Translation via Tadeusz Giczan.
Yesterday, RIA Novosti published a lengthy piece titled “What Russia should do with Ukraine”, which explains in detail what Russia understands by ‘denazification’.
The special operation revealed that not only the political leadership in Ukraine is Nazi, but also the majority of the population. All Ukrainians who have taken up arms must be eliminated – because they are responsible for the genocide of the Russian people.
Ukrainians disguise their Nazism by calling it a “desire for independence” and a “European way of development”. Ukraine doesn’t have a Nazi party, a Führer or racial laws, but because of its flexibility, Ukrainian Nazism is far more dangerous to the world than Hitler’s Nazism.
Denazification means de-Ukrainianisation. Ukrainians are an artificial anti-Russian construct. They should no longer have a national identity. Denazification of Ukraine also means its inevitable de-Europeanisation.
Ukraine’s political elite must be eliminated as it cannot be re-educated. Ordinary Ukrainians must experience all the horrors of war and absorb the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for their guilt.
The liberated and denazified territory of the Ukrainian state should no longer be called Ukraine. Denazification should last at least one generation – 25 years.
I was under the impression that “denazification” was carried out by the Soviet Union – over 70 years. Maybe it wasn’t ‘real’ denazification?
Well, that is a new meaning of ‘genocide’! I didn’t know the Russian people were extinct! Are there still Russians in Moskow? Perhaps it is time to sponsor Russian refugees?
Also please remember, there’s no such thing whatsoever as free press in Russia. Nothing appears in print that Kremlin doesn’t want to see there.
Well that much is undeniable, albeit ordinary Ukrainians are learning a very different historical lesson from the one the author had in mind. And that lesson is: resistance is not futile.
Mr Putin was always an evil man – robbing and murdering many Russians (and others).
But now his evil has toppled over into madness.
This RIA Novosti article is clearly written to please Mr Putin and other lunatics – such as the Tribal Collectivist Alexander Dugin.
As Glenn Beck said, in warning other American conservatives, what Alexander Dugin says attacking what has been happening in the West over so many years (the horrible decline of Western societies) appears conservative – but THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, when one turns to what Alexander Dugin himself believes – it is savage Tribal Collectivism. It is not “just” a matter of Dugin supporting Covid lockdowns – it is his basic belief structure.
As for “de Europeanisation” of the Ukraine – RUSSIA itself is European. Being “European” does NOT mean European Union.
The denial of the European nature of the Russian people, of Russian culture, plays-into-the-hands of Mr Putin.
“Genocide of the Russian people” – most ethnic Russians in the Ukraine are fighting AGAINST Mr Putin (because they, quite rightly, despise him).
As for calling opponents of tyranny “Nazis” – then the great figures of Russian culture for centuries were themselves “Nazis”. This hatred of European (Europe does NOT mean the E.U.) culture must include hatred of RUSSIAN cities, from St Petersburg and Moscow all the way to Vladivostok on the Pacific (and the churches in Alaska to) – as these are part of European culture.
This RIA Novosti article is a tissue of lies – may the author of it have his lies turn to ashes in his mouth.
Carnivorous Bookworm writes, “Also please remember, there’s no such thing whatsoever as free press in Russia. Nothing appears in print that Kremlin doesn’t want to see there.” Very true – and also remember that the Russian state news agency RIA Novosty is not a fringe outlet. It goes back to the time of Stalin.
I would not have been surprised to see articles as openly murderous in tone as this one appearing in minor Russian newspapers as “trial balloons”. As you say, the brief time when there truly was a free press in Russia is long gone, but if anyone kicked up a fuss they could always get a government spokesman to smile and say “Oh, you mustn’t take it so seriously, this is just one person’s view. We have a free press, you know.” But I am surprised that they seem to have skipped the “plausible deniability” stage entirely and gone straight to… this.
– Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare at RUSI
Electing a Jewish president certainly shows a more ‘flexible’ form of Nazism than Adolf’s. So much ‘more dangerous to the world’ than his insistance on shoving Jews into gas chambers.
