In preparation for a genocidal war against Ukraine, Russian propaganda has been feeding the Russians with dehumanizing rhetoric about Ukrainians for years – from portraying them as comical and treating the Ukrainian nation as inferior to outright equation of all Ukrainians with Nazis lately.
Dehumanization as a process of denying humanity to a social group is a traditional element of propaganda used by colonial states against the oppressed nations. This is how it evolved in terms of the Kremlin’s propaganda targeting Ukraine.