The person they are replying to identified themselves as a Canadian citizen living in Ukraine.
The person who described themselves as "Ukrainian-Ukrainian" is implying that their own assessment of the situation is likely to be more accurate since they are not just an expatriate.
There are at least four kinds of Ukrainians. Russians with Ukrainian citizenship (a lot of these in Crimea and L/DNR), Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and Western Ukrainians, who did not live in the Russian Empire or Soviet Ukraine before 1944, and have Roman Catholic-controlled faith based on Orthdox rituals.
The first three groups form a continuity and is not perfectly correlated with loyalty to Ukrainian state.
Romanians form with ~500K the third biggest minority in Ukraine. Again, a situation where USSR conquered and draw the map as it wished, since they live in teritory formely belonging to interbellic Romania.
One fact which people forget: Ukraine decided to end support to minorities, as such there is no longer possible to study in native language. This type of nationalism should not be supported at all. Ukraine is no saint.
This is not true. In 2020-2021 curriculum year in Ukraine there were 874 schools that that had languages of minorities as a language of instruction.
In 9 different languages - Russian, Bulgarian, Crimean Tatar language, German, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Moldavian.
I had a friend who I referred to as "my Russian friend". When my uncle married a Russian woman, I showed her a picture of my Russian friend from one of his kids birthday parties, and she said, "I think he is from Ukraine". I asked why she thought that and she said because of the lettering of the sign in the background - apparently they have a different (but similar enough to my non-Russian reading eyes) alphabet, too.
Just FYI - like you, I grew up hearing it called "the Ukraine" (like "The Philippines" or "The Netherlands") but apparently that's changed and it's just "Ukraine" now.
