Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Russia’s Plan for Ukraine? Genocide
Russia has dropped the maskirovka about its goals in the “Special Operation” in Ukraine. RIA Novosty, a Russian Federation state-owned domestic news agency recently published an article that outlines the real goals of their invasion. It’s as if Goebbels had published a synopsis of the Wannsee Conference in the Völkischer Beobachter.
From Putin’s initial lie that the “special Operation” was aimed at liberating the Ukrainian population from its evil Nazi government, the article expands the aim of exterminating Ukrainian nationhood. Forever. What follows are some of the highlights of the article.
You can read the entire article, rescued by the Wayback Machine, here.
The operation to de-nazify Ukraine, which has started with a military phase, will follow in peacetime the same logic of progression as the military operation. With each step, it will be necessary to succeed in implementing irreversible changes, which would become the building blocks of the following step. For this, the necessary first steps of de-nazification can be defined the following way:
• The liquidation of armed Nazi formation (which is understood to include any Ukrainian armed formations, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as anything that assists in their military, informational, and educational infrastructure
• The creation of bodies for popular self-rule, as well as law enforcement (both for security and law and order) on liberated territory, to protective people from terrorist acts of insurgent Nazi groups
• The implementation of the Russian information space
• The seizure of any educational materials, and a band on educational programs, at all levels, that contain Nazi ideological attitudes
• Mass investigations to establish personal accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, spreading of Nazi ideology and supporting the Nazi regime
• Lustration, publicizing the names of the accomplices of the Nazi regime, engaging them in forced labor to repair destroyed infrastructure as part of their punishment for Nazi activities (for those that wouldn’t be sentenced to death or imprisonment)
• The adoption, at a local level, under Russian advisement, primary normative acts of “grassroots” de-nazification, a ban on all types and forms of reviving Nazi ideology
• The creation of memorials, commemorative signs, and monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, and the immortalization of the memory of the heroes that fought against it
• The creation and adoption of a series of anti-fascist and de-nazificative norms in the constitutions of these new people’s republics
• The creation of a constantly operating body of de-nazification, for a period of 25 years
Russia will have no compatriots in its de-nazification of Ukraine, seeing as this is purely Russian work, as well as considering that it is not just the Banderite version of Nazi Ukraine that will be eradicated, but also and most of all, Western totalitarianism, the forced programs of civilizational degradation and ruin, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the USA.
In order to realize the plan of Ukrainian de-nazification, Russian life itself will have to finally rid itself of its pro-European and pro-Western illusions, and accept itself as the last line of defense, and the preserver of, those values of historic Europe (the Old World), which it deserves, and from which the West has ultimately abandoned, losing in a war against itself.
But wait there is more.
De-nazification is necessary when a sizable part of the population – most likely, the majority – has mastered and drawn in the Nazi regime into its politics.
That is, when the theory “the people are good, the government is bad” no longer holds true.
Get that? The majority of Ukrainians are hopelessly Nazi. And Nazis cannot live.
War criminals and active Nazis have to made an example of. There has to be a total lustration – the liquidation and ban of any organizations that ties themselves to the practice of Nazism. However, aside from the leadership, a good part of the population is also responsible here, who are themselves passive Nazis, accomplices to Nazism.
They supported the Nazi government, and indulged it.
A just punishment for this part of the population can only be found in the burden of the hardships of a just war against the Nazi system,
Denazification can only be conducted by the victor, which assumes 1) its unconditional control over the de-nazification process, and 2) an authority that can facilitate this control. In this respect, a country undergoing de-nazification cannot be sovereign. The de-nazification-leading government – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach regarding denazification.
The ideology of the de-nazifying party cannot be disputed by the guilty party, subjected to de-nazification. Russia’s call for the necessity of de-nazification means that the Crimean scenario cannot work for Ukraine as whole. In fact, this scenario was already unrealistic in 2014, and in the rebellious Donbas.
The Nazification of Ukraine took more than 30 years – starting at a minimum in 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism receive a legal and legitimate form of political self-expression and spearheaded the movement for “independence”, leaning towards Nazism.
A particular feature of Nazified Ukraine is its amorphousness and ambivalentness, which allows for the masking of Nazism as a desire to move towards an “independent” and “European” (Western and pro-American) path of development, (in reality – towards degradation), while insisting that Ukraine “doesn’t have any Nazism, only private and singular excesses.”
An independent Ukraine, that wants to be part of the West, cannot be permitted to exist.
The name “Ukraine,” seemingly, cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people’s republics, newly created in the space free from Nazism, should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, and the restoration and modernization of social support systems for the population.
Again, Ukraine cannot exist.