The western woke see Nazism (‘flexible’ or otherwise) everywhere, in every critic, in every dissenter, in every moderate even, but this seems to eclipse even them.
When the woke say, “You’re a Nazi”, they mean, “You disagreed with me”, but they tend not to spell it out so clearly. The piece seems oddly explicit.
– It could be that the translation is not such as to understate the original’s meaning.
– It may reflect the crudity a country’s propaganda descends into when the rulers’ control of the narrative is yet greater that the control the woke exercise over here.
Or it could be that the Kremlin’s response to the unpleasant revelations of the last two days is to double down. Like the past tense of the woke law of merited impossibility, but in a grimmer context, the Putin line may be ‘it never happened – and they so deserved it’. I’m reminded of a Russian state witness in a French court when the French communists slandered Kravchenko, who claimed he did not recognise certain names (prominent purgees) but then snarled, “Why do you make yourself the defenders of people like that!“
Give it a rest, Paul. Seriously. Would you at least entertain the possibility you are wrong?
Natalie Solent.
The Yeltsin years of freedom of the press were actually a return to the Silver Age of the late 19th century and early 1900s (up to the First World War) when Russia had both a lively opposition press and trial by jury.
The first order of business of Mr Putin was to undermine BOTH.
These people who keep ignoring the evil of Mr Putin and claiming that the Russian people themselves are inherently evil, are doing the work of Mr Putin for him.
I am certainly not a PC person (far from it) and have I no reason to love Russians or Ukrainians (both of whom persecuted my own ancestors), but the endless racist attacks on Russians are despicable.
Again I am not a PC person (far from it) – but some (some – not all) of the stuff on this very site has been shocking in its anti Russian racism. Its failure to grasp the basic fact that Mr Putin is the great ENEMY of Russia – of the Russian people. That the Russian people have been fed a diet of lies (by both the education system and the media – for decades now), that Mr Putin has betrayed both the rights and interests of the Russian people.
This anti Russian racism does NOT serve the interests of an independent Ukraine – on the contrary it plays into the hands of Mr Putin. By making his LIE, that he is defending ethnic Russians against Western hatred, seem plausible.
The key is to get the truth to the Russian people – that it is not ourselves or the Ukrainians who are their enemies, that it is MR PUTIN who is the enemy of the Russian people.
Yeah, right the only ever NAZI state with a Jewish president. There are lies, damnable lies and then there is the Kremlin.
PS I wrote this before I read Niall’s comment – things came-up as they do before I got to post. I apologise up to a point but I guess it is a point worth making twice – at least.
Paul Marks (April 4, 2022 at 1:24 pm), I have to agree with Perry that you are being unreasonable (and in a very wokish way 🙂 ) in diagnosing racism where people suggest that contemporary Russian culture had faults before Putin came along – faults that underly him and may well outlast him.
Stalin lives on in the minds both of those Russians (they are not hard to find) who still praise him (encouraged by Putin’s rewriting-to-diminish purge history, but many would be there anyway) and those Russians who cringe to the state they fear beyond reason (also encouraged by Putin). And the element of liberty that Russian culture inherited from before communism burned so much of it away again was already markedly less than that inherited by, for example, Britain. Culture matters. Nationalism was a crutch for the Ukrainian mind that helped it when Stalin was there (I discussed this here and here. It had downsides but also gave protection against the little Stalin that lived inside many a Russian’s head – and still lives in some.)
It would be difficult for a supporter of the Ukrainians to believe in the innate racial inferiority of Russians, given the genetic closeness of the two groups. When I see a Ukrainian write (of a massacre, for example) that “this is what Russians do”, I may agree or I may debate but I do not expand it to “this is what the Russian race does and will always do – their genes make them brutes” instead of (for example) “this is what Russian culture does and will do after Putin departs – their culture brutalises them and it will take time to change”. Before challenging a remark, I seek to grasp what its writer meant.
For example, when looking at what Soviet soldiers did to Germans (and others) late in WWII, it is relevant to know that the Nazi invasion was only one of a succession of brutalising experiences those Soviet generations had. Before it, the civil war, the famine and the great purge all selected against the compassionate and taught others to keep their kinder instincts under stern control. After it, the NKVD similarly selected against kindness when they sorted Soviet soldiers into informers, who had a slightly safer and easier life in the Soviet Army’s second line, versus the not-keen-enough-to-inform, who served in the front line (if they escaped the penal battalions).
is what some front-line Soviet soldiers said to two German women they encountered during the battle of Berlin. The soldiers who said this might have been Ukrainians or Russians; that doesn’t affect the all-too-true point of their warning – or the need to understand ‘not so bad’ in terms of Russian culture after the selections I spoke of above.
Paul,
It’s not about “race” but culture and there are differences between parts of Europe. Russia has always been semi-detached in this respect. Yeah, I know the likes of Peter the Great did a lot to Westernise Russia but nowhere near enough. There isn’t really a single European Culture. That’s one of the reasons I like visiting different parts of the continent. Including Poland quite a lot. They’re Slavic, right? I can’t imagine the Polish Army ever doing any of the stuff I’ve seen in Ukraine.
NickM (April 4, 2022 at 1:52 pm), please feel free not to apologise when you agree with me 🙂 – or make the same sarcastic comment at the same time as me. As you say, some points are well worth making twice.
(I grudgingly grant that you also do not need to apologise when you do not agree with me. 🙂 )
NickM: I am assured by the PA that Israel is a Nazi state. Is Ukraine simply following in those footsteps?
OK, Niall, so I’m just not going to apologise 😉
Billl, well, in a sense the PA are correct. The NAZIs did give Jewish survivors the final big incentive to set-up Israel. So, in a very twisted way… Both the PA and Russia are basically just using “NAZI” as the worst possible slur because they don’t really have any substantive arguments.
Anyway, this is all in danger of Godwining the thread.
Anyway, to take things back to the OP… If we accept the premise (I would say this is axiomatic) that Ukraine is a soverign state and has been for c. 30 years then surely it is down to the Ukrainians which international clubs they want to join and has nothing to do with the Kremlin and the botox-ed bastard’s Tsarist/Soviet Romantic dreams of a Greater Mother Russia. And it is romanticism. It is dreams of past glories (which were probably not really that glorious anyway, they usually aren’t are they?)
All Russian official news is now aimed at only two target populations: the Russian people and those few states aligned with Russia.
Forty days on, the “special military operation” is a propaganda flop.
By the way, it is the Russians who have been doing all the Godwining on this issue.
I read entire original in Russian & they’re basically saying they want to go full on Pol Pot on Ukraine, explicitly stating they will exterminate the Ukrainian intelligentsia en-mass (literally) & reduce Ukraine to an agrarian hinterland under punitive Russian administration.
So, no surprises there then, other than fact they’re being open about it.
Poniatowski, that should be much more widely known.
As should the Gremlin in the Kremlin fucking-over ExoMars, the ISS and other space stuff. Oh, well, should have gone to SpaceXsavers… All I want is Putin for 20 minutes. I have a windowless shed, a knackered plastic garden chair, duct tape, a Chas & Dave CD*, a soldering iron and a Breville. After the first 10 mins he’d be wishing the Ur-Poot hadn’t crawled out of the primordial slime all those aeons ago.
*I don’t have a Chas & Dave CD so I I’ll just stream “Badgers, Badgers…” on contiuous repeat. Or is that just too cruel?
There are many places in Urban America I just do not enter. I avoid those places because they are full of American Urban blacks. They are crime-ridden places.
I do not believe that there is anything intrinsic in the black race that causes such behavior. I believe the cause is that their current poor-urban culture is horrid.
Am I being racist? Perhaps, but I prefer to think of it as being culturist.
Same here with people’s attitudes towards the Russians. You can have a sh*t culture no matter your race. But it is important to think about whether that culture is monolithic across the population or is enforced in place by the powerful.
How many poor black families of good people are huddled together in the hells of Chicago and St. Louis? How many good Russians dare not speak against what’s going on?
