Fascism and Genocide: Russia’s War Against Ukrainians [1. ed.] 9783838217840, 9783838216911, 9783838217482, 9783838217734, 9783838218700, 9783838277912

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Taras Kuzio in collaboration with Stefan Jajecznyk-Kelman

Fascism and Genocide Russia’s War Against Ukrainians

UKRAINIAN VOICES Collected by Andreas Umland 32

Yuriy Lukanov, Tetiana Pechonchik (eds.) The Press: How Russia destroyed Media Freedom in Crimea With a foreword by Taras Kuzio ISBN 978-3-8382-1784-0

33

Megan Buskey Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet

A Family Story of Exile and Return ISBN 978-3-8382-1691-1

34

Vira Ageyeva Behind the Scenes of the Empire

Essays on Cultural Relationships between Ukraine and Russia ISBN 978-3-8382-1748-2

35

Marieluise Beck (eds.) Understanding Ukraine

Tracing the Roots of Terror and Violence With a foreword by Dmytro Kuleba ISBN 978-3-8382-1773-4

36

Olesya Khromeychuk A Loss

The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister With a foreword by Philippe Sands ISBN 978-3-8382-1870-0

The book series “Ukrainian Voices” publishes English- and German-language monographs, edited volumes, document collections, and anthologies of articles authored and composed by Ukrainian politicians, intellectuals, activists, officials, researchers, and diplomats. The series’ aim is to introduce Western and other audiences to Ukrainian explorations, deliberations and interpretations of historic and current, domestic, and international affairs. The purpose of these books is to make non-Ukrainian readers familiar with how some prominent Ukrainians approach, view and assess their country’s development and position in the world. The series was founded, and the volumes are collected by Andreas Umland, Dr. phil. (FU Berlin), Ph. D. (Cambridge), Associate Professor of Politics at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and an Analyst in the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

Taras Kuzio in collaboration with Stefan Jajecznyk-Kelman

FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Russia’s War Against Ukrainians

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover picture: EUvsDisinfo.eu

ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7791-2 © ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2023 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und elektronische Speicherformen sowie die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

‘When someone is at war with an entire nation, he doesn’t stand a chance. For us, this is a people’s war. People are invincible! When the people have such friends as those of the Ukrainians, victory becomes inevitable.’ ‘We will fight to the end. We shall fight on the seas; we shall fight in the air. We shall protect our land, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight everywhere—on heaps of debris, on the banks of the Kalmyus and Dnipro, and we shall never ever surrender.’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Contents Preface ................................................................................................... 11 1

Obsession ...................................................................................... 35

2

Genocide ....................................................................................... 67

3

Disinformation ........................................................................... 107

4

Military........................................................................................ 129

5

Volunteers and Geeks ............................................................... 167

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Divorce ........................................................................................ 207

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Global Crisis ............................................................................... 235

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Tables Table 1. Russia’s War and Genocide Against Ukrainians. ............. 10

Graphics 1. Killed Russian Officers Per Day (30-day average). Ragnar Gudmundsson, Icelandic Data Analyst. .................................... 20 2. Russian Officers Killed in Ukraine. @KilledinUkraine ............ 21 3. Dmitry Medvedev. EU vs Disinformation. ............................... 76 4. Russian Military Losses in Ukraine. Ragnar Gudmundsson, Icelandic Data Analyst. .............................................................. 143 5. Russian Tank Losses in Ukraine. Ragnar Gudmundsson, Icelandic Data Analyst. .............................................................. 144

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Table 1. Russia’s War and Genocide Against Ukrainians 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers and other security forces have been killed and two times that number wounded. Upwards of 150,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since 2014. 100,000 of these were killed during the destruction of Mariupol. Twelve million refugees and IDP’s were created. 100 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed. 1,100 children have been killed and injured. The Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office has collected data on 45,000 incidents of aggression and war crimes. A further 15,000 crimes against the national security of Ukraine have also been registered: or nearly 60,000 in total. https://warcrimes.gov.ua/ all-crimes.html Destruction of cultural heritage in Ukraine ‘has become an integral element of Russia’s war’ the UN reported. Russia has damaged or destroyed 600 cultural heritage sites and objects, which includes religious sites, museums, historic buildings, buildings dedicated to cultural activities, monuments, and libraries. Russia has damaged one half of Ukraine’s energy generating systems. Russia has damaged or destroyed 130,000 residential buildings, 400 enterprises and plants, 18 civilian airports, 800 kindergartens and 2,200 educational facilities, hundreds of medical facilities, 50 shopping centres, 500 administrative buildings, 28 oil depots, and 650 cultural facilities.

Preface “On the day of the invasion, Putin ‘spoke like some White general from the Russian civil war’” Ivan Krastev

The decision to invade Ukraine was made by the Kremlin in summer 2021. Vladimir Putin’s long, rambling essay published in July 2021 was the ideological treatise to justify the ‘liberation’ of Little Russians (the nineteenth century Tsarist Empire term for Ukrainians). Nineteenth century imperial nationalist myths had become mainstream in Putin’s Russia over more than two decades he has been in power and drove Russia’s invasion. Russia’s imperialist campaign was defeated by the twenty first reality of a robust Ukrainian national identity, modern military technology and training, a resilient society, volunteers, and civil society. Six reasons Putin outlined for launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine are not justified by international law. These included: 1.

2.

3.

Ukraine had never existed until the USSR was created, a claim that could be made against all fifteen Soviet republics—including the Russian Federation. All former Western colonies had never existed before the building of European empires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Donbas had not recognised the legitimacy of Euromaidan revolutionaries coming to power, a favourite Kremlin trope about an alleged ‘putsch’ in 2014. President Viktor Yanukovych was not ousted in a ‘putsch;’ he fled from Ukraine and the Ukrainian parliament, including members of the Party of Regions, voted unanimously by 328 to zero to impeach him. Russia transformed protestors in the Donbas into armed insurgents; this was never an organic process. Putin has argued repeatedly since his 2008 speech to the NATO-Russia Council that Ukraine includes ‘ancient Russian lands,’ an argument that Ukraine could turn round and argue Russia also includes ‘ancient Ukrainian lands’ such as the Kuban. Russia itself includes former German, 11

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4.

5.

6.

Finnish, Estonian, Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese ‘ancient lands;’ if territorial changes are to be implemented why should these be only Ukrainian? Ukraine refused to implement the Minsk agreement. This is best understood as Ukraine refused to agree to Russia’s interpretation of them (see later). Ukraine was committing ‘genocide’ against Russian-speakers in the Donbas. There has never been any evidence of this and only two percent of Ukrainians believed Russia invaded Ukraine to protect Russian speakers. The West and its Ukrainian nationalist puppets transformed Ukraine into an ‘anti-Russia.’ This justification flowed from the long-standing Russian denial of a sovereign Ukraine and its depiction as a US puppet. As a sovereign state and founding member of the UN, Ukraine has every right to pursue whatever domestic and foreign policies it wants.

Over the course of 2021-2021, the Kremlin became increasingly frustrated with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Treason charges were levelled against Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life. His four pro-Russian TV channels were closed in February (ZiK, 112, NewsOne) and December 2021 (First Independent). Medvedchuk was de facto Vladimir Putin’s political representative in Ukraine and Putin is the Godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter. Putin regarded the criminal charges as a direct challenge to his authority and standing and the closing down of television channels as evidence Ukraine had become an ‘AntiRussia.’ A second factor was the launch of the Crimean Platform in summer 2021 to lobby countries around the world to support the peninsula’s de-occupation. Crimea was always viewed by the Kremlin as off limits for negotiations and a closed subject. Putin had refused to include Crimea’s fate within the two Minsk Agreements. The Kremlin’s changed calculus became evident in October 2021 when deputy head of Russia’s Security Council Medvedev penned a vitriolic attack on Ukrainian identity and an anti-Semitic attack on Zelenskyy which ruled out further negotiations with

