According to Russian TV and radio host Anna Shafran "there can be no compromises – the Ukrainian people and language do not exist". She claims Ukrainian is merely a "dialect of Russian". The problem is that Russian TV always needs to provide Russian subtitles or voiceover when they quote someone speaking Ukrainian, which is logical because otherwise nobody would understand it. Just as with all Slavic languages, Ukrainian does share many roots with Russian, just like Polish or Czech do, but also has a vocabulary and grammar distinctive enough to make understanding each other very challenging. Russian narrative regarding the Ukrainian language is a multi-layered heap of lies - if anything, modern Russian evolved from Ukrainian, not the other way around - Moscow did not even exist when Kyiv was a cultural and trading center of Ruthenia. And if the languages were really close, Russian state wouldn't be consistently trying to erase Ukrainian language and culture for centuries, including today, when they fiercely burn Ukrainian books on the occupied territories and prosecute people for speaking Ukrainian.