But that openness is a surprise, or at least informative. A month ago, at the end of this post, I noted that Putin’s problems arose entirely from the one fact he’d refused to know: the unanticipated reality of the Ukraine.
I interpret this open definition of ‘denazification’ as meaning Putin has indeed so decided. The Ukraine’s sense of itself as a nation is to be killed. Clearly, neither Stalin nor certain Tsars who preceded him actually managed to do this, but they did create long tracts of time when the ruler of Russia could act as if it were true (and have many in the west think so), which may suffice for Putin.
Or to give him cover.
“See what some of my people want me to do? But I will remain reasonable, even though my people want me to destroy Ukraine.”
Sort of “the next Russian leader might not be as nice as me. Count your blessings.”
Hell’s Teeth bobby b!
You mean they already got Stalin 2.0 on the defrost defrost cycle?
I suggest we get the Smoking Gnu to hack their microwave…
Whilst it is true that Russia does not have a free press, even this isn’t sufficient. The free American press was free to not report on the laptop of Hunter Biden, and is only now getting around to admitting it is true, and has some interesting facts to report.
https://brightlightnews.com/full-interview-uncovering-the-covid-narrative-with-dr-robert-malone/
Dr. Robert Malone’s recent comments on WEF and the Ukraine crisis, which went viral:
Oh good lord 😐 The convoluted thesis above needs to have its throat cut with Occam’s razor. Putin is doing what he is doing for the exact reasons he has always said he is doing them when addressing Russian audiences.
I agree.
There may be other reasons also, though.
Nick and Niall.
I am not being “unreasonable” I am telling the truth. If other people do not like the truth, and choose to do Mr Putin’s work for him, by attacking “Russians” in general – thus allowing Mr Putin to pose as the great defender of Russians (which is the opposite of the truth – for he is really the great ENEMY of the Russian people), that is their fault – not mine. Let the consequences be upon their own conscience.
Tim B.
I do not deny SOME of what you say, or SOME of what Dr Malone says – I am no friend of the World Economic Forum or the Western “liberal” establishment in general. Indeed I despise them as the totalitarian filth that they are. HOWEVER…..
There is a time and a place – presently we are dealing with Mr Putin’s unjust invasion of the Ukraine with all the horror that means. The looting, the rapes, the murder of civilians (anyone who has read Kipling, or indeed read Homer’s Iliad, will know what men do in war) – so we must keep our message directed and clear.
Mr Putin must be condemned and we must work with Russians (whilst being ever aware of the danger of double agents) to overthrow him.
Yes the World Economic Forum and co have not gone away – and I hate them as much as Dr Malone does, but Mr Putin first.
Remember Klaus Schwab and co do not directly murder people – their policies may indirectly lead to mass death, but they can plausibly deny that this is their intention. So, for example, putting a sniper rifle bullet in the head of Dr Klaus Schwab, or Justin Trudeau, or any of these people, would NOT be justified – indeed it would be COUNTER PRODUCTIVE as it would show pro liberty, anti Agenda 2030, people as “terrorists”.
Mr Putin’s forces are murdering people right now (as I type these words) – Ukrainians, Russians, whoever, it makes no difference to Mr Putin (or to those who serve him). Looting, rape, torture and murder of the helpless – that is what men often do (especially under the circumstances of war) and Mr Putin knows that as well as any of us – he launched this war knowing what it would lead to. What has happened, and is happening, is upon his head.
Let us get rid of Mr Putin first, we need to concentrate on the problem of Mr Putin.
Am I suggesting the killing of Mr Putin? Yes, if other means to remove him fail (as they, so far, have failed), I think it WOULD be justified, given current circumstances.
Mr Putin has always been an evil man, he has committed many crimes that are worthy of the death penalty – but now his evil (perhaps because he is very ill – many are claiming that he is) has toppled over into madness, and he is in charge of vast numbers of nuclear weapons.
It is time for Mr Putin to be removed from a position of power – if that means he must be killed, so be it.
