That's far from certain. Russian rhetoric around the invasion sounds increasingly like advocacy for genocide. Timothy Snyder, a historian specializing in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust, says this:
Timothy Snyder wrote:Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency "RIA Novosti" published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated several times into English.
As I have been saying since the war began, "denazification" in official Russian usage just means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. A "Nazi," as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the "nazification of Ukraine." Indeed "any attempt to build such a state" has to be a "Nazi" act. Ukrainians are "Nazis" because they fail to accept "the necessity that the people support Russia." Ukrainians should suffer for believing that they exist as a separate people; only this can lead to the "redemption of guilt"…
Russia's genocide handbook was published on April 3, two days after the first revelation that Russian servicemen in Ukraine had murdered hundreds of people in Bucha, and just as the story was reaching major newspapers. The Bucha massacre was one of several cases of mass killing that emerged as Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv region. This means that the genocide program was knowingly published even as the physical evidence of genocide was emerging. The writer and the editors chose this particular moment to make public a program for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.
As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at at the moment those actions become public knowledge. From a legal perspective, the existence of such a text (in the larger context of similar statements and Vladimir Putin's repeated denial that Ukraine exists) makes the charge of genocide far easier to make. Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so. Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.
And if Putin disapproved of the killing, raping and robbing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers, it would be stopped. Instead, he says they are "brave" and on a "noble mission".
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
OK, you saw this, and you know that this is an official Russian government publication that is referred to.
See what? About a month ago, Putin was telling the people of Russia that military action was necessary to free the Ukrainian people from the west and the alt-right. Putin wasn't initially planning to destroy Ukraine.
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus.
OK, you saw this, and you know that this is an official Russian government publication that is referred to.
See what? About a month ago, Putin was telling the people of Russia that military action was necessary to free the Ukrainian people from the west and the alt-right. Putin wasn't initially planning to destroy Ukraine.
You have forgotten his essay explaining that Ukraine was an imaginary country that had no right to exist?
Granted, his unwillingness ever to listen to any advice he does not like meant that he ended up believing, in the face of all evidence and probability, that it would be an easy task to destroy Ukrainian resistance to being abolished.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
See what? About a month ago, Putin was telling the people of Russia that military action was necessary to free the Ukrainian people from the west and the alt-right. Putin wasn't initially planning to destroy Ukraine.
Putin believes that Ukraine is "really" a part of Russia, and any distinct Ukrainian ethnic identity is a product of Western influence. That influence, he believes, goes back long before the fall of the Soviet Union, to the period when western Ukraine was under Austrian rule, but was worsened by the insidious efforts of the US and its allies to undermine Russian power in the region. Here is what he said about Ukraine's history in July of last year: "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians".
Russia's initial attack plan, with an attempted rapid assault on Kyiv, only makes sense if Putin expected he would be able to install a puppet government, and there would be no significant Ukrainian insurgency after the fact — that is, most Ukrainians would accept that they are actually Russian and are therefore OK with being ruled by Russia. The ferocity of Ukraine's resistance clearly proves that its people are more attached to their distinct identity than Putin thought. Therefore, in Putin's eyes, that identity must be eliminated.
See what? About a month ago, Putin was telling the people of Russia that military action was necessary to free the Ukrainian people from the west and the alt-right. Putin wasn't initially planning to destroy Ukraine.
Putin believes that Ukraine is "really" a part of Russia, and any distinct Ukrainian ethnic identity is a product of Western influence. That influence, he believes, goes back long before the fall of the Soviet Union, to the period when western Ukraine was under Austrian rule, but was worsened by the insidious efforts of the US and its allies to undermine Russian power in the region. Here is what he said about Ukraine's history in July of last year: "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians".
Russia's initial attack plan, with an attempted rapid assault on Kyiv, only makes sense if Putin expected he would be able to install a puppet government, and there would be no significant Ukrainian insurgency after the fact — that is, most Ukrainians would accept that they are actually Russian and are therefore OK with being ruled by Russia. The ferocity of Ukraine's resistance clearly proves that its people are more attached to their distinct identity than Putin thought. Therefore, in Putin's eyes, that identity must be eliminated.
Do you believe the resistance is worth it?
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus.