In his February 24 address to the Russian people announcing the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin set out as one of his reasons for going to war the “denazification” of Ukraine.
As Russian troops launched their attack on Ukraine on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the “special military operation” would seek the “denazification” of its sovereign neighbor.
“Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide… for the last eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” Putin said during an address on state television.
There was a lot of confusion. The Putin fanbois immediately took it to mean that Putin was invading to destroy the Azov Battalion, which has been labeled as following a “neo-nazi” ideology. Thinkers with bigger brains attributed it back to Ukraine’s problematic role in World War II.
This is the Washinton Post’s effort in Putin says he will ‘denazify’ Ukraine. Here’s the history behind that claim.
Russia is deeply influenced by the rhetoric of fighting fascism. After all, Russia made great sacrifices in World War II against Nazi Germany. Putin may be manipulating the history of war trauma to his advantage and twisting it for his own purposes, according to critics.
The New York Times offers up this analysis: Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine.
The “Nazi” slur’s sudden emergence shows how Mr. Putin is trying to use stereotypes, distorted reality and his country’s lingering World War II trauma to justify his invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin is casting the war as a continuation of Russia’s fight against evil in what is known in the country as the Great Patriotic War, apparently counting on lingering Russian pride in the victory over Nazi Germany to carry over into support for Mr. Putin’s attack.
Plausible? Perhaps.
Sometimes though, we can hear the Russians telling us their secrets if you pay close attention.
In February, a piece appeared in RIA Novosti, more of which is in a second), Sputnik, and was swiftly 404-ed. It laid out Russia’s goal in attacking Ukraine as bringing Ukraine, and eventually Belarus, back inside a Greater Russia; see Did a Quickly Deleted Essay in Russian Media Explain What Vladimir Putin Wants Russia to Gain From the Ukraine Invasion? The first few days of war were filled with troops who did not want to protect the fake republics of Donbas.
On Monday, the officially-sanctioned Russian outlet RIA NovostiA pundit called Timofei Sergiev published an opinion-ed titled What can Russia do for Ukraine?
Here’s a list of some highlights via Twitter.
An op-ed for state news agency RIA Novosti titled “What Russia should do with Ukraine” by pundit Timofei Sergeitsev has created quite a stir today
The rhetoric is truly horrific, even by the standards of what I’m used to seeing from pro-Kremlin media
These are just a few of the quotes that we have:
“Denazification is a set of measures aimed at the nazified mass of the population, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals”
“However, besides the elite, a significant part of the masses of the people, who are passive nazis, are accomplices to Nazism. They have supported the Nazi authorities and indulged them…”
“…The just punishment for this part of the population is possible only as the bearing of the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system”
“The name Ukraine can seemingly not be retained as the title of any fully denazified state formation on the territory liberated from the Nazi regime”
“Denazification is inevitably also deukrainisation – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic element of self-identification of the population of the territories of the historical Malorossiya and Novorossiya begun by the Soviet authorities”
“Unlike, let’s say, Georgia or the Baltics, Ukraine, as history has shown, is unviable as a national state, and attempts to ‘build’ one logically lead to Nazism”
“The Banderite elite must be liquidated, its reeducation is impossible. The social ‘swamp’ which actively and passively supports it must undergo the hardships of war and digest the experience as a historical lesson and atonement”
[You an find extended quotes at the end of the post to give you the flavor. The translation is via Medium but you can use Google Translate and read it for yourself at this link. You’ll see the term “Banderite” in the essay, it refers to the short-lived pro-German puppet state created by Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. (If Bandera had read Mein Kampf and Hitler’s views on Slavs, he would not have been shocked when his great idea failed.)]
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Former Russian President, and currently Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council of Russia Security Council of Russia Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, took to Telegram to share his thoughts. This essay contains all the details. translated on TwitterYou can also find it at Russian shops like this one. These are just a few highlights.
For the past 30 years, ‘Passionate Ukrainians’ have been praying for Third Reich. Literally. Images in which Nazi symbols were found in every unit of Ukraine’s military forces are enough to cause disgust [Russian] army – flags, literature, posters. Mugs even with swastikas /12
— Max Fras (@maxfras) April 5, 2022
She does it this way. [Nazi] Ukraine! And ‘individual freaks,’ who believe they are entitled to represent Ukraine. Their lesson will not be the current operation but episodes from the glorious past.
— Max Fras (@maxfras) April 5, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin set the goal to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. This complex task will be completed in one go. These complex tasks will occur simultaneously, and not just on the battlefields. /16
— Max Fras (@maxfras) April 5, 2022
To change the bloody and false consciousness of a part of today’s Ukrainians is the most important goal. The goal is, for the sake of the peace of future generations of Ukrainians themselves, the opportunity to finally build an open Eurasia – from Lisbon to Vladivostok /17 EOT
— Max Fras (@maxfras) April 5, 2022
How can we make sense of all this?
The essay was written by a well-known pundit and published in high-profile Russian media outlets. The essay lays out a plan for something that looks very much like Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, with the Katyn Forest thrown in for good measure. The essay calls for the elimination of Ukraine’s polity, and suggests that the Ukrainian language will be destroyed and its culture destroyed. It is the definition of genocide. This implies that Poland, the Baltic States and other countries are the next to be included in the list. All of this is contained under the rubric of “denazification.”
Close on its heels, Putin crony Dmitry Medvedev excoriates Ukraine as a bastion of nazism and says that “for the sake of peace,” Ukraine’s taint of nazism must be erased.
As Hitler did with Hitler’s plans for the future Mein KampfThus, we can assume that the Russian government just revealed what it was going to do.
I’m leery of “man on the street” interviews, but if this video is real and representative, the Russian people have received the message loud and clear.
Russia’s attitude towards Ukraine
Russia has something seriously wrong pic.twitter.com/vRfDaxmL1l
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 5, 2022
Bucha’s atrocities are not only for the weak. here | here), the targeting of civilian buildings, and the indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian cities, it isn’t hard to see how and why this is taking place. These actions are not those of untrained troops or rogue commanders. It is part of a program for the national eradication. This is Putin’s “Final Solution to the Ukrainian Problem.” The killings, kidnappings, and terrorism are not bugs in a sloppy military operation; they are highly prized features of a plan to absorb Ukraine back into Russia and, over time, eliminate the national and cultural identity of the Ukrainian people.
This has serious consequences. This means in its simplest form that there is no way to make a peaceful settlement with Ukraine. An armed truce can be established in Ukraine until the next round or until Russia takes over as leader.
Read The Ukrainian Army Liberates Territory From Russian Invaders and Discovers Murdered Civilians; Shocking Evidence of Mass-Scale Russian War Crimes Raises the Stakes in Ukraine, and Russian Torture Chamber Discovered in Liberated Ukraine Town as the Russian Army Continues to Do What It Is Good at Doing for more details on the Bucha war crimes.
This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now.
— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 24, 2022
RIA Novosti essay
When a significant number of people (probably most) have been exposed to the Nazi regime, and are engaged in its agendas, denazification becomes necessary. That is, when the “good people — bad government” hypothesis does not apply. This fact is the foundation of denazification policies and their measures. However, the subject itself forms its basis.
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All Nazis who have taken up arms need to be defeated on the field, and as many as possible. No significant distinction should be made between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called “nationalist battalions,” as well as the Territorial Defense, who have joined the two other types of military units. They are all equally complicit in the horrendous violence towards civilians, equally complicit in the genocide of the Russian people, and they don’t comply with the laws and customs of war. They must be held accountable for war crimes and the active Nazis. An exhaustive lustration should be done. All Nazi-related organizations must be destroyed and banned. However, not only must the top ranks be destroyed, many people can also be guilty of complicity with Nazism and passive Nazis.
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This will lead to further demazification, with the process of ideology repressions (suppression of Nazi paradigms) and harsh censorships in the political sphere as well as in the cultural and educational spheres.
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One generation must be raised, educated, and mature to allow for denazification. The nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years — starting from as early as 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism was given legal and legitimate forms of political self-expression and led the movement for “independence”, setting a course for Nazism.
The current nazified Ukraine is characterized by its formlessness and ambivalence, which allow it to disguise Nazism as the aspiration to “independence” and the “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality, to degradation) and claim that “there is no Nazism” in Ukraine, “only few sporadic incidents.” Indeed, there isn’t a main Nazi party, no Führer, no full-fledged racial laws (only a cutdown version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result — no opposition or resistance against the regime.
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That’s why there can be no compromise during denazification, as in the case of the “no to NATO, yes to EU” formula. The collective West is in itself the architect, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Banderite supporters from Western Ukraine and their “historical memory” is just one of the tools of the nazification of Ukraine. Ukronazism is a greater threat to Russia and the rest of the world than Hitler’s German Nazism.
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Apparently, the name “Ukraine” cannot be kept as a title of any fully denazified state entity on the territory liberated from the Nazi regime.
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Denazification will inevitably include de-ukrainization — the rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component in the self-identification of the population of the historical Malorossiya and Novorossiya territories, which was started by the Soviet authorities. This artificial ethnocentrism, which was a Communist tool, was never forgotten after it fell.
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Unlike, for example, Georgia or the Baltic States, history has proved it impossible for Ukraine to exist as a nation-state, and any attempts to “build” such a nation-state naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism can be described as an artificial antiRussian construct, which has no civilisational substance. It is a subordinate component of an extraneous alien civilization. Denazification is not possible by mere debanking. The Banderite element, while a cover for the European project to destroy Ukraine, is only a hand.
Their reeducation will not be possible. The Banderite elites need to be eradicated. The social “bog,” which has actively and passively supported them through action and inaction, must go through the hardships of war and internalize the lived experience as a historical lesson and the redemption of its guilt.
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The special military operation’s goal is to achieve denazification within its limits. This includes a military victory against the Kyiv regime and liberation of territories from the nazification armed supporters. It also involves the capture of war criminals and creation of conditions that allow for continued peacetime denazification.
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