At various times in my life I have been accused of ruthlessness, even cruelty, of not valuing human life to the level that I should – and my above statement about the need to remove Mr Putin by any necessary means, including killing him, may be taken as evidence that these charges against me are correct.
However, consider the record of Mr Putin – what he has done so many times over so many years. And consider what he has become – and what he is doing right now.
Do you really want a man who is both evil (a multiple murderer) and increasingly mentally-unstable to be in control of vast numbers of nuclear weapons?
No cheap shots about the senile Mr Biden – he is not in charge of anything, but Mr Putin is.
Think about it – I believe the logic of the situation will force you to the same conclusion that I have come to.
No, Paul, you are saying what you think is true, but not telling ‘the truth’. You are not lying, I get that, but you are certainly incorrect, and very obviously so. Stick to what you know, because this is not it, advice you are certain to ignore as is your right. Russia and quantum physics, topics you really need to stay away from.
You simply discard the views of people with vastly more first hand experience of the region (and I do not mean me) and absurdly accuse them of “racism”. For this reason, on this topic at least I cannot take you seriously and somewhat resent the time spent countering your, well, nonsense to be honest.
Fine by me. Not convinced it will make much difference though.
I also need to correct a factual error (at least implied error) of Dr Malone and others – Mr Putin has certainly NOT tried to take Russia out of the Covid system of the “international community”.
Lockdowns, injections with “vaccines”, the standard play book has been followed in Russia under Mr Putin – many Russians that I know are very cynical (and rightly so) about such policies. But Mr Putin is a true believer – just like Macron, Trudeau and so on.
This is especially odd considering that some dictators with which Mr Putin is allied, such as the dictator or Belarus and the dictator of Nicaragua, essentially ignored Covid – there were no general lockdowns in Belarus and Nicaragua, any more than there were in Nebraska or Japan. Japan is an especially interesting case – as there was endless hysterical talk in the media (and even from the government), but there was no general lockdown, and deaths in Japan were irritatingly low (I say “irritatingly” – as Japanese television and so on seemed desperate for the death numbers to be higher, in order to justify the policies they wanted, and seemed incredibly frustrated that people were not dying in much larger numbers).
Mr Putin could see that Covid was no worse in (say) Belarus than in lockdown countries – yet he carried on with the international Covid policies anyway.
So, I am sorry, but Mr Putin as a saviour from the international totalitarian agenda just does not work – it is counterfactual (refuted by the facts).
Perry – you have made a choice that plays into the hands of Mr Putin. That is unfortunate.
As for saying that racism, attacking Russians as Russians, is racism – of course it is racism. Although it is an absurd form of racism – for reasons that I will explain.
It is a particularly absurd form of racism – as in biology Russians and Ukrainians are the same race, and culturally they have largely (largely – not totally) a common history.
Mr Hitler and his National Socialists also had no clear biological idea of what a race was – they had no understanding of DNA, and culturally they ignored the intermarriage of leading German and Slav families over a thousand years. Just as they ignored (perhaps they did not know) that Germans (like all Indo Europeans) originally came from what is now Russia.
Unless one is, say, a Sardinian – a European’s ancestors are likely to have originally come from what is now Russia. In the United Kingdom (at least before demographic changes since the 1960s) the chance was over 90%.
There was about a 90% population replacement in the British Isles at the start of the Bronze Age (which there was not in Sardinia and a few other places) – the racial hatred of Russians is absurd, because that is where the Western Europeans (certainly the British) originally came from, both the Germans and the “Celts” (although that term is not much used any more) can be traced back to common ancestors that were from what is now Russia. Yes there has been genetic drift over thousands of years – and some interbreeding between Slavs and peoples from further east (but it has NOT generally produced dramatic genetic change). The old Nazi charge that Russians are “more Mongol than European” is FALSE.
In short Mr Hitler was engaged in a “war of races” against his-own-race, but was too ignorant to understand what he was doing. He mistook differences in (say) language for differences in biological race.
People who attack “Russians” (not Mr Putin – “Russians”) in racial terms are engaged in similar absurdity, and saying “it is culture not race” is absurd – as the people in question have largely the same cultural history.
Russians and Ukrainians are the same biological race – they are not different races (so attacking “Russians” in racial terms is absurd) and they have a largely (not totally – but largely) common history.
If Russians are inherently bad – then so (by the same demented “logic”) are Ukrainians.
And the vast majority of ethnic Russians in the Ukraine are fighting AGAINST Mr Putin anyway.
Genetically all the above is only partly to do with me – but if you Indo Europeans insist on irrational racial hatreds of each other, I have to do what I can to set you straight.
You are the same race. And, in the case of Russians and Ukrainians, you have a largely (not totally – but largely) a common history.
It is MR PUTIN who is the problem – and his campaign of LIES with which he has deceived so many Russians. Dur to the fact that he has stranglehold on the Russian education system and media – and has made use of his stranglehold in a Dr Goebbels like manner (yes I am comparing Mr Putin to Dr Goebbels – and I am justified to do so.
It is NOT general ordinary Russians or general ordinary Ukrainians that are problem.
So just stop this ignorant racism.
Unless, Perry, you would think that I would be justified to go around poisoning whole towns, indeed cities, of German people.
After all, according to the logic of your position, the “Germans” are inherently bad – they murdered members of my family and millions of other people, NOT because they were deceived and corrupted by Mr Hitler and others – but because there was something inherently wrong with the German people, with German culture itself.
Some Jews did indeed come to this conclusion and planned just such revenge on the Germans (down to the babies) however they were MISTAKEN – and they had to be stopped, sometimes by rather direct means, and it fell to other Jews to stop them.
The people of Pushkin are no more inherently evil than the people of Goethe are inherently evil.
To hate “Russians” as Russians, to hold that they are inherently bad, is just what Mr Putin wants Westerners to do, it plays into his hands.
I say again – the vast majority of ethnic Russians who have not been subjected to Mr Putin’s brainwashing (via the media and the education system) are fighting in the Ukraine AGAINST him.
So please stop this madness of attacking “Russians” as such.
The Russian people are the victims of the Mr Putin (the victims of his oppression and the victims of his lies). Mr Putin presents himself as great defender of Russians (and some people on this site are, unwittingly, doing all they can to help him in that pretence – by their attacks on “Russians”), but Mr Putin is really the great ENEMY of the Russian people.
By the way – it is somewhat absurd when BBC (and other) people stand by Neolithic monuments and talk about how these things were created by “our ancestors”.
Largely speaking – they-were-not. And I do not mean that they were not created by my ancestors (that is obviously so) – I mean that they were, most likely, not created by YOUR ancestors gentle reader (there is a chance that you are descended from people who were in these islands in the Neolithic period – but it is not a very big chance).
Unless one is, say, Sardinian and one is talking about Neolithic structures there. Although even Sardinia was not immune from some demographic change.
You are just wasting people’s time now. This is about the current state of Russian culture, not Russian genetics, that has been said repeatedly by people on this blog who share Russian genetics. If you cannot get your head around that, you are in the grips of obsession. Seriously old chap, I am done with you. At this point you are just clogging up the comments.
I’m taking Perry’s example here. I skimmed Paul’s tortous anthropology lecture but I cannot find it in my soul to continue this. It would be like deep-mining with a teaspoon. I think me, and others, have simply not even been listened to, let alone argued against… I feel like this is almost a through the looking glass version of arguing with a trans-activist. Anyway, I have sofware to install, a rather odd computer hardware job to do and in the background Julia and I are watching cat porn.
I don’t hate this Russian. I don’t think any sane person could.
But I despise not only Putin, but his legions of minions and enablers, and the considerable number of Russians who enthusiastically gobble his lies and endorse his crimes.
Germany would not have committed all the Nazi crimes without Hitler. But lots of Germans willingly joined in those crimes – practically speaking, as the German nation following its Leader down a path many already wanted to take.
