Yesterday, April 3, the state-owned Russian news agency RIA News published an article, which calls for the genocide of Ukrainians.
Timofey Sergeytsev, the author of the article “What should Russia do with Ukraine”, justifies the need for mass repressions against Ukrainians in order to force them to abandon their own nationality, culture, and language. He uses the Russian propaganda term “Ukrainism” to describe “an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization.”
The main thesis of the article is the extermination of Ukrainians as an ethnical group not only through the “denazification” and “debanderization”, but moreover through so-called “de-Ukrainization” – “a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia (Malorossiya) and New Russia (Novorossiya), begun by the Soviet authorities.” The author adds that “denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.”
The full translation of the article can be found below.
“What should Russia do with Ukraine” by Timofey Sergeytsev
Back in April last year, we wrote about the inevitability of the denazification of Ukraine. We don’t need nazi, Bandera Ukraine, the enemy of Russia, and the West’s tool for the destruction of Russia. Today, the issue of denazification has moved into a practical plane.
Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people – most likely the majority – has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. That is when the hypothesis “the people are good – the government is bad” does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.
Ukraine is in just such a situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for the “peace of Poroshenko” and “peace of Zelenskyy” should not be misleading – the Ukrainians were quite satisfied with the shortest path to peace through the blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted at when they were elected. It was this method of “appeasement” of internal anti-fascists – through total terror – that was used in Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mariupol, and other Russian cities. And this quite suited the Ukrainian man in the street. Denazification is a set of measures in relation to the Nazified mass of the population, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals.
The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. There should be no significant differences between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, and do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and prudently as possible in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that a deep mass Nazification of the population was prepared and carried out, secured by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda, internal violence, and terror, as well as the eight-year war with the people of Donbas who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism.
Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a de-nazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and in the rebellious Donbas. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine, which defined itself as a Nazi society.
The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification. The Nazification of Ukraine continued for more than 30 years, beginning at least in 1989 when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for “independence” towards Nazism.
The peculiarity of modern Nazified Ukraine is in amorphousness and ambivalence, which make it possible to disguise Nazism as a desire for “independence” and a “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality – to degradation), to assert that in Ukraine “there is no Nazism, only private individual excesses”. After all, there is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their truncated version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.
However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of German Nazism during the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” (essentially political technology) frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of any Nazism – as European and, in its most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, on the basis of a formula like “NATO – no, EU – yes.” The collective West itself is the designer, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Western Bandera cadres and their “historical memory” are only one of the tools for the Nazification of Ukraine. Ukronazism carries not less, but a greater threat to the world and Russia than German Nazism of the Hitlerite version.
The name “Ukraine” apparently 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, restoration, and modernization of the life support systems of the population.
In fact, their political aspirations cannot be neutral – expiation of guilt before Russia for treating it as an enemy can be realized only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival, and development. No “Marshall Plans” should be allowed for these territories. There can be no “neutrality” in the ideological and practical sense, compatible with denazification. The cadres and organizations that are the instrument of denazification in the newly denazified republics cannot but rely on Russia’s direct military and organizational support.
Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia (Malorossiya) and New Russia (Novorossiya), begun by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless. In this official capacity, he passed under the authority of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality.
Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries, Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a nation-state, and attempts to “build” one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification – the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. The social “bog”, which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of the war and assimilate the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for its guilt. Those, who did not support the Nazi regime, suffered from it and the war unleashed by him in the Donbas, must be consolidated and organized, must become the pillar of the new government, its vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who have been tempted and carried away by the role of an enemy of Russia.
Denazification as the goal of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself is understood as a military victory over the Kyiv regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of the Nazis, the elimination of implacable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, and the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification in peacetime.
The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, police, and defense bodies, cleansed of Nazi elements, launching on their basis the founding processes of founding a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for the denazification of Ukraine (newly created or converted, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo), with the adoption under Russian control of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification, the definition of the boundaries and framework for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in the field of denazification, the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that in order to achieve the goals of denazification, the support of the population is necessary, its transition to the side of Russia after liberation from terror, violence, and ideological pressure of the Kyiv regime, after the withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of hostilities, to be convinced of Russia’s long-term intentions – that “they will not be abandoned.” It is impossible to foresee in advance exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found empirically. It will remain hostile to Russia, but forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine with formally banned Nazism. The haters of Russia will go there. The guarantee of the preservation of this residual Ukraine in a neutral state should be the threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature.
The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as a military operation. At each of them, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will become the results of the corresponding stage. In this case, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:
- liquidation of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, informational, educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
- the formation of public self-government bodies and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories, protecting the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
- installation of the Russian information space;
- the withdrawal of educational materials and the prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological guidelines;
- mass investigative actions to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology, and support for the Nazi regime;
- lustration, publication of the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who will not be subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
- the adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification “from below”, a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
- the establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
- the inclusion of a complex of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people’s republics;
- creation of permanent denazification bodies for a period of 25 years.
Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Since this is a purely Russian business. And also because not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the United States.
In order to put the plan of denazification of Ukraine into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, realize itself as the last instance of protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve it and which the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for himself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and was expressed in the world war and the Russian revolution, inextricably linked with each other.
Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. It implemented the main Western project, an alternative to capitalism, which won the nation-states – a socialist, red project. It crushed German Nazism, a monstrous product of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was the outstretched hand of friendship from Russia, for which Russia received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.
Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it selflessly provided. Further, Russia will go its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage – leadership in the global process of decolonization.
As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and allies with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.
Sources: RIA News, English translation
