Russian state news agency “Ria Novosti” published a guest article in which author Timofei Sergeitsev calls for the annihilation of Ukraine as a state under the keyword “denazification”. In addition, he demands to punish and kill tens of thousands of people who participated in the defense of Ukraine during the war.
Vladimir Putin also justified the invasion of Ukraine with “denazification” and called the Kiev government a “Nazi regime” that oppresses Russian-speaking people and must be overthrown. So the article is on the government line. What he is clearer than the previous official statements of the Putin administration are the consequences and the concrete measures that this “denazification” demands.
The article (here in the original and here in the English translation) is titled “What must happen to Ukraine”.
The article says, among other things, about Ukraine (no, it’s not about Nazi Germany):
“Denazification is necessary when a significant portion of the population – probably the majority – was dominated and attracted by Nazi policies. In other words, when the hypothesis “the people are good – the government is bad” does not work. basis of the policy of denazification, all its measures, and the fact itself is its object.”
And further: “In addition to those mentioned above (note: the armed forces), however, a significant part of the masses who are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and tolerated the Nazi government. The just punishment of this portion of the population is only possible by enduring the inevitable difficulties of a just war against the Nazi system, fought with the greatest possible care and prudence towards the civilian population.
The subsequent denazification of this mass of the population consists of re-education, which is achieved through ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi sentiment and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but necessarily also in the sphere of culture and education.
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And further: “Denazification can only be carried out by the victor, which requires (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to guarantee that control. In this sense, a denazified country cannot be sovereign… The name “Ukraine” obviously cannot be maintained as the title of a fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime.”
The article was clicked over 300,000 times (on Monday afternoon). Recently, Ria Novosti, probably inadvertently, published an article celebrating the Russian victory and likely revealing one of Russia’s goals in Ukraine.
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Author Sergeitsev apparently supports the Civic Platform of the Russian liberal-conservative party. In 2017 he can be seen at least at one party congress in Moscow.
The party’s founder is the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, one of the richest people in Russia. After running against Vladimir Putin in the 2011 presidential election, according to a list published by the United States, he is now one of Putin’s confidants.
Sergeitsev is called a writer and film producer in media reports. It is said that he worked as a producer on the 2012 drama The Empty Home.
BBC reporter Francis Scarr called the guest post’s rhetoric via Twitter “terrifying” even by the usual standards of Kremlin-affiliated media. CNN reporter Neil Hauer sees Ria Novosti’s post as “full-scale genocidal rhetoric” in Russian state media.
Hauer compares the Bucha massacre to the Grozny massacre during the 2000 Chechen war. The difference is that the Russian army kills civilians, although the people of Bucha “may be their relatives,” writes Hauer.