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Kyiv. Medvedev claimed Ukrainian leaders were US puppets and therefore the Kremlin needed to negotiate directly with their alleged Washington ‘puppet masters.’ Meanwhile, Russia would wait for the emergence of a ‘sane leadership’ in Kyiv (i.e., the installation of a pro-Russian satrap) who would return ‘normality’ to Russian-Ukrainian relations that the Kremlin craved. In November 2021, the Kremlin unfurled a fake crisis to justify its invasion four months later. Putin issued an ultimatum to the West, demanding ‘written security guarantees’ there will be no further NATO enlargement. While this demand primarily targeted against Ukraine, it also applied to Georgia, Finland, and Sweden. Finland and Sweden joined NATO after the invasion; Ukraine and Georgia were never invited into MAP’s (Membership Action Plans) and were therefore never in the queue to join. The US, UK and NATO rejected the Kremlin’s red lines. The West has never accepted Russia has a right to an exclusive sphere of influence in Eurasia, dictating the parameters of Ukrainian sovereignty, and demanding changes in policies towards Central-Eastern Europe. The Kremlin undoubtedly knew they would never sign its ‘written security guarantees.’ In Spring 2021, Russia deployed 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border which rose to 175,000 by February 2022. Although this was a significant mobilisation with a clear intention of putting military pressure on Ukraine and the West, it sent confusing signals. To occupy a country as large as Ukraine and defeat Ukraine’s security forces, which would eventually number 400,000 and, following full mobilisation, one million a Russian invading force would need at least four times more troops. Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said Russia would need between 500,000 and 600,000 troops. There were two reasons for Russia’s invasion force numbering only 175,000. The first is it was based on nineteenth century Russian imperial nationalist myths of Little Russians eagerly awaiting their liberation from Ukrainian nationalists operating as US puppets. The second was that Russia did not have many more troops it could use; the Russian-Ukrainian war has shown that Russia is a

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Potemkin military power. Russia has long been a mafia state and corrosive corruption has affected every aspect of its military forces. Russian intelligence forces were hampered by being too afraid to tell Putin the truth. Russian security forces had stolen much of the funds earmarked for Ukraine. Meanwhile, those who Russian intelligence services had paid in Ukraine simply told them what they wanted to hear. The massing of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border was intended to back up the Kremlin’s ultimatum to the West which was described in stark terms by the Russian Foreign Ministry: ‘The West has two paths: to take seriously Russia’s proposals on ‘written security guarantees’, or to deal with a military-technical alternative.’ The ‘alternative’ came on 24 February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s ultimatum consisted of three elements: 1.

A Halt to the Eastward Enlargement of NATO: Putin demanded ‘written security guarantees’ against further NATO enlargement to the East, and the denial of accession to the alliance of former Soviet republics (i.e., Ukraine and Georgia). The irony is that long-standing neutral Finland and Sweden joined NATO because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia issued broader demands: ‘NATO and the US must not station any additional military personnel or weapons outside the countries where they were stationed as of May 1997 (prior to the accession to the alliance of Eastern European countries) except in exceptional cases with the consent of Russia.’ Russia also demanded NATO did not militarily cooperate with, and did not establish military bases in, Ukraine and former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. New NATO members and Ukraine were never going to agree to the former two demands while the creation of NATO military bases in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eurasia had never been discussed. Ukraine has been militarily cooperating with NATO since the mid 1990s and ironically, the inflow of Western military equipment since Russia’s invasion has

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increased Ukraine’s integration with NATO and the interoperability of Ukrainian and Western military forces. The Implementation of the Minsk-2 Ceasefire Agreement: Moscow blamed Ukraine for the lack of progress in the peace process in the Donbas. The peace process was hampered by two different interpretations. Ukraine proposed to implement security measures first, such as demilitarising the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) and Luhansk Peoples Republic (LNR) proxy forces, withdrawing Russian troops and regaining control over the Russian-Ukrainian border. Then Ukraine would hold local elections under OSCE supervision and Ukrainian legislation, and Ukrainian parliament would amend the constitution to create a ‘special status’ region for the Donbas. Russia proposed the opposite way forward: to firstly hold elections and change the constitution followed by de-militarisation and border questions. Presidents Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy never trusted Russia to follow through on all the steps if Ukraine agreed to Russia’s interpretation of the sequencing of the Minsk Accords. Since the invasion trust is non-existent. ‘I have no faith in the Russian Federation,’ Zelenskyy told Turkish President Recep T. Erdogan because, ‘The people who're killing, raping and dropping rockets on our civilian infrastructures every day cannot want peace, so they have to leave our territories first.’ Putin described Zelenskyy’s proposals for updating and revising the Minsk ceasefire agreements as the ‘destructive line of Kyiv.’ But Zelenskyy’s proposed changes were reflective of public opinion in Ukraine, with only 12 percent of Ukrainians believing the Minsk Accords should be implemented in their current format. The Kremlin’s hardline stance failed to capitalise on Zelenskyy’s postelection naivety regarding Russia and his desire to rapidly prove he was being successful in securing peace. In 2019, if Russia had adopted a less brazen negotiating stance it may have been able to sign a peace accord with Zelenskyy. In autumn 2019, Zelenskyy agreed to the Steinmeier Formula

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FASCISM AND GENOCIDE (a 2016 proposal by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier) which basically followed Russia’s sequencing with elections held before de-militarisation followed by the creation of a ‘special status.’ The following year, Zelenskyy became increasingly frustrated by Russia’s intransigence and dropped the Steinmeier Formula. By 2021, on the eve of the invasion, Russia’s intransigence and Ukrainophobia had transformed Zelenskyy into being little different to his predecessor, Poroshenko. The crux of the matter was that the Kremlin was frustrated by being unable to pressure Kyiv to capitulate to its version of the Minsk accords that would have transformed Ukraine into a Russian satellite. The Kremlin always sought Ukraine’s capitulation and never a compromise. Russia has steadfastly stuck to its demand for Ukraine’s ‘total capitulation,’ as Medvedev explained even after the rout of its forces in Kharkiv oblast in September 2022, on Russia’s terms. In response to comments from President Zelensky, Medvedev posted on Telegram, ‘The current 'ultimatums' are a warm-up for kids, a preview of demands to be made in the future. He knows them: the total surrender of the Kyiv regime on Russia's terms.’ Ukrainians have never accepted Russian ultimatums. In September 2022, 87 percent, an increase on 82 percent since May of that year, would not agree to territorial compromises for peace. The biggest increases have taken place in the east and south where 85 (up from 68 percent since May 2022) and 83 percent respectively are opposed to compromises. Among Ukraine’s IDP’s the figure is even higher at 92 percent. There is no difference between Russian (85 percent) and Ukrainian speakers (90 percent) over rejecting compromises. Ukrainian public support provides President Zelenskyy with the backing to reject Russian ultimatums he explained as follows: ‘They don’t want negotiations. In their understanding, they understand talks as an ultimatum in which we must recognise that the Donbas and Crimea are Russian territories. They recently said that Ukraine should

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recognise the south as Russian territories after they hold some ‘referendum’ ...’ Zelenskyy showed, in the same manner as Ukrainians, he does not trust Putin and the Kremlin to keep to what they signed. This was because: ‘They will still come after our other territories in six months.’ Zelenskyy believed Russia would only negotiate when it was forced to by a combination of military defeats and ‘when they see the strength behind the world’s support for Ukraine.’ Guarantees Against Military Deployments in Ukraine: Russian leaders expressed concerns NATO weapons systems would be installed in Ukraine. They also demanded guarantees NATO would not use the former Soviet republics for military purposes against Russia. The Kremlin’s demand for ‘written security guarantees’ against missile deployments were non-sensical as NATO had never deployed or planned to deploy offensive missiles in Ukraine. Until Russia’s invasion the West desisted from transferring what it called ‘offensive’ military equipment to Ukraine. Until the invasion, Germany and the Netherlands had blocked the transfer of even defensive weaponry to Ukraine while the only countries who had been willing to transfer offensive capability were the three Baltic states and the UK. Prior to the invasion, Ukraine’s requests for air and missile defence systems went ‘unanswered despite assurances that ‘NATO stands with Ukraine.’ Russia’s demand ignored Ukraine’s domestic capabilities; its Neptune missiles have a range of 300 kms.

Russian Goals in Ukraine Russia’s goal has always been to transform Ukraine into a country resembling Belarus similar to that run by self-appointed President Alexander Lukashenka. Ukraine as Belarus-2 would be committed to an alliance with Russia, disinterested in European integration, subservient to the Russian ‘elder brother’, and uphold the primacy of the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church. In other

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words, Ukraine would return to what had existed in the USSR which would erase three decades of independence. Between the 2014 crisis and invasion, the Kremlin planned to achieve its objective of moulding Ukraine into a second Belarus by pressurising Kyiv to accept it’s understanding of the September 2014 and February 2015 Minsk Accords. The Kremlin’s pressure on Ukrainian presidents failed to achieve its twin goals of ‘Bosnianisation’ and ‘Finlandisation.’ Therefore, Russia moved to its alternative strategy of four months of negotiations that were a maskiriovka in preparation for a full-scale military invasion. Russia’s goals of ‘Belarusianisation’ and ‘Finlandisation’ were understood as follows: 1.

