{"id":95579,"date":"2022-06-04T17:05:18","date_gmt":"2022-06-04T15:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=95579"},"modified":"2022-06-03T13:04:07","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T11:04:07","slug":"03-05-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=95579","title":{"rendered":"Is Putin Committing Genocide in Ukraine?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Is Putin Committing Genocide in Ukraine?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

ALEXANDER J. MOTYL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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After three months, the historical record is now clear<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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Tetiana Ustymenko weeps over the grave of her son, buried in the garden of her house in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, on April 6, 2022RONALDO SCHEMIDT\/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Ukraine\u2019s military intelligence service recently released a disturbing transcript<\/a> of an intercepted telephone conversation between a 20-year-old Russian solider, Konstantin Solovyov, and his 41-year-old mother, Tatiana.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After exchanging a few pleasantries, Konstantin tells his mother how Russian secret service (FSB) agents go about torturing Ukrainian prisoners. \u201cDo you know what a little rose is?\u201d he asks. \u201cNo,\u201d she replies. \u201cOne can make 21 roses on a man\u2019s body,\u201d he explains, referencing the Russian practice of giving one\u2019s beloved 21 roses. \u201c20 digits and the member. Sorry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAha.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHave you seen how a little rose unfurls, opens up?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYes,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe skin and flesh are sliced off along the bones,\u201d Konstantin explains. \u201cAnd then all the fingers and toes. The same is also done [down] there. That\u2019s called 21 roses on a man\u2019s body. Do you know what other tortures I saw later?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhy do you say you took part \u2026? After all, the FSB agent was there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWell, we captured the prisoners and brought them \u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWell.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAnd while we waited for the heads of the torture chambers, we beat them and broke their legs so they wouldn\u2019t run away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The mother is unfazed, so Konstantin goes on to describe another form of torture. \u201cThey stick a pipe up his ass and then slide barbed wire inside. They pull out the pipe, while the barbed wire stays inside. Then they slowly pull out the wire.\u201d Mom\u2019s response? \u201cA fuck-up.\u201d After a bit of chit chat, Tatiana reveals her true self: \u201cIf I were there, I\u2019d also get a kick out of it. You and I are alike.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If this were an isolated instance of cruelty, one could dismiss it as the shared psychosis of two profoundly disturbed<\/a> individuals. But there is a large body of evidence<\/a> of similar wanton torture of Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers. Killing, rape, and looting<\/a> have also assumed systemic forms<\/a>. And, significantly, the mothers and wives of the perpetrators are in many cases fully aware of what their husbands, brothers, and sons are doing\u2014indeed, they often appear to wholeheartedly approve, because \u201cyou and I are alike.\u201d As one scholar who studied<\/a> Russian responses to the massacre at Bucha\u2014a town north of Kyiv, where several hundred Ukrainians were executed and dumped into mass graves\u2014points out, \u201cat least half of the discussion of Bucha by Telegram<\/a> users I charted exhorted the Russian army to be more violent in its approach in Ukraine. A total of 144 users\u2014again, almost half of the total\u2014filled the discussion with racially motivated or violence inducing content.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The case for calling what is happening in Ukraine not merely \u201cwar\u201d or even \u201cmurder\u201d but \u201cgenocide\u201d rests on these and many other facts of the intentional destruction of Ukrainians as Ukrainians. Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines<\/a> genocide in the following manner:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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a. Killing members of the group;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearly, Ukrainians are a national group that the Russian regime is attempting to destroy by means of the actions identified under a, b, c, and e. Does the Russian regime intend to destroy Ukrainians as Ukrainians? More specifically, since \u201ccase law has associated<\/a> intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy,\u201d does the Russian regime have such a plan or policy?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The answer is yes: The intent is there and the policy exists. For starters, Russian shelling and killing of Ukrainian civilians is clearly intentional and not the mere byproduct of military maneuvers. So, too, is the ethnic cleansing\u2014the forced deportations<\/a> of 1.3 million Ukrainians, including 223,000 children, to Russia\u2019s hinterlands. There is also no military rationale for the wholesale devastation of Mariupol and Kharkiv. Both cities, and scores of other settlements, have been destroyed because they were inhabited by Ukrainians. And since Vladimir Putin determines all Russian policy, there can be no doubt that the decision to kill Ukrainians as Ukrainians is his.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Putin\u2019s genocidal policy toward Ukrainians has a clearly expressed ideological and political underpinning. The Russian leader has repeatedly stated<\/a> that he believes Ukraine is an historical aberration and that Ukrainians do not exist<\/a> and have no right to exist. Dmitry Medvedev, former president and prime minister, has also gone on record saying<\/a> that \u201cUkrainianism is a fake. It never was and is not.\u201d It\u2019s a small step from the view that Ukrainians don\u2019t exist to the view that they shouldn\u2019t exist.