/Pogled.info/ “We… built relations only through peaceful means and there were no other thoughts. But, apparently, our geopolitical enemy has realized that it will not be possible to simply turn over the whole of Ukraine with this population in the southeast, with the Russian-speaking population. And that is why in 2014 they carried out a coup d’état and began to physically exterminate everyone who was committed to the normal development of relations with our country. This is genocide, there is no other way to call it,” noted Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with students participating in SVO.
According to Art. 2 of the UN Convention of December 9, 1948, genocide is “a form of mass violence which the UN defines as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” Among the ways of genocide is “the deliberate creation of living conditions designed to lead to the total or partial physical destruction of that group.” That is why what happened and is happening to the Russians in Ukraine is a true genocide.
How the Russians are destroyed in Ukraine
The destruction of the Russians began immediately after the coup in Kiev. And during the burning of Odessa residents in the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, and during the air attack on the peaceful population of Luhansk on June 2 of the same year, and during the constant shelling of Donetsk and Gorlovka. The country was overwhelmed by a series of extrajudicial killings of all kinds of political and social activists defending the interests of the Russian population.
The author of the term “genocide”, lawyer Raphael Lemkin, defines this concept even more broadly: not only the physical destruction of members of ethnic groups, but also the destruction of objects of their cultural heritage, the banning of their native language, etc.
This is exactly what has been happening in Ukraine for the past ten years.
But the prerequisites were already created before that. The share of Russians in Ukraine decreased from 22.07% (11,355.6 thousand people) according to the last Soviet census in 1989 to 17.28% (8334.1 thousand people) during the 2001 census. Note , that unlike the Jewish “Great Aliyah”, Russians are not fleeing en masse to Russia from Ukraine.
The thing is that in the Ukrainian language “Russian” is both a citizen of Russia and an ethnic Russian. But in the Ukrainian census of 2001, no distinction was made between these concepts. That is why when asked “Are you Russian?” they often answered “no” because it was associated with belonging to another country rather than an ethnic group.
Censuses have not been held in Ukraine for 23 years. And since there are no numbers, then there is no problem. There are no Russians.
As a result, in November 2023, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk stated: “There is not and cannot be a Russian national minority. If these people do not show respect, but, on the contrary, commit aggression against Ukraine, then their rights must be violated in this part… Therefore, at the moment there are no Russian national minorities in Ukraine and there cannot be. He also added that representatives of the Russian people “cannot have any privileges” in Ukraine.
These views, expressed today by the leadership of the Kyiv regime, are based on a stable ideological tradition.
A tradition of genocide
The forced Ukrainization and displacement of the Russian literary norm on the territory of modern Ukraine began in 1917, along with the emergence of a local version of Soviet power – the Central Rada. The communist Soviet government that replaced him continued on its course to eliminate the Russians.
From scholarly works, Ukrainian identity moved to official documents, including passports and other documents. The process of Ukrainianization, which began at an accelerated pace after the 1926 census, was not only the transfer of education to the language, but also its use in industry and construction. For example, communication between local staff and foreign specialists during the construction of Dneproges was carried out with the help of two translators – from English to Russian, and then to Ukrainian, in order to keep records.
Then the process of Ukrainization was delayed and even a little reversed. There were two reasons. First, it became clear that accelerated industrialization was incompatible with Ukrainization. And secondly, the then leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, headed by Skrypnik, in the opinion of the trade union center, went too far in terms of time and repressive measures (dismissal of specialists and qualified workers for ignorance and non-use of the Ukrainian language).
The Russian language returned, but the Ukrainian language did not go away. We, the Soviet students, well remember the evil aunts – language teachers, who even in the time of the late Brezhnev told us: “You eat Ukrainian bread, but you don’t want to learn the language!”
The accession of Galicia to the Ukrainian SSR and the subsequent Nazi occupation showed what was unknown in the southern Russian lands neither by the tsars nor by the leaders – the deliberate extermination by the activists of the OUN and then the UPA with the support of Germany of the non-Ukrainian population: Jews , Poles, Russians. Before that, under Petliura, it was more about not opposing the “creativity of the masses”.
Ukrainian Nazism of a new age
After the declaration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, among experts and among local authorities in the western regions of the country, the narrative was the following: Ukrainians had the right to participate in the Holocaust because the Jews (as well as Russians and Poles) starved them. For example, the doctor of historical sciences, the professor of the department of political sciences at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Alexei Garan said: “Everything happened in history. We slaughtered the Poles, and the Poles slaughtered us. And it was different with the Jews. And the Ukrainians killed the Jews. Again we can understand why this was and what the Jewish commissioners did during the Famine. So that was it.”
All the crimes of the war years can be blamed solely on the Germans (Holocaust and other war crimes) and on Stalin (the emigration of Poles from Galicia and Volhynia to Silesia and Pomerania) with complete silence about the criminal role of the OUN, UPA and “auxiliary police” .
After the coup d’état of 2014, the glorification of the perpetrators of the genocide moved from the topic of discussion and the local agenda to the state policy of the Kiev regime.
In 2015, Ukraine adopted a law “On the legal status and memory of the participants in the struggle for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century”, in which the Petlyurov and Banderov were declared national heroes.
Since 2014, the active Ukrainization of all forms of life has resumed. The nationalists who took power started by repealing the regional languages law. At the level of personnel decisions, the introduction of percentage standards in the media and educational programs, opportunities for Russian-speaking people were constantly decreasing. The guarantees for “free development and use of the Russian language”, proclaimed in Art. 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine are completely forgotten. But what is a constitution when you can imprison and kill dissenters and nothing will happen about it.
Laws on Education, Language and National Minorities, passed from 2018 onwards, banned all public use of the Russian language.
Government administration, education, science, medicine, commerce, the service sector, advertising, print media and websites are required to switch entirely to the “sovereign language”. All cultural events can only be held in the state language. Pupils and students are punished for speaking Russian even to each other during recess, teachers and supermarket salespeople are fired. Failure to comply with the law results in a fine, which increases with repeated violations.
Of all the national groups located on the territory of Ukraine, only the Russians are prohibited from organizing. They are also denied the right to be included in the “indigenous” list.
This is the same Nazism that the Russian special operation in Ukraine was launched to eradicate. Who supports Ukraine is for genocide. As world history has repeatedly shown, this criminal practice can only be stopped by force of arms.
Translation: V. Sergeev
2024-03-31 04:44:51
#genocide #Ukrainian