2.

‘Bosnianisation’: transforming Ukraine into a decentralised federal republic with a weak central government. Russia would secure the ability to indirectly veto domestic and foreign affairs through its DNR and LNR proxy entities who controlled the Donbas ‘special status’ region. 35,000 military forces Russia had built up in the DNR and LNR would become official security forces for the Donbas ‘special status’ region. A Russian Trojan Horse would exist within the Ukrainian state. ‘Finlandisation’: Ukraine would drop its goals of NATO and EU membership and become a ‘neutral’ state; in effect, a Russian buffer state within Russia’s sphere of influence. Russia’s understanding of ‘neutrality’ has nothing in common with the internationally accepted norm; after all, Ukraine was a neutral (‘non-bloc’) country in 2014 when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea. Some Western experts wrongly believed Russia would agree to Ukraine dropping NATO and allowing EU membership goals. They ignored the fact Russia pressured President Viktor Yanukovych to not sign an Association Agreement with the EU with the goal of taking Ukraine into the Eurasian Economic Union. The Kremlin’s pressure led to the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity. Ironically, Russia’s military aggression has led to the EU declaring Ukraine to be a candidate member and public opinion polls showing record support for

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NATO and EU membership and no support for joining Russian-led Eurasian unions. Ukraine’s rejection of adhering to Russian demands for ‘written security guarantees’ was driven by experience of Russian behaviour. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in exchange for security assurances provided in the Budapest Memorandum by the UK, US, and Russian Federation (France and China also signed separately). These five countries agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia’s subsequent 2014 invasion of Crimea was a clear violation of what it had signed in the Budapest Memorandum; the Kremlin’s demand for ‘written security guarantees’ was therefore an extreme case of double standards.

Putin’s Three Miscalculations Four months of international negotiations in US-Russia, RussiaOSCE, and Russia-NATO formats failed to achieve any breakthrough; in fact, they were never meant to as they were always a maskirovka as a prelude towards a full-scale invasion planned since Summer 2021. The Kremlin never truly expected its demands for ‘written security guarantees’ would be accepted by the West. The entire exercise was a means to pin the blame for the invasion on the West. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was planned by the Russian security services, rather than the military, based on outdated myths and stereotypes about Ukraine and a lack of understanding of the West. Russia failed to achieve its planned two to three-day blitzkrieg capture of Ukraine and the capital city of Kyiv. The parade uniforms issued to Russian soldiers for a military victory parade on Khreshchatyk Street, echoing the Nazi parade in Paris in 1940, were never used. Russia captured only one oblast centre—Kherson—by treason, not military prowess. Putin miscalculated in three important areas. 1.

Ukrainians: Putin’s imperial nationalist denial of the existence of an independent Ukraine and separate Ukrainian nation is based on nineteenth century myths of ‘Little

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FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Russians’ constituting one of three branches of a pan-Russian nation. The Kremlin really did believe its army would be greeted with bread and salt and flowers. The Kremlin has never understood the concept of Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriotism. Ukraine built a civic nation since 1991 and its citizens have risen on three occasions in 1990, 2004 and 2013-2014 to demand their rights as citizens. Desovietisation and decommunisation have contributed towards Ukraine’s Europeanisation. Russia has stagnated under Putin through a re-sovietisation of Russian society, cult of the tyrant Joseph Stalin, creation of a mafia state, cynicism, and violence at home and abroad. Ukrainians have grown as citizens; Russians have stagnated as subjects. Little Russians do not exist in Ukraine and therefore they could not have greeted Russian soldiers as liberators. Instead, Ukrainians ‘welcomed’ the Russian army with stingers, NLAW’s, javelins, and Bayraktar TB2 drones. After six months of war, Russian military casualties of 80,000 dead and wounded are far higher than ten years of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Killed Russian Officers Per Day (30-day average). Source: Ragnar Gudmundsson, Icelandic Data Analyst.

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Russian Officers Killed in Ukraine. Source: @KilledinUkraine

2.

The Kremlin is not unique in its ignorance as only a small handful of Russian politicians, academic and think tank experts have an understanding of Ukraine. The Kremlin failed to learn its lessons from 2014 when attempts at fanning separatism in south-eastern Ukraine failed and Russia had to twice invade to save its proxies from defeat in the Donbas. The eastern Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, President Zelenskyy’s home region bordering the Donbas war zone, was a patriotic hub of resistance. Russian People: The invasion of Ukraine will never generate the same level of public support as that of Crimea in 2014 which has a mythical link to Russian and Soviet imperial

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3.

glories. Public support for Crimea’s annexation has remained at a steady 84-86 percent since 2014. Protests inside Russia will grow over the high number of military casualties and in response to deteriorating socio-economic conditions from Western sanctions. In the 1980s, the totalitarian Soviet Union could not prevent knowledge of casualties in Afghanistan from reaching home. Despite state control of television and closure of social media, contemporary Russia will be even less successful. The West: The West imposed no sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Georgia. The Kremlin believed the West would be again divided and impose weak sanctions, as it did in 2014. An investigation by The Washington Post found Putin believed that a Western response ‘would be big on outrage but limited in actual punishment.’ This is because: ‘The Biden administration was chastened by the humiliating U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and wanted to avoid new wars. The United States and Europe were still struggling through the coronavirus pandemic. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the de facto European leader, was leaving office and handing power to an untested successor. French President Emmanuel Macron was facing a re-election battle against a resurgent right wing, and Britain was suffering from a post-Brexit economic downturn. Large parts of the continent depended on Russian oil and natural gas, which Putin thought he could use as a wedge to split the Western alliance. He had built up hundreds of billions of dollars in cash reserves and was confident the Russian economy could weather the inevitable sanctions, as it had in the past.’ Following the invasion, the West’s response was united in imposing crippling sanctions previously only used against Iran. Over 1,000 Western companies have pulled out of Russia. Deliveries of modern and large amounts of arms to Ukraine from over forty NATO and neutral members represents the biggest Western military operation ever undertaken. The era of Ostpolitik and Putinversteher (Putin Understanders) is over. Germany closed

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the Nord Stream II gas pipeline, reversed—like Sweden— its policy of not supplying arms to conflict zones, and increased defence spending. The EU, for the first time in its history, is financing arms supplies to Ukraine. Putin’s agents of influence—Russian oligarchs—who are now sanctioned are no longer able to spread corruption through Western political elites.

Zelenskyy: Ukraine’s Winston Churchill While it is the main aim of this book to explore the broad political and military conditions of Putin’s genocidal war against Ukraine, it would be unwise to ignore the influence of one specific person— Ukraine’s President since 2019, Zelenskyy. Opinion polls prior to Russia’s invasion were unflattering to Zelenskyy when Ukrainians were asked if he would be a good commander-in-chief. A November 2021 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociological Studies asked, ‘In the event of a full-scale Russian invasion, which is now being warned about by Ukrainian and foreign intelligence services, will Volodymyr Zelenskyy be able to effectively function as Supreme Commander and organise the defence of the country?’ 51.6 percent of Ukrainians said ‘no’ and only 35.9 percent responded ‘yes,’ with the remainder unsure. Time since the invasion has shown the doubters to have been wrong. An unlikely wartime leader, Zelenskyy has become a figurehead for Ukrainian resistance within Ukraine and beyond the country’s borders. Zelenskyy has taken on the burden of his people’s desire to resist the Russian invasion and personifies that in his words and deeds. He has shown a range of emotional responses in rallying his people when necessary and at other times has cried with them by sharing their sorrow; in both cases amplifying these emotions around the globe. Despite not having any military experience and being relatively inexperienced politically, Zelenskyy now cuts a Churchillian figure among world leaders—almost single-handedly taking on responsibility for Ukraine’s PR on the global stage. A heroic leader of a country at war, a meme, a fashion icon (if you’re Emmanuel

