keep abreast with the news. Good news, I can understand 95% of the time without using the dictionary. Thank you, Novorussians! I just added Russian to my fluentlanguage list: I also speak French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch and Hungarian. By learning Russian, I discovered I can also read Bulgarian, though without the declensions. The Slavic languages are close: I can understand half of what the Serbian, Croatian (actually similar to Serbian)and Polish are saying.I don't bother with the Ukrainian much, it's about another reality altogether.
Well done! Moлoдчинa!
Yes, knowing Russian you can read Bulgarian for about 80%, but beware of several words that are written the same, but which meaning diverged, like нaпpaвo, which means "to the right" in Russian and "strait ahead" in Bulgarian.
As you noticed, other Slavic languages (with the exception of Latvian, which diverged quite a lot) are close between each other to be understood with a little effort and careful thinking about the words' roots.
Modern Ukrainian is an artificial construct, which is about 50% Polish, 25% German and 25% Russian. This hybrid is mainly pushed from Galicia, while central Ukraine speaks "Surszhik", which is less diluted. It is interesting to note in this regards the thoughts expressed by the last hetman of Ukraine -
Pavel Petrovich Skoropadskij, of which Ukrainians do not learn in schools as he does not align with the ideals of Bandera:
Yes, yes. Now that the Russians have won, they can proudly withdraw their victorious forces and stop killing people.
It's hard to withdraw something that wasn't there to begin with. Ukrainian army can stop killing people of Ukraine/Novorossia because said people managed to defend themselves.
blablahblah, you still remind me of those Germans in 1940s that screamed about bad Russians who would not stop defending themselves in the face of glorious German army.