Putin is directly responsible for Russian crimes in Ukraine. But the thousands of other Russians, who commit and enable the crimes, are acting consciously as Russians. Something is very wrong there,
Any Russian publicly defying this madness is a true hero.
And sadly there are far too many of them.
I found another translation of the same Novosti article provided by the Ukrainian Post. Bar the inevitable differences of phrasing between two translators, it agrees with the translation by Tadeusz Giczan.
Translation of Novosti article by Timofey Sergeytsev follows:
Back in April last year, we wrote about the inevitability of the denazification of Ukraine. We do not need Nazis, Bandera Ukraine, Russia’s enemy, and the West’s instrument to destroy Russia. Today, the issue of denazification has moved into practice.
Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people – most likely its majority – is mastered and drawn into its policy by the Nazi regime. That is when the hypothesis “good people – bad power” does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, all its activities, and the very fact is its subject.
Ukraine is in this situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for “Poroshenko’s peace” and “Zelensky’s world” should not be misleading – Ukrainians were quite satisfied with the shortest way to peace through the blitzkrieg, which was hinted at by the last two Ukrainian presidents during their election. It was this method of “appeasement” of internal anti-fascists – through total terror – that was used in Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other Russian cities. And this quite satisfied the Ukrainian layman. Denazification is a set of measures against the Nazi mass population, which technically cannot be directly punished as war criminals.
The Nazis who have taken up arms should be destroyed as much as possible on the battlefield. There should be no significant distinction 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 still involved in exorbitant cruelty against civilians, they are 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 roughly and demonstratively punished. Total lustration should be carried out. Any organizations associated with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, who are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. Fair punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, which is carried out as carefully and prudently as possible against 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 necessarily also in the field of culture and education. It was through culture and education that a deep mass nationalization of the population was prepared and carried out, fixed by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda, internal violence, and terror, as well as an eight-year war with the people of Donbass who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism.
Denazification can be carried out only by the winner, which implies (1) his unconditional control over the denazification process and (2) the power providing such control. In this regard, the denazied country cannot be sovereign. The denazisifying nation – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be challenged by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means recognizing the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and the rebel Donbass. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine, which defined itself as a Nazi society.
The timing of denazification cannot be less than one generation, which must be born, grow and reach maturity in the conditions of denazification. The Nazification of Ukraine lasted more than 30 years – since at least 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for “independence”, rushing to Nazism.
The peculiarity of modern Nazid Ukraine is the amorphous and ambivalence, which make it possible to disguise Nazism as a desire for “independence” and “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality – to degradation), to argue that in Ukraine “there is no Nazism, only private isolated excesses”. After all, there is neither the main Nazi party, nor the Fuhrer, nor full-fledged racial laws (only their reduced version in the form of repression against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition or 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 twentieth century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” (political technological essentially) frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of all Nazism – as European and, in the most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out as a compromise, based on a formula like “NATO – no, EU – yes”. The collective West itself is the designer, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while Western Bandera cadres and their “historical memory” were only one of the tools of Nazifization of Ukraine. Ukronazism poses no less, but more threat to peace and Russia than Hitler’s German Nazism.
The name “Ukraine” does not seem to be preserved as the title of any fully denazified state entity in the territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people’s republics newly created in a Nazi-free space should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, restoration, and modernization of life support systems of the population.
Their political aspiration cannot be neutral – atonement for guilt before Russia for treating it as an enemy can be realized only in reliance on Russia in the processes of reconstruction, 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. Personnel and organizations that are an instrument of denazification in the newly denied republics cannot but rely on direct power and organizational support from Russia.
Denazification will inevitably also be deukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflating of the ethnic composition of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and Novorossiya, initiated by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain orphaned after its fall. He passed in this official position under the direction of another superpower (power standing over states) – the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural borders 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” such naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its civilizational content, a subordinate element of someone else’s and alien civilization. Debanderization 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, so the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be eliminated, its re-education is impossible. The social “swamp”, which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of war and learn 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 it unleashed in Donbass, should be consolidated and organized and should become the backbone of the new government, vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that wartime tragedies and dramas benefit peoples who are seduced and fascinated by the role of Russia’s enemy.