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Macron) and sublime communicator—Zelenskyy has become all these and more since the February 2022 invasion. In the run up to Russia’s 2022 invasion, it was already becoming clear Zelenskyy understood the importance of his words as president of a threatened country as he shifted the language, tone and delivery of his message for each of the various audiences he had to satisfy. Firstly, to the Ukrainian people—Zelenskyy’s speeches in the days leading up to the 24th of February were an attempt at reassuring his public that its army was ready for any scenario and that plans were in place for the defence of the country. His daily messages to the Ukrainian public in the early days of the war echoed this focus on reassurance, the president famously telling his public he and his government were in Kyiv and to not believe the flood of Russian disinformation that accompanied their invasion. Zelenskyy’s ‘grim stagecraft’—as his messages were later described in The Atlantic magazine—were a key buffer against the very real possibility of mass panic in the face of invading Russian forces. At that time, Zelenskyy recognised he needed to lead, and those five minutes in front of a shaky phone camera each night were a hugely important part of his early success. The second, Zelenskyy’s messages to international leaders and Ukraine’s partners, was starker by pointing out where eight years of appeasing Putin had left Ukraine, all the while making repeated pleas for military and financial support. In his speech made in person to world leaders at the Munich Security Conference shortly before the 2022 invasion—an event he was allegedly advised against attending due to the threat from invading Russian forces—Zelenskyy invoked the history of the Second World War as he asked leaders, ‘What do attempts at appeasement lead to? As the question ‘Why die for Danzig?’ turned into the need to die for Dunkirk and dozens of other cities in Europe and the world. At the cost of tens of millions of lives.’ In appealing to the history of the World War II, Zelenskyy warned those present of a return to early 20th Century chaos, the prevention of which being the raison d'être of most postwar international institutions. Similarly, Zelenskyy has been prolific in speaking to NGOs, charities, students, and legislatures across the world since Russia’s

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latest invasion using each occasion to reinforce several of his key messages, such as Ukraine relies on support from others and that support will allow Ukraine to defeat, not just halt, Russia. He reminded British university students for whom Ukraine is a distant conflict the consequences of a resurgent, imperialist Russia: ‘You should care about the war in Ukraine. This war is visible and monstrous. The truth is important.’ Finally, to Russia where Zelenskyy made arguably his most impassioned plea against further invasion and expansion of the war. The politics of language—particularly that of Russian speaking Ukrainians—has often been used to fallaciously divide Ukrainians by outside observers seeking to neatly explain its post-colonial experience. In speaking to his neighbours in his native Russian, he made an impassioned plea for peace while also giving a powerful counter to the oft-cited Kremlin lie Russian speakers had been longpersecuted in Ukraine. In the early hours of the 24th of February, shortly before bombs and missiles were landing across Ukraine, Zelenskyy said: ‘nobody will have guarantees of security anymore. Who will suffer the most from it? The people. Who doesn’t want it the most? The people! Who can stop it? The people. But are there those people among you? I am sure.’ In a similar vein, Zelenskyy has used his effective communication to levy powerfully emotive accusations of genocide and war crimes against Russia. While domestic media in Russia has consistently dismissed Russian actions as ‘provocations’ or ‘fakes,’ Ukraine’s president has not held back in describing scenes following Russian retreat from occupied areas. After mass graves and torture cells were found in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel in Kyiv’s northern suburbs he appealed to Russian mothers, saying: ‘Even if you raised looters, how did they also become butchers? You couldn't be unaware of what's inside your children. You couldn't overlook that they are deprived of everything human. No soul. No heart. They killed deliberately and with pleasure.’ But what is it about Zelenskyy, the president elected on a populist wave in 2019, that helped him craft his powerful global image as Ukraine’s khaki-clad orator-in-chief? When elected, the former comedian and actor vowed—among other steps—to restore

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Ukraine’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity; in effect, ending the then-frozen conflict in the country’s east while finding a solution to the question of Russian-occupied Crimea. Instead, three years later, he became Ukraine’s unlikely wartime leader and a focal point in the country’s resistance against a full-scale Russian invasion. With the benefit of hindsight, Zelenskyy was right to promise what he did during that election campaign, although the way in which it has been delivered is substantially different to how he perhaps first envisioned. While Zelenskyy’s experience of his election campaign aided him in resisting Russian propaganda and information warfare in the early days of this latest phase of the conflict, it is important to take a broader view of his life as an influencing factor on his contemporary actions. His ‘typical Soviet bringing’—as he describes it—in a Russian-speaking Jewish-Ukrainian household in the tough, industrial city of Kryvyy Rih is central to his wartime character. Though his leadership pedigree had already been observed by those who knew Zelenskyy at university, where he read law, he was destined for more. In an interview with The Guardian a former economics lecturer described how people naturally followed him, adding: ‘He was an intellectual light, and a humorous and fun guy. His decency was obvious. There was lot of the real Zelenskyy in the president that was portrayed in ‘Servant of the People.’ It was in this his most famous show, ‘Servant of the People,’ where Zelenskyy would first make his commentary on Ukrainian politics as he portrayed the unlikely schoolteacher-turned-President Vasyl Holoborodko. Perhaps a practise run for his own election campaign and eventual presidency, Zelenskyy outlined his disdain for Ukraine’s traditional politics dominated by oligarchs and their murky business interests. The show’s popularity shows how he struck a chord with the Ukrainian public, many of whom believed he was just like them. The straight-talking of Zelenskyy’s hometown is evident in his addresses to foreign governments in which he has ditched the polite niceties and innuendo of international diplomacy. In previously dealing with partner nations, Ukraine was viewed as a poor neighbour for whom Europe had an uncomfortable responsibility. Since

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the invasion, Zelenskyy has been forceful in demanding support and action from Ukraine’s partners. In a speech to the European Parliament in March 2022, a few weeks after Russia invaded, Zelenskyy pleaded with MEP’s to not only support Ukraine with words and proclamations, but by concrete actions. ‘Do prove that you are with us. Do prove that you will not let us go. Do prove that you are indeed Europeans, and then life will win over death and light will win over darkness,’ Zelenskyy said, beginning a PR offensive that would eventually see billions of dollars of military and humanitarian aid being sent to aid Ukraine’s war effort and support the government’s budget. Zelenskyy has also been praised for his broader public messaging, while his use of dialect words and phrases from his hometown have gained him support from ordinary Ukrainians who see him as one of their own. In fact, in the first six months since the beginning of full-scale hostilities in February 2022, Zelenskyy’s popularity and approval ratings were regularly above 90 percent. In a July 2022 opinion poll, 97 percent of Ukrainians trusted the armed forces and 85 percent trusted commander-in-Chief Zelenskyy. Ukrainian polls in the last three decades had always found Ukrainians exhibiting low trust in their president. Importantly, Zelenskyy has used his communications acumen to win round support from citizens of countries other than his own. One example is the US where Zelenskyy is seen in a highly affable way, with Pew research reporting over 70 percent of Americans having a positive view of him. It is likely that perhaps before being embroiled in Donald Trump’s impeachment saga shortly after his 2019 election, very few in the US could recognise Zelenskyy in a line up. This is important for those supporting and trusting Ukraine with billions of dollars in military support and to keep the US public on-side is key in maintaining vital government support. Soon after Russia’s 2022 invasion, several clips of Zelenskyy went viral on social media—most notably his Kvartal 95 sketch where he and his colleagues humorously appear to play a piano with their genitals, and the behind-the-scenes clips of him recording the voice of Paddington Bear for the Ukrainian-language release of the film. While the content of these clips could be dismissed as

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online frivolity, they served an important purpose. Firstly, for many in the West, this would have been their first introduction to Zelenskyy as an entertainment performer, with the Paddington clip particularly endearing him to viewers. Secondly, they provided a stark contrast between Ukraine as a fun-loving innocent country, and Russian barbarity which it was now facing. Similarly, Zelenskyy’s populist appeal can be credited as influencing his effective political positioning. Despite early links to oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyy, Zelenskyy’s campaign maintained that he was the candidate that represented a departure from the oligarch-dominated politics that they argued had hampered Ukraine and its progress since independence. His predecessor, President Petro Poroshenko, was hampered by his status as an oligarch when compared with the fresh-faced digitally led election campaign waged by Zelenskyy. Furthermore, Zelenskyy and much of his team represented a generation of Ukrainians that while having been born in the Soviet Union, were never part of the system as adults; thus, they weren’t tainted by their former positions working within the Soviet system. Furthermore, no journalist has ever found evidence of any corruption that Zelenskyy was involved in, surely a first for Ukraine’s presidents. Zelenskyy has been successful in leading Ukraine through the toughest months of independence. His background as a television star and successful comedian and producer has given him the very characteristics with which he has built his wartime effectiveness as a skilled communicator. The image he and his team have built is a direct result of this. Even down to his khaki clothes, Zelenskyy has presented himself in a meticulously consistent and informal way. His image has featured on the front pages of magazines and newspapers the world over, while his likeness has been captured in countless memes and posters; a notable example being an image of him wearing the costume of Marvel’s Captain America. President Macron has emulated his khaki clad attire. As we have already explored, Zelenskyy has shown he is keenly aware of the various audiences taking an interest in what he says, and how he says it. He varies his messaging well, speaking to Ukrainians each night via video address as if he is a family member