De-nazification will inevitably be expressed as de-Ukrainianization – the rejection of the artificially divided ethnic component of self-identification, created as far back as under Soviet authority, of the population of the historical territories of Malorossiya and Novorossiya.
Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic states, Ukraine, as history has shown, cannot exist in the form of a national government, and attempts to “build” it as such, naturally leads to Nazism. Ukrainianism is an artificial anti-Russian construct, which does not have any civilizational content of its own, and is a subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization.
This part is particularly sweet. The way you define a “Nazi” is anyone who wants to be Ukrainian.
De-nazification, as a goal of the special military operation, within the the scope of that operation, is understood as a military victory over the Kyiv regime, the liberation of the territory from armed Nazi supporters, the liquidation of irreconcilable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, as well as the creation of a system of conditions for the following peace-time de-nazification.
The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, law enforcement, and defense bodies, cleansed of Nazi elements. This can be used as the basis to launch the founding processes of a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for Ukrainian de-nazification (newly created or converted, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo). This, along with the adoption, under Russian control, of a republican regulatory framework (legislation) on de-nazification, the definition of the boundaries and framework for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territories in the field of de-nazification, and the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
The plan is to destroy Ukraine as a political entity, to cleanse the land of anyone who longs for independence or even a national identity. To Russia, Ukraine has never existed and is only a part of Mother Russia that must be returned to its status as “Malorus” (Little Russia). Ukrainian culture will be illegal. The language will be suppressed. Publishing in Ukrainian will be banned. Because it’s Nazi.
This is not the first time Ukrainians have been the unwelcome recipients of Russia’s special love. Catherine the Great showed it. Multiple Tsars showed it. Stalin showed it. And Ukraine survived them all. I have no doubt Putler will fail as well, but not before causing immense death and destruction in his Genocide.
Published in Foreign Policy
More evidence of intentional killing of civilians
https://mobile.twitter.com/FideliusSchmid/status/1512023149466079233?cxt=HHwWgsC-wePC5PspAAAA
Sure it is. Just ask him.
Yup. This story describes present-day Syria. I’m sure this is what Putin is after in Ukraine.
He is a monster with a lot of help. His friends are just like him.
It’s really easy to kill people.
I’m not sure why you think it is important to know the details of how the killing could be carried out. Can’t they just shoot civilians anytime they please? That method is not difficult to effect.
I think Putin would prefer a nation of slavish followers to genocide, but Ukraine isn’t going to do that. They have humiliated Putin which brings his wrath.
However, I think a certain number of Russian soldiers are just sadists whipped up on Putin’s propaganda. There has been a lot of evil in Russia in the past 100-plus years. Thus, evil probably comes out quite easily. For example, Russia has had the highest abortion rate as recently as 2004, over 50% higher than #2 Vietnam.
I mean, my guess is they carry it out like the NKVD did. It’s not like the Russians don’t have experience with mass terror.
Because I am curious as to how this is going to be accomplished. Genocide is a big deal. I am not sure why you would think how they are going to do it is not important.
The Russians appear to have withdrawn from Kiev. If they are going to engage in genocide, won’t they need to wipe out much of, if not most of, Kiev?
How the genocide will be conducted is very important, because it speaks to how the West can fight it. If it is carpet bombing, SAMs might help. If it is tanks, more anti-tank weapons (and the stuff to use them). Etc.
Syria is mentioned above. Are we saying that Syria meets the definition of genocide? Is that based on people killed, because the nation of Syria still seems to be there, with a lot of people still calling themselves Syrians. Is the genocide mentioned for other peoples? Syria does not seem like genocide to me. It is a horror, to be sure, but there does not seem to be systematic elimination of a people. If we go by deaths alone, did we engage in genocide in Iraq?
No where has Hang ON called for or supported the complete destruction of Ukraine. You are making that statement, so you have to back it up. Prove it to me with quotes, or you are just name calling.
I think and I may be wrong but there are probably some elements of genocide in Syria. It is tribal warfare, with ancient hatreds and grievances. I suspect those tribes are absolutely trying to eliminate each other entirely, but I agree that Syria is a complicated mess that doesn’t fit the definition cleanly.
Tribal warfare is always horrid. And I will agree there are tribal forces at place between Russia and Ukraine. I am not sure Syria is the model for Ukraine either.
It seems like the Russians so far have been using artillery and airpower in places they don’t control and just plain old small arms and infantry weapons in the places they do. The concern is that they would use WMD or thermobarics on a population center like Kiev. I did not think that likely; however, given what we are seeing and what apparently the Russians maximalist war aims are I am not entirely sure anymore.