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One of the regime\u2019s key propagandists, Petr Akopov, repeated<\/a> Putin\u2019s anti-Ukrainian claims on Feb. 24, the day the invasion of Ukraine began. \u201cUkraine as anti-Russia will no longer exist,\u201d he intoned. Akopov expected Ukraine to fall quickly and therefore avoided recommending physical annihilation. That dishonor fell to another influential Russian propagandist, Timofey Sergeytsev, who published in early April what the historian Timothy Snyder has called<\/a> \u201cRussia\u2019s genocide handbook.\u201d In Putin\u2019s Russia, opinions expressed by leading propagandists may be assumed to bear the president\u2019s imprimatur.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The evidence of genocidal intent and policy is thus overwhelming. Before Sergeytsev\u2019s damning article appeared, the genocide scholar Alexander Hinton had asked<\/a>: \u201cHas Russia carried out genocidal acts?\u201d His answer: \u201cRussia has targeted and killed civilians and reportedly forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, including children, to Russia \u2026 Russia has also created \u2018harsh conditions of life\u2019 in parts of Ukraine \u2026 Russia seeks to seize and Russify Donbas and other parts of eastern Ukraine, where, if Putin is taken at his word, an \u2018imaginary\u2019 Ukrainian identity will be erased.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere is a significant risk that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine,\u201d Hinton wrote on April 4. \u201cIt is possible that a genocide has already begun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nearly two months after Hinton\u2019s tentative claim, we can confidently assert that the risk has become a fact. Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Either Russia destroys Ukraine and defeats an irredeemably Russophobic world\u2014if necessary with atomic weapons\u2014or else it\u2019s the end of Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who or what is responsible for Russia\u2019s transformation into a state committed to the genocide of Ukrainians, and for the apparent support of a critical mass of Russian people for mass murder? For one, Vladimir Putin not only dismantled Russia\u2019s nascent democratic institutions and created a totalitarian dictatorship; he also routinized and normalized violence, both in practice and in speech, by assassinating political opponents, promoting an explicitly imperialistic agenda, and militarizing Russian society. Russians have been bombarded with these messages for over 20 years; unsurprisingly, many see the world only in zero-sum terms: Either Russia destroys Ukraine and defeats an irredeemably Russophobic world<\/a>\u2014if necessary with atomic weapons\u2014or else it\u2019s the end of Russia.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Official and semi-official propagandists have played a central role in what critics of Putin\u2019s regime call the \u201czombification\u201d of Russians. Television hosts Vladimir Solovyov and Olga Skabeyeva, the RT television network chief Margarita Simonyan, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, and presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov have relentlessly spread lies, dehumanized Ukrainians, and thereby influenced an audience that still largely gets its news from state-managed television.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Russian publishers have also contributed to the demonization and dehumanization of Ukrainians. \u201cSince 2009,\u201d according to<\/a> one study, \u201cRussia has seen an explosion of books in the fantasy genre focused on the topic of a war with Ukraine, as well as purportedly \u2018historical\u2019 literature and general nonfiction titles discussing the \u2018collapse of the Ukraine project\u2019 and mocking the independence of the \u2018nonexistent\u2019 Ukrainian people and the \u2018artificial\u2019 nature of the Ukrainian language.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Is there something inherent in Russian culture that promotes such cruelty and violence? Most Ukrainians<\/a> believe the answer is yes. In their view, Russian culture and its most ardent promoters are both the products and legitimizers of an historically aggressive, violent, imperialistic, and bloodthirsty state. As the historian Ewa Thompson has persuasively argued<\/a>, Russia is the bearer of an imperial culture that has denied agency and humanity to the non-Russian peoples subjugated by Russian tyrants since Ivan the Terrible. Matthew Omolesky of the Royal Anthropological Institute is even more direct<\/a>: \u201cIf the poison of Russian chauvinism can eat its way so deeply into the brains of such sensitive writers as Pushkin, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, and Brodsky, if it can cause them to write \u2018eulogies of butchery\u2019 and make poetry an \u2018ally of executioners\u2019 \u2026 then imagine what it can do to the brains of less sophisticated, or more cynical, members of the Russian nation. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ukrainians have drawn the logical conclusion from this state of affairs. They are determined, at both the official and societal levels, to \u201cdecolonize<\/a>\u201d an independent Ukrainian culture and integrate it into both Europe and the wider world, and to remove all vestiges of Russian imperialism. Street names are being changed<\/a>, monuments are being dismantled<\/a>, and textbooks are being rewritten. The Russian language is also being abandoned in favor of Ukrainian\u2014not as a governmental decree being imposed on a reluctant public, but as the grassroots legislative expression of the public itself. President Volodymyr Zelensky is playing no small role in this process with his heroic defense of Ukraine, its people, history, and culture.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As a formerly pro-Russian Ukrainian politician has put it<\/a>, \u201cAfter what Russia has done, we no longer have a common past. We only have different futures.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

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Alexander J. Motyl<\/strong> is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Is Putin Committing Genocide in Ukraine? ALEXANDER J. MOTYL After three months, the historical record is now clear . Tetiana Ustymenko weeps over the grave of her son, buried in the garden of her house in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, on April 6, 2022RONALDO SCHEMIDT\/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Ukraine\u2019s military intelligence service recently released a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95579"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95845,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95579\/revisions\/95845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}