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catching up while working abroad. At the same time from his base in Kyiv he is courting and solidifying international support by addressing multiple demographics ranging from national legislatures to attendees at music festivals. Similarly, he has—since the Russian withdrawal from the north of the country—been keen to build relations with Ukraine’s key allies by hosting them in the capital. His political bromances with Polish President Andrzej Duda and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson are clear examples of this. Alongside Zelenskyy, he and his team have made use of several internationally prominent Ukrainians to reinforce and broaden the global reach of their country’s message. Former heavyweight boxing champions Volodymyr and Vitaliy Kitchko have been similarly employed to use their international clout to raise support for Ukraine. Elsewhere, some of Ukraine’s most famous singers have been eager in collaborating with Western giants of music to a similar end. Andriy Khlyvnyuk, lead singer of rap group Boombox has for example featured on a track with British rock giants Pink Floyd. Importantly, though Zelenskyy has courted interest from political and military figures, it is in his giving access to non-traditional news magazines and publications that have propelled his image beyond the usual crowd of experts and observers for whom he has become well-known. Furthermore, Zelenskyy has been successful in emphasising the equal importance of his role as Ukraine’s leader, but also as a father to his children and husband to his wife, Olena who has now become something of a celebrity in her own right after appearing on the cover of Vogue magazine. While Zelenskyy’s ambitious electoral promises were harder to achieve than he or his team had perhaps expected—prior to the invasion his presidency was marred by several scandals involving his close associates and saw various street protests from those unhappy with his administration. While his support was waning shortly before February’s invasion from its over-70 percent high in 2019, his approval ratings have since rocketed to over 90 percent since the 2022 invasion began. Finally, Zelenskyy has been keen to continuously show the vast difference between his emotional connection with people contrasting with the cold distance of Putin’s autocratic rule. While the

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Russian president was pictured speaking with his generals from the end of an impossibly long table, Zelenskyy was in bomb shelters with Ukrainians and making regular visits to the front lines of the war visiting his troops. While Putin’s whereabouts have been kept tightly secret, Zelenskyy has taken opportunities to walk around his capital with foreign leaders. Importantly, where Ukrainian lands have been liberated, Zelenskyy has been among the first to visit them afterwards, showing the press and foreign dignitaries the first-hand proof of Russian war crimes and atrocities. To further highlight the differences between him and Putin, Zelenskyy has been successful in delegating the business of war to experts. Rather than taking personal control of forces in the field “at the level of a colonel or brigadier”, as Western military sources said of Putin to The Guardian newspaper, Zelenskyy has encouraged Ukraine’s army commander-in-chief General Valeriy Zaluzhnyy to operate independently. Unlike Putin, Zelenskyy has continually praised the work of his armed forces and has not tried to micromanage them.

The Consequences for the West of Ukraine’s Military Defeat Russia’s invasion has created the world’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II with an estimated twelve million Ukrainians internally displaced or fleeing their country. Two in three Ukrainian children have fled their homes. Five hundred children have been killed and many thousands wounded. At least two children are killed every day with many more wounded. Russia has destroyed a huge number of residential buildings and infra-structure. Nearly three million Ukrainians have been deported through filtration camps to Russia, including half a million children. Torture and execution of POW’s and civilians is endemic. Legal scholars agree Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. Putin justified his illegal invasion of Ukraine by claiming it was to end a ‘genocide’ of Russian speakers in the Donbas. And yet it his army that is killing many Russian speakers with most of Russia’s brutal military attacks against Russian-speaking cities taking

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place in south-eastern Ukraine. An estimated 100,000 civilians were killed in the Russian-speaking port of Mariupol. It is Putin’s Russia which is undertaking a genocide of Russian-speakers in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s goal is the destruction of the Ukrainian state, a founding member of the UN, and the erasing of the Ukrainian nation from the map of Europe by murdering its elites and transforming the remaining population into submissive Little Russian subjects. 89 percent of Ukrainians believe Russia’s military actions constitute genocide and nearly half of Ukrainians describe Putin’s regime as fascist and Nazi. If the flow of Western military equipment ceased, Ukraine could be defeated, Russia would take control of the country and install a pro-Kremlin satrap like Lukashenka. Europe would be then faced by three, not two, threats from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Ukraine is five times more populous than Belarus and if defeated would act as a second Russian launching pad for Putin’s war against the West. The threat to European security and danger of a slide to war between NATO and Russia would grow. A Russian victory in Ukraine would encourage Putin to undermine NATO’s collective defence by attacking the three Baltic states. Lithuania would be Putin’s first target because of its strong support for Ukraine. The security threat to Poland would grow from neighbouring Belarus and a defeated Ukraine. It is therefore not in the interests of the West for Ukraine to be militarily defeated by Russia. Russia’s military victory would not only spell the end of the Ukrainian independent state it would also spell the end of the international liberal world order developed by the West after World War II. Ukraine’s defeat would lead to the rise of a global system controlled by hegemonic and authoritarian states such as China, Russia, and Iran. It is in the West’s fundamental national interest to support Ukraine’s fight for its democratic freedom, national identity, and independence.

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Key Points 

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All the ostensible factors given by Russia for invading Ukraine have nothing to do with reality and all of them infringe the UN Charter and international law. Russia’s goals in invading Ukraine in 2022 are unachievable. To transform Ukraine into a Little Russia (that would resemble Belarus) would require genocide and war crimes on a level last seen in Joseph Stalin’s USSR and Adolf Hitlers Nazi rule. Putin and the Kremlin miscalculated in misunderstanding Ukraine, the attitudes of the Russian people and the Western response. Ukrainians have heroically fought against the invasion in a people’s war. The outflow of nearly three quarters of a million Russians after the announcement of partial mobilisation shows that many Russians do not want to fight and die for Russian imperialism. Meanwhile, the West imposed Iranian-style sanctions on Russia, which it had not done in 2014, and provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in military assistance and budgetary aid. Previous Western failings regarding Ukraine have been front-and-centre of some of Zelenskyy’s messaging. He has had the courage to call out previous Western mistakes towards Russia while imploring Western leaders to rectify these through supporting Ukraine. Zelenskyy’s background as a television producer and comedian have made him an excellent communicator, tailoring his messages effectively to maximise sympathy and support from his different audiences and in the process fashioning a strong pro-Ukrainian international coalition. His skill in powerfully communicating emotive topics has seen sympathy for Ukraine grow as fresh evidence of Russian war crimes and atrocities have been uncovered. Zelenskyy has effectively positioned himself as an ‘ordinary’ Ukrainian, one of the people he serves, rather than a distant oligarch or celebrity. His personal approval ratings inside and outside of Ukraine have allowed Western governments to continue their support for Ukraine and its