I suspect Russia needs time to regroup before they can continue to press. I would expect that they will continue to use small arms and infantry weapons in the places they control. When they start up again I would expect they are going to move toward airpower. Unless the ground dries up enough to allow them better cross country movement. I have no idea how long the muddy season lasts in Ukraine.
The key thing for the Ukrainians and the West to understand is any cease fire arrangement or peace deal is temporary only. It will be used by Russia to prepare for wave 2, so the Ukrainians will have to respond by rearming and preparing as well.
I hope with our help.
We will have to see how it goes. If they do use WMD or thermobarics, the world will become a lot more dangerous.
First, a correction. Saying that somebody supports the destruction of a country is not “name calling.” It is an observation. You can characterize it as a lie or a wrong observation if you like, but it is not calling names.
About three or four weeks ago there was a post on the Ukraine War. In it, @Hang On made several comments that were openly supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and seemed to have complete disregard for the plight of the Ukraine people. So I asked him directly in a comment “Are you okay with Russia crushing the Ukraine?” He did not answer, but continued to make comments in the thread. When I saw that, I asked him again by posting a comment that went something like this “I noticed that you purposely avoided answering my question, so I will ask you one more time. Do you think it is okay for Russia to crush Ukraine?”
Again, I heard nothing but crickets. Though I don’t have his admission in writing, it is obviously clear by his avoidance of the question that his answer would be “yes.” Besides, his comments in other threads all confirm his support for the Russian side. In this very thread he dismissed the entire post by telling @Kozak “That’s not what the document (the Russian article that the post is about) is calling for. But that’s the usual garbage comment from you.”
I don’t call people disparaging names on this site and I don’t slur, mock, or humiliate others for their political views. I am of the Dennis Prager philosophy in that “I prefer clarity over agreement.” It is more important to clarify one’s views or situations rather than to find agreement. That’s the only reason I mentioned Hang On’s stance, because another member replying in comment #54 assumed that Hang On was gravely misled (instead of being on Russia’s side).
As I said before, why don’t you ask him to clarify his opinion? As the old saying goes, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
For Putin it is the model for how to destroy any enemy with the audacity to fight back.
they have already used thermobarics
https://thehill.com/policy/international/597581-russia-says-its-used-thermobaric-weapon-system-in-ukraine-uk/
Somewhat disputed according to the article; however, using thermobarics on a military target and using them to raze a city are different things.
That was me. I don’t know if what happened in Syria qualifies as genocide, but it was a total scorched-earth destruction of many parts of the country that remain uninhabitable. Assad and Putin certainly didn’t restore the housing and businesses that the Syrian people had built. I don’t know how these leaders do this to people. It’s horrible. It seems that Assad and Putin have no conscience.
This is the part of the article that is, to me, foreboding for the future of Ukraine:
Maybe this qualifies as a large step towards genocide:
mass grave with 700 remains in it in Chernihiv
https://mobile.twitter.com/lesiavasylenko/status/1512439627025682435
…at a distance. Up close, not so much
From my view genocide is when you just want to kill everyone of the genus because of who they are. It doesn’t matter how you might do it, or whether you’ll be successful (hopefully not). Rather it points more toward the perpetrators’ goals. Looking at the reasons for “non-just” war: do you want to subjugate some other group (tribal warfare can fall into that camp), do you want to conquer territory (time immemorial), do want somebody else’s stuff (a variation of territory conquering), or do you want to get rid of everyone of a particular belief/ethnicity/etc. The latter is genocide. You want to rid yourself/the world of some pesky/(sub-)human group of people.
It doesn’t matter how well you’ve thought it out. It doesn’t matter how cleverly you’ve planned it — most genocidists don’t have the ruthless skills and resources of the Nazis. It doesn’t matter how well you carry it out. It’s all about what you are doing and why. For example, killing lots of civilians (innocent or otherwise) may be ugly/wrong, but it’s not necessarily genocide. Although inhumanely brutal in today’s world, it was distasteful but not so out of bounds in the past. Rather it was a brutally effective means to pacify a population by making an example of others. Killing them because they are Ukranians, or Armenians, or Kulaks, or Jews, and you want to be rid of them, that’s genocide. The objective matters a lot.
[added]
Preventing the target group from breeding and having children is a form of genocide too. It’s “nice”, in that you may not brutalize or kill them, but you wipe out their type just the same.
I am not the one slinging accusations, and he is not the one slinging accusations, you are. I have, in fact, reached out to him. That has not, shall we say, helped your case.
Now I am really lost. Are they committing genocide or not? I am told with absolute certainty in the OP that is their plan. In fact, to doubt it borders on supporting it. So, I am not doubting it. I am asking how they are going to do it.
Thus far, the answer seems to be “We don’t know how they are going to do it, and that is not what is important, what is important is that you be as outraged as possible about this document in this OP!”
I refuse to go from outrage to outrage in this war. It sucks. People are dying that don’t need too. On both sides. Russian conscripts are fighting the war of someone else. I don’t like it when rich Americans send someone else to go fight for them for muddled reasons. I cannot imagine my son being sent to fight this sort of war in Ukraine. How horrible.
If we think Russia is going to engage in genocide, then we need to figure out how to help Ukraine best counter it. I do not think that is unreasonable.
Your accusations were to me and I quote:
“That is a false statement and slur against him.”
“Prove it to me with quotes, or you are just name calling.”
You are correct that Hang On was not slinging accusations. He was just making disparaging comments to Kozak that were redacted by the moderators. I’m not sure what accusations you think I was making, unless you call describing a person’s written opinion of the war an accusation. And I did reach out to him by asking a simple question, twice. He refused to engage.
I think I provided my analysis on the instrumentation they are using to accomplish this. I don’t see how we can stop it without intervening in a way that I would not support. I think all we can do is keep doing what we are doing. Maybe we should provide the MiGs, S-300 Anti-Aircraft systems, or other Western Anti Aircraft systems to try to negate Russian Airpower. Non of that is going to stop the behind the lines executions. Also with the recent strikes on evacuating civilians I am not sure there is anything to be done to save people stuck behind the lines.
Kozak has also been redacted for calling another member names.
Sounds like genocide to me:
“Russian media amplified an op-ed written by Kremlin-affiliated film director Timofey Sergeytsev on April 3 that outlined specific steps to “denazify Ukraine” and sought to justify Russian atrocities.[15] The op-ed claims the entire Ukrainian Armed Forces are Nazis and called for their total “liquidation.” The op-ed additionally stated Ukraine cannot be an independent state and called for a multi-generational effort to alter the educational, informational, and cultural infrastructure of Ukraine that would inevitably constitute “de-Ukrainization.” The op-ed called for the creation of “systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification in peacetime,” including the installation of a permanent Russian information space in Ukraine.”
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-invasion-update-22
the entire Ukrainian military is to be “liquidated”- and they are already murdering any Ukrainian vets they find- together that would amount to well over 600,000 men-and to kill them will require many many more deaths & murders- but some here will quibble- “well I do not think it is enough murders to call it genocide”- like the dead will be able see the distinction….
or maybe Russia didn’t do it- Putin claims the British did it-those sly SOBs-just like the US caused the whole war:
“Mirzayan claimed scenes in Bucha – where Putin’s troops have been accused of butchering civilians and burying them in mass graves – were faked and “done by professionals, probably British”.
“They’re the best in the area of information operations,” he said.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18169454/russian-propaganda-britain-staged-genocide-bucha/
I am sure there are those who will say- “you see it isn’t clear who is at fault” and try to swallow the lies.
“However, it’s the rhetoric coming from Moscow that tips over into genocidal intent, Mr Finkel says.
He points to an article titled “What should Russia do with Ukraine?” published this week by Russia’s state-owned media Ria news agency.
The article argues that Ukraine “is impossible as a nation state” and even its name “apparently cannot be retained”; the Ukrainian nationalist elite “need to be liquidated, its re-education is impossible”, argues the writer, Timofei Sergeytsev.
He bases his theory on the baseless claim that Ukraine is a Nazi state, arguing that a significant section of the population is guilty too because they are “passive Nazis”, and therefore accomplices. After a Russian victory these people would require re-education lasting at least a generation and it would “inevitably mean de-Ukrainisation”.
“For me, the shift in tone in recent weeks in Russia, and especially among the elites, was the tipping point that we call the threshold of intent, not just to destroy the state… but to destroy an identity,” says Prof Finkel.
“The goal of the war is de-Ukrainisation… they are not focusing on the state, they’re focusing on Ukrainians.”
Gregory Stanton, founding president and chair of Genocide Watch, says there is proof “that the Russian army is in fact intending to destroy, in part, the Ukrainian national group”.
“That’s why they’re targeting civilians. They’re not just targeting combatants and military.”
He says President Putin’s claims in the lead-up to the invasion, that the eight-year war in Ukraine’s east looked like genocide, were what some scholars call “mirroring”.
“Often the perpetrator of genocide will accuse the other side – the targeted victims – of intending to commit genocide before, in fact, the perpetrator does so. That’s what happened in this case.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61017352
The killing is easy. The living with it not so much.
Where are the great and inspiring speeches for the ages against what Putin and the Russians are doing and saying? Where are the world’s statesmen? They don’t even have to write anything. They could quote statesmen from the past. Lord knows, there have been plenty of Putins in the past.