Denazification as the purpose of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself is understood as a military victory over the Kiev regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of Nazis, the elimination of irreconcilable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, as well as the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification of peacetime.
The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, police and defense bodies cleared of Nazi elements, the launch on their basis of the constituent processes of the foundation of new republican statehood, the integration of this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for denazification of Ukraine (newly created or redesigned, say, from Ross In this regard, Russia should act as the custodian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that to achieve the goals of denazification, it is necessary to support the population, and its transition to the side of Russia after liberation from terror, violence, and ideological pressure of the Kiev regime, after withdrawal from information isolation. Of course, it should take some time for people to recover from the shock of hostilities, and make sure of Russia’s long-term intentions – that “they will not be abandoned.” It is impossible to foresee in advance in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to be part of the pro-Russian territories. The alienation line, however, will be found empirically. It will remain hostile to Russia, but forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine by formally banning Nazism. Russia’s haters will go there. The guarantee of maintaining this residual Ukraine in a neutral state should be the threat of immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements. This may require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the line of alienation to the Russian border, there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, anti-fascist in its internal nature.
The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began in the military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as the military operation. Each of them will need to achieve irreversible changes, which will be the results of the corresponding stage. At the same time, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be determined as follows:
– elimination of armed Nazi formations (which mean any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as military, information, and educational infrastructure ensuring their activity;
– formation of bodies of people’s self-government and militia (defense and law and order) of liberated territories protecting the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
– installation of the Russian information space;
– withdrawal of educational materials and prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological attitudes;
– mass investigative actions to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, dissemination of Nazi ideology, and support for the Nazi regime;
– illustration, publication of the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, their involvement in forced labor to restore destroyed infrastructure as a punishment for Nazi activities (among those who will not be subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
– adoption at the local level under the supervision of Russia of primary normative acts of denazification “from below”, prohibition of all types and forms of a revival of Nazi ideology;
– installation of memorials, memorial signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, the perpetuation of the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
– inclusion of a set of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitution of the new people’s republics;
– a creation of permanent denazification bodies for 25 years.
Russia will have no allies for the denazification of Ukraine. Because it’s a purely Russian business. And also since not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but also, above all, Western totalitarianism, imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, mechanisms of subordination to the superpower of the West and the United States.
To carry out the plan of the denazification of Ukraine into the life of Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, to realize itself as the last instance of protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (Old World) that deserve and which the West ultimately abandoned, losing in the struggle for itself. This struggle lasted throughout the twentieth century and was expressed in the world war and the Russian revolution, inextricably linked to each other.
Russia did everything possible to save the West in the twentieth century. It implemented the main Western project, an alternative to capitalism, which defeated 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 Russia’s hand of friendship, for which Russia received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.
Everything Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by offering the greatest sacrifices. The West eventually rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to avenge Russia for the help it unselfishly provided. Then Russia will go its way, without 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 partnership and allied relations with countries that have been oppressed by the West for centuries and that 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 understand as it begins to free itself from the dope, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.
Sorry for the messed-up use of italics in the above, but having already lost this comment once I dare not try to amend it. Obviously both the translations, the one by Tadeusz Giczan and the one by the Ukrainian Post, come from anti-Putin sources. However given that Russian is a widely spoken language I doubt anyone would get away with trying to seriously misrepresent what was said. However I would be interested to know whether pro-Putin sources have started to row back and claim that Timofey Sergeytsev (sometimes Romanized as Timofei Sergeitsev) was being maliciously mistranslated to sound more extreme. I am still astonished that the Russian government put out something so likely to stiffen Ukrainian resistance and to gain them sympathy worldwide. The Russians used to be much more adept in their propaganda. My only explanation is that the air being breathed in the sealed bunker of Putin’s immediate circle is metaphorically and perhaps literally going bad.
I think the ‘smarts’ of Putin and his inner circle has been vastly overstated. These are people who really do believe their own propaganda.