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armed forces. He has trusted his military commanders and has avoided micro-managing them. Suggested Reading Chkhaidze, Nicholas, Yurov, Ivan, and Kuzio, Taras, Opposition in Russia to the Invasion of Ukraine: How Much of a Threat to Putin’s Regime, Henry Jackson Society, 23 June. https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publicat ions/opposition-in-russia/ Harris, Shane, DeYoung, Karen, Khurshudyan, Isabelle, Parker, Ashley, and Sly, Liz. (2022). ‘Road to war: U.S. struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion,’ The Washington Post, 16 August. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/ 2022/ukraine-road-to-war/ Hill, Fiona, and Stent, Angela. (2022). ‘The World Putin Wants. How Distortions About the Past Feed Delusions About the Future,’ Foreign Affairs, 101 (5): 108-123. Kuzio, Taras. (2016). ‘Soviet and Russian Anti (Ukrainian)Nationalism and Restalinization,’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 49 (1): 87-99. Kuzio, T. (2017). ‘Why Vladimir Putin is Angry with the West. Understanding the Drivers of Russia’s Information, Cyber and Hybrid War,’ Security Policy Working Paper 7, Berlin: Federal Academy for Security Policy, February. https://www.baks.bund.de/en/newsletter/archi ve/view/971 Kuzio, T. (2022a). ‘Preface’ In: Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War: Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality, London: Routledge, 1-34. Kuzio, T. (2022b). ‘Post-Soviet states must decide how they align postUkraine,’ The Washington Times, 23 March. https://www.washingt ontimes.com/news/2022/mar/23/post-soviet-states-must-decidehow-they-align-post/ Kuzio, T. (2022c). ‘Why actions in response to Bucha war horror must be robust. Putin has always been a war criminal and a sociopath. It is time to stand up to him properly,’ The Daily Telegraph, 4 April. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/04/russia-ukr aine-war-actions-response-bucha-horror-must-robust/ Kuzio, T. (2022d). ‘Six reasons why Ukraine is winning the war against Russia,’ UK Defence Journal, 28 April. https://ukdefencejournal.org. uk/six-reasons-why-ukraine-is-winning-the-war-against-russia/ Kuzio, T. (2022e). ‘A weaker Russia provides a vacuum for the EU to exploit in Eurasia,’ New Eastern Europe, 29 April. https://neweasterneu rope.eu/2022/04/29/a-weaker-russia-provides-a-vacuum-for-theeu-to-exploit-in-eurasia/

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Kuzio, T. (2022f). ‘NATO’s Goal for Ukraine Must Be to Defeat Russia and Replace Putin,’ 1945, 11 July. https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/07/ natos-goal-for-ukraine-must-be-to-defeat-russia-and-replace-putin/ Kyiv International Institute of International Studies (2021). ‘Suspilno-Politychni Nastroyi Naselennya Ukrayiny: Aktualni Politychni Podii,’ 26-29 November. https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=report s&id=1074&page=1&fbclid=IwAR3q08eNIhuSaK88FTGQjTqiM_Z8 pTJMNukFFkVzaBD8dspB8ndQ20k0g3I Miller, Greg, and Belton, Catherine. (2022). ‘Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed,’ The Washington Post, 19 August. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia -fsb-intelligence-ukraine-war/ Sonne, Paul, Khurshudyan, Morgunov, Serhiy, and Khudov, Kostiantyn. (2022). ‘Battle for Kyiv: Ukrainian valor, Russian blunders combined to save the capital,’ The Washington Post, 24 August. https://www. washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2022/kyiv-battl e-ukraine-survival/ Zelenskyy, Volodymyr. Presidential website. https://www.president. gov.ua/en

1 Obsession ‘The Russian side has long formulated answers to their questions. I just wonder what the point of asking questions is if you already have an answer. And that, it seems to me, is the difficulty of this dialogue. Because there are things where you must find some compromise so that people don't die and there are things where there can be no compromise. Russia cannot just come to us and say: by the way you are part of Russia... This is nonsense. Why are you offering this to us?’ President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Putin and his regime have dramatically changed during the eight years between the 2014 annexation of Crimea and military aggression against the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas and 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Constitutional changes in 2020 extended Putin’s term in office until 2036 but de facto made Putin president (Tsar) for life. No opposition of any kind is permitted in Putin’s totalitarian dictatorship. Human Rights Watch described Putin’s regime as follows: ‘Today, Russia is more repressive than it has ever been in the post-Soviet era. The authorities crack down on critical media, harass peaceful protesters, engage in smear campaigns against independent groups, and stifle them with fines. Foreign organizations are increasingly banned as “undesirable,” and Russian nationals and organizations are penalized for supposed involvement with them. A new law enables Russian authorities to block access partially or fully to the internet in Russia in the event of undefined “security threats” and gives the government control of the country’s internet traffic, enhancing its capacity to conduct fine-grain censorship. Impunity for egregious abuses by security officials in Chechnya remains rampant.’

Since 2020, Russia has transitioned from a collective leadership and authoritarian autocracy reminiscent of the post-Stalin Soviet era to a totalitarian, personalised dictatorship found in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Russian state has promoted a cult of Stalin throughout Putin’s rule which has led to most Russians, including young people, holding positive views of the tyrant. A favourable view of Stalin is tied to the promotion of the quasi-religious cult of the Great Patriotic War and Russia’s fight against ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine and the West.

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Since 2020, Russia has evolved from an authoritarian autocracy to a totalitarian fascist dictatorship. In 2016, well-known US political scientist Alexander J. Motyl published a scholarly study of Russia as a fascist state that was at that time received tepidly. Marlene Laruelle continues to deny Russia is fascist in her book Is Russia Fascist? Unravelling Propaganda East and West published less than a month after the invasion. Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine there is widespread and growing support among scholars, think tank experts and policymakers to describe Russia as a totalitarian dictatorship and fascist state. Putin’s Russia’s fascist state has ten characteristics 1. Disparaging of Liberal Democracy: The concept of sovereign democracy was unfurled by Kremlin grey cardinal Vladyslav Surkis to prevent Wester influences contaminating Russia. After the Orange Revolution the Kremlin created nationalist youth groups, such as Nashi (Ours) to oppose the spread of Western influence into Russia. These pro-Kremlin youth groups were a supposed bulwark against a colour revolution spreading to Russia. They violently attacked domestic ‘traitors’ to Russia and ambassadors of NATO countries. Pro-Russian extremists from the Donbas, Crimea, and Odesa were trained at Kremlin-organised camps in Russia attended by pro-Putin youth groups. One of these, the Donetsk Republic, was brought to power in the so-called DNR by Russia’s invasion in 2014. 2. Creation of a Totalitarian Dictatorship: Russia has become a totalitarian dictatorship that allows no forms of opposition. Opposition leaders have been killed or imprisoned on trumped up charges, independent media have been closed, Russians who are unhappy with political developments have been encouraged to leave the country, and protests are brutally crushed, and the participants imprisoned and tortured. Putin’s authoritarian system allowed some limited forms of opposition; Alexei Navalny, for example, and his Anti-Corruption Foundation was tolerated up to a degree. Navalny was poisoned only a month after the July 2020 sham constitutional referendum. The poisoning spectacularly failed. After returning from abroad he was arrested in February 2021 and

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sentenced to 2.5 years in detention. In March 2022 Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison on trumped up charges. The evolution of Putin’s regime towards a totalitarian dictatorship and fascist state is closely tied to Russia’s imperial nationalism. A Moscow businessman told Catherine Belton: ‘Putin needs a continuation of the war’ because, ‘In condition of war, he can control society. If there is peace, people will start asking questions about why their lives are so bad.’At the same time as Navalny and others were being repressed inside Russia, the Kremlin was building up its forces on the Ukrainian border in Spring 2021 and invading Ukraine in February 2022. Following the invasion, draconian censorship measures were imposed whereby Russians can be punished for using ‘war’ and ‘invasion’ to describe Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. Russian political culture differentiates between those in opposition and traitors. The former can be bought, corrupted, and negotiated with, while traitors have to be destroyed. In the search for domestic and external traitors, Putin’s speeches before and since the invasion of Ukraine are throwbacks to the Stalin era. Domestic traitors are, as they were in the Soviet Union, those who had crossed a line in their opposition to the authorities. Ukrainians are external traitors because they refuse to accept Ukraine is Little Russia and Ukrainians are a Little Russian branch of the pan-Russian nation. Ukrainians are betraying the pan-Russian nation and Russian World at the behest of the US which turned Ukraine into an ‘AntiRussia.’ At his press conference three weeks into the invasion, Putin ranted against a ‘fifth column and national traitors,’ condemned ‘scum and traitors’ and called for the ’needed self-detoxification of society.’ 3. Upholding Traditional Values and the Nation: Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 with an agenda to promote traditional, conservative values. These have been tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian and Eurasian civilisation, and Russian history where the individual is a subject with no rights and the nation is at the centre of devotion. Russian people should dissolve themselves within the collective will and pay homage to the nation and leader. The West is promoted as the negative ‘Other’ because it is

