English [New Zealand] is my first language, and my only language until age 25 or so. My English is likely influenced by the fact that French is the lingua franca where I've been living (mostly) since that distant time. For the last 25 years, approximately, I've been engaged in on-line discussion in English, generally with a population of majority American English locutors. I have actively resisted the americanisation of my means of expression; however I daresay I understand American writers at least as well, on average, as they understand each other. Likewise concerning locutors of French.

Concerning the "civil war" in Ukraine, I truly wish to learn your reasoning. I understand that, for example, a patriot of the Confederacy might have rejected the term concerning their war with the Union, considering that it was, on the contrary, a war between two sovereign nations. If this is the analogy that you are referencing, do you consider any war between entities within the former Soviet Union to be a "civil war"? For example, Azerbaijan / Armenia?

Or what? Not wishing to put words in your mouth (but, clearly, fishing)

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}