My friend told me "ruskie" is used as a somewhat pejorative description of a "Russian". Like Brits say "Yanks" about the Americans.
The other issue is that people don't know how to translate "ruski" to English, so they would say "Russian dumplings", but in reality they should be called "Ruthenian dumplings" from Ruthenian Voivodeship.
They probably seen tourists turn their nose on "Russian dumplings", so they renamed them to "Ukrainian".
Since most of the Ruthenian Voivodeship is now in Ukraine it somewhat makes sense, but it is not entirely correct. Just shows lazy thinking.
In the UK, those sold in supermarkets are no longer called "ruskie" but simply potato and cheese dumplings.
When it's used as a noun it's pejorative for Russian people. When it's used as an adjective - it's neutral (and can be used both for russian and ruthenian stuff).
There's also more specific words - rosyjskie for russian and rusińskie for ruthenian, but very few people use "rusińskie" nowadays.
BTW there's this joke from communist times:
A waitress in a milk bar shouts "who ordered ruskie", someone in the bar shouts back "nobody, they came on their own".
> My friend told me "ruskie" is used as a somewhat pejorative description of a "Russian". Like Brits say "Yanks" about the Americans.
There was a joke which used that, during the Communist Poland era (where country was thoroughly dominated by it's USSR neighbor and supposed friend, as per the official propaganda):
The other issue is that people don't know how to translate "ruski" to English, so they would say "Russian dumplings", but in reality they should be called "Ruthenian dumplings" from Ruthenian Voivodeship.
They probably seen tourists turn their nose on "Russian dumplings", so they renamed them to "Ukrainian".
Since most of the Ruthenian Voivodeship is now in Ukraine it somewhat makes sense, but it is not entirely correct. Just shows lazy thinking.
In the UK, those sold in supermarkets are no longer called "ruskie" but simply potato and cheese dumplings.