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undermining traditional families, fanning gay rights and political correctness, and dissolving national sovereignty in globalising projects. Europe is negatively portrayed as ‘GayEvropa.’ 4. Promotion of a Personality Cult: Fascist regimes require leaders who embody national strength. The personality cult surrounding Putin the macho leader has existed for nearly two decades. With constitutional changes de facto crowning Putin ruler for life, he became a Tsar. As in the Tsarist Empire, the legitimacy of Tsars come from a higher being, meaning no mere mortal has a right to question their authority. Oligarchs are like Boyars in the Tsarist Empire whose personal and financial fortunes are dependent on maintaining good relations with the president (Tsar). 5. Feeling National Grievance: Putin is an angry leader; angry at the West for conspiring with internal ‘traitors’ to bring about the disintegration of the USSR and angry at the Little Russian (i.e., Ukraine) province for becoming a US puppet state and ‘Anti-Russia.’ Putin rehabilitated Tsarist imperial and White Russian émigré writers and generals and made their chauvinistic views fashionable and mainstream. Since returning as president in 2012, Putin has pursued a sacred mission to enter Russian history as the ‘Gatherer of Russian (i.e., east Slavic) Lands.’ Crimea was annexed in 2014, a region that most Russians never accepted was part of Ukraine. The next target was Belarus which became a Russian province after the 2020 presidential elections which Lukashenka lost and forcibly kept himself in power with the Kremlin’s backing. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Lukashenka has been the only Eurasian leader who has supported Russia at the UN and in allowing its territory to be used to fire missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets. Ukraine was the missing link in the ‘Gathering of Russian Lands.’ After the failure to dismember Ukraine in 2014 using proxy forces, Putin opted to launch a fullscale invasion eight years later to complete his ‘Gathering of Russian Lands.’ 6. Fanning a Cult of War and Violence: Fascist regimes believe they have a right as great powers to impose their will on small countries and to do this by glorifying militarism. A cult of the dead in the Great Patriotic War is accompanied by a cult of war. Putin

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first turn to the nationalist right came after the 2004 Orange Revolution. Growing xenophobia against the West dominated Putin’s February 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference. Putin declared war on the West but the West chose to ignore it until fourteen years later. Putin’s rule of Russia as president and prime minister has been dominated by violence. Brutal and criminal wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine have been undertaken alongside false flag apartment bombings in Russian cities, and the wonton deaths of Russian civilians in submarines, theatres, and schools. Putin has never shown any remorse for the loss of human life, whether Russian or non-Russian. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two Georgian territories that Russia had manufactured into frozen conflicts in the early 1990s. Russian war crimes undertaken in Chechnya and Syria are being replicated in Ukraine. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has led to very high casualty rates of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, far more than the number of those the USSR lost in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The EU’s centre to combat disinformation reported: ‘A morbid death cult appears to reign in the Kremlin, where death, destruction and immense human suffering is met with rejoicing. Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets continue to call immense human suffering liberation and the ruins temporarily fallen into Russian hands tokens of glorious victory.’ Russians are called upon to sacrifice themselves in the struggle to defeat Nazism in Ukraine, just as their grandparents and parents had fought German Nazis in the Great Patriotic War.’

The EU’s centre to combat disinformation continued: ‘The fall of the Donbas twin cities of Sevyerodonetsk and Lysychansk into Russian hands as bombed-out ruins did not satisfy the bloodthirst in Kremlin. Negligible gains made with heavy casualties were celebrated as a major victory...’ Russian military objectives, ‘will undoubtedly entail more levelled cities, indiscriminate strikes against civilian targets, and incessant Kremlin propaganda trying to explain away the atrocities awaiting. If Russia is, as according to Naryshkin, fighting for its ‘historical future’, the future does not seem to hold much for them apart from death and devastation.’

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7. Mobilising Imperial Nationalism: Authoritarian political systems require acquiescence from the public while totalitarian systems demand more; namely, that its subjects participate in the regimes goals at home and abroad. This reflects the difference between authoritarian Russia prior to 2019 and Russia’s totalitarian dictatorship from 2020. In 2014 the Kremlin did not mobilise Russians for the ‘civil war’ in eastern Ukraine. In 2022, the Kremlin is mobilising Russian society around a cult of war and the symbol ‘Z’, one of two symbols (the other being ‘V’) which was painted on Russian tanks and military vehicles invading Ukraine. ‘Z’ has become trendy and hip among young Russians determined to show their support for the war against Ukraine. Young Russians, including sportsmen and women at international events, have printed ‘Z’ on their tee shirts and sports shirts and have tattooed ‘Z’ on their bodies. A staggering 71 percent of Russians expressed pride, hope, joy, and trust in Russia’s special military operation. 80 percent (March 2022) and 76 percent (August 2022) of Russians supported Russian military actions in Ukraine. The Levada Centre found that in the first six months of Putin’s war against Ukraine, only between 14 and 20 percent of Russians opposed the invasion while a stunning 74 to 80 percent supported it. The number of Russians who believe the special military invasion is successful declined from 73 to 53 percent between May and September 2022. But the number of Russians who support the special military invasion only slightly declined during the same period from 80 to 72 percent. Russian liberals are as extinct as dinosaurs. It is mythical to believe Russians are more opposed to the war than older generations. 76 percent of 18–24-year-old Russians supported Putin's military operation against Ukraine compared to 84 percent of Russians above the age of 55; that is, Russia’s oldest generation was only eight percent more aggressive than Russian teenagers. Only six percent fewer Russians over the age of 55 (12 percent) opposed the war than teenage Russians (18 percent). 8. Mainstreaming Genocidal Discourse: For nearly two decades, or for the majority of Putin’s rule over Russia, Ukrainians have been dehumanised in the Russian media and political discourse. The

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Kremlin’s policy of dehumanisation deepened an existing Russian chauvinistic disparaging of Ukrainians that had existed in the USSR. Soviet policies had promoted Russian as the language of modernity and civilisation and Ukrainian as the language of uncouth peasants and the village. The Russian language had a future as the language of Homo Sovieticus, but the Ukrainian language did not. Coupled with this was the pejorative depiction of Ukrainians as younger brothers who could not function in the world without their Russian elder brother. Dehumanisation of Ukrainians has taken place alongside a revival of the Soviet ideological campaign against Ukrainian nationalism and Nazis and its application to any Ukrainians who upheld their national identity. In the USSR, Ukrainian patriots who condemned Russian chauvinism were accused of being in the pay of Western intelligence agencies, they were traitors seeking the disunity of the eastern Slavic peoples. Both in the Soviet era and contemporary Russia, Ukrainian ‘Nazis’ were US puppets. Russia’s dehumanisation denies the legitimacy of Ukraine as an independent and sovereign state and a separate Ukrainian nation. Ukrainians have no agency and Russia believes it alone has the right to control Little Russia. Ukrainians are supposedly Little Russians misguided by the West’s malfeasance and occupied by nationalist Nazi’s from the west of the country. Putin’s 6,000-word rambling essay published in July 2021, after two years of isolation during the covid pandemic, is his ideological treatise justifying his special military operation eight months later. Arguing Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people;’ the treatise confirmed the racist and chauvinistic beliefs Putin had long held and espoused. Since the invasion, hyper-imperialistic discourse in support of wiping Ukrainians from the map of Europe is commonly found on Russian television, newspapers, and news websites and in the discourse of Russian political leaders. Former President Dmitri Medvedev has attempted to outdo other Russian chauvinists in his racist attacks against Ukrainians. 9. Implementing Revanchist Expansionism: A revanchist goal to restore Russia’s alleged ‘golden age’ is tied to glorification of earlier expansions of Russia’s territory. As The Economist wrote, ‘The

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engine of fascism does not have a reverse gear’ and ‘Expansion is in its nature.’ Putin has convinced most of the Russian people that ‘Little Russia’ rightfully belongs to Russia. Putin’s revival of Tsarist and White Russian émigré imperial nationalism and the myth of a pan-Russian nation has echoes of the pan-German nation promoted by the Nazi’s in the 1930s. Russian imperial nationalism denies the existence of Ukrainians and Belarusians and backs a unified Russian World of three eastern Slavs and Russian speakers. Nazi pan-Germanism denied the existence of Austrians and laid claim to a greater Germany that encompassed German speaking peoples. Russian revanchist claims towards Crimea and Sevastopol began on the first day of the post-Soviet era and territorial claims towards them were made throughout the next three decades. The signing of the 1997 treaty between Russia and Ukraine that recognised their border and the 2010 Kharkiv accords that granted Russia a long-term lease on the Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol failed to halt these Russian territorial demands. Ukraine’s borders have been subjected to revanchist claims since Putin’s well-known speech to the NATO-Russia Council in 2008, where he wrongly claimed southern Ukraine was populated by ‘Russians.’ During the eight years between the 2014 crisis and 2022 invasion, Putin and other Kremlin leaders repeatedly laid claim to what they called ‘ancient Russian lands’ in New Russia and the Black Sea Lands of south-eastern Ukraine that were allegedly wrongly included by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin within the Ukrainian SSR. 10. Mainstreaming Genocide: The final aspect of Russia as a fascist state is the Kremlin’s genocide of Ukrainian national identity. The Kremlin claim of a mythical Ukrainian genocide of Russian speakers in the Donbas given as justification for the special military operation had no basis in fact. In fact, it is Russia’s military aggression in 2014 and especially in 2022 that has brought about destruction, depopulation, and genocide in the Donbas. In the 2021 Ukrainian census the two oblasts of the Donbas had a combined population of 6.1 million making it the most inhabited region of Ukraine. In 2014 approximately two million of its inhabitants fled as refugees

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and IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons). By summer 2022, another nearly three million had been killed or fled. Putin’s military aggression has depopulated the Donbas of 80 percent of its pre-2014 inhabitants, or 4.88 million. The Kremlin’s goal of denazification is the eradication of Ukrainian national identity and its replacement by a Little Russian branch of the pan-Russian nation. A Kremlin propagandist proposed that, ‘Denazification will inevitably mean de-Ukrainianisation—a rejection of the large-scale artificial growth of the ethnic self-identification component of the populations in the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia.’ Putin countenances no opposition to denazification. Ukrainian cities and towns that oppose his invading forces, even when they are Russian speaking such as Kharkiv and Mariupol, are bombarded and flattened, while their civilians are starved, tortured, deported, and murdered. Opposition to Russia’s armed forces signifies the population’s contamination by Ukrainian Nazi’s who should be ruthlessly exterminated, even if this means the destruction of large tracts of regions such as the Donbas. In areas occupied by Russian forces, death lists are used to arrest, torture and murder local leaders, journalists, and civil society activists. Death lists were drawn up prior to the invasion of those who held a Ukrainian national identity, were supporters of the Euromaidan Revolution and backed Ukraine’s integration into Europe. Their place was to be taken by local quislings, often from banned pro-Russian parties, and Russian officials and intelligence officers who have been brought in to rule as colonial overlords.

Russian Imperial Nationalist Depiction of Ukraine Russian imperial nationalists believe Ukraine is an artificial construct composed of four parts: 1.

Crimea: The peninsula was allegedly always Russian. This racist claim has no basis in historical fact because it presumes the region had no history prior to 1783 and ignores

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2.

3.

4.

the existence of a Crimean Tatar state which existed for six hundred years prior to the Russian imperial conquest. New Russia: South-east Ukraine was wrongly included within Ukraine by Soviet leaders because it is ‘ancient Russian land’ and populated by ‘Russians.’ Russia’s special military operation would liberate and annex New Russia. Little Russia (Malorossia): Little Russians living in central Ukraine have always striven to be aligned with the Russian World. Western Ukraine: The region was never considered to be part of the Russian World. On Russian television host and propagandist Yuri Kot said Russia should take all of ‘historical Novorossia, Malorossia, and in principle all of the border of Ukraine up to Lviv.’ Russian media have proposed that Russia and Ukraine’s western neighbours divide Ukraine with its western region re-occupied by Poland, Hungary, and Romania.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced in July 2022 would annex New Russia that year and prepare for the future ‘liberation’ of Kyiv and Little Russia. The Kremlin’s goal of annexing New Russia was speeded up by Ukraine’s successful offensive in Kharkiv which made Putin look weak and had three goals. The first is to obtain grain and water supplies for Crimea. The second is to form a land bridge from the Russian border and Russian-occupied Donbas to Crimea, and possibly all the way to Odesa and the Transnistria frozen conflict in Moldova. The third is to deny Ukraine access to the Black Sea, thereby destroying its trade with the outside world and proving Ukraine is a failed state. On 30 September 2022, Putin signed the documents which annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson after blatantly fraudulent ‘referendums.’ Putin used the occasion to thank the ‘heroes of great Russia’ who had fought for New Russia since 2014 and asked the audience to join him ‘in a minute of silence to honour their memory’:

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‘We will always remember the heroes of the Russian Spring, those who refused to accept the neo-Nazi coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014, all those who died for the right to speak their native language, to preserve their culture, traditions, and religion, and for the very right to live. We remember the soldiers of Donbass, the martyrs of the “Odessa Khatyn,” the victims of inhuman terrorist attacks carried out by the Kyiv regime. We commemorate volunteers and militiamen, civilians, children, women, senior citizens, Russians, Ukrainians, people of various nationalities; popular leader of Donetsk…and all our soldiers and officers who died a hero’s death during the special military operation. They are heroes. (Applause.)’

Three Sources of Putin’s Personality Putin’s three personality traits culminated in his obsession with, and invasion of Ukraine. Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny explained, ‘The war with Ukraine was started and waged, of course, by Putin, trying to solve his domestic political problems. But the real war party is the entire elite and the system of power itself, which is an endless self-reproducing Russian authoritarianism of the imperial kind. External aggression in any form, from diplomatic rhetoric to outright warfare, is its preferred mode of operation, and Ukraine is its preferred target.’ Navalny explained Putin and the Kremlin’s obsession with Ukraine as follows: ‘First, jealousy of Ukraine and its possible successes is an innate feature of post-Soviet power in Russia; it was also characteristic of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. But since the beginning of Putin’s rule, and especially after the Orange Revolution that began in 2004, hatred of Ukraine’s European choice, and the desire to turn it into a failed state, have become a lasting obsession not only for Putin but also for all politicians of his generation.’

Navalny continued: ‘Control over Ukraine is the most important article of faith for all Russians with imperial views, from officials to ordinary people. In their opinion, Russia combined with a subordinate Ukraine amounts to a “reborn U.S.S.R. and empire.” Without Ukraine, in this view, Russia is just a country with no chance of world domination. Everything that Ukraine acquires is something taken away from Russia.’

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The best way to understand Putin is to understand he combines his KGB career background with rehabilitation of Tsarist imperial nationalism and the criminality of a mafia kleptocrat. Chekist Putin’s first personality trait is his career as a KGB officer. Putin joined the KGB in the 1970s at a time when most Soviet people had given up on communism; this was after all the Leonid Brezhnev ‘era of stagnation.’ Putin was different, he was still a true believer in communism. Putin has never gotten over the disintegration of the USSR. In 2005, a year after the Rose and Orange Revolutions, Putin said the disintegration of the USSR ‘was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.’ Putin’s closest ally is Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, with whom he has a common KGB and FSB background. Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the Russian political consultancy R. Politik, believes Patrushev’s hard-line ‘ideas form the foundations of decisions taken by Putin. He is one of the few figures Putin listens to.’ Putin’s nostalgia for the USSR drove his resovietisation of Russia. Putin’s re-sovietisation took place at the same time Ukraine was undergoing de-sovietisation and decommunisation. Putin incorporated the Soviet national anthem into the Russian anthem, but without its lyrics. There are no memorials (i.e., museums, monuments, plaques) to Soviet crimes, no discussion of Russia’s guilt for these crimes, and no debate about Russia imperial past. Ukrainian film director Serhiy Loznitsa said that the absence of a Nurembergstyle trial for Soviet crimes against humanity has led to its successor state, Russia, committing war crimes in Ukraine. Without the process of decommunisation and coming to terms with Soviet crimes against humanity, Russians are unable to appreciate and condemn the war crimes being committed by their army in Ukraine. When the Levada Centre asked Russians if they were morally responsible for the loss of civilian lives in Ukraine between 58-65 percent said Russians were not responsible with only about a third saying they were. Andrey Sidorov, deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University, claimed international human

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rights agreements do not apply to Russia because: ‘The rules of war, according to international conventions, are of an advisory nature: not to strike [certain objects], if possible. But it’s no longer possible.’ Eurasianism, a popular imperial ideology in Russia, denies Russia committed any errors in its imperial policies towards nonRussian peoples. Instead, Eurasianism makes the ludicrous claim Russian imperial rule was benign and beneficial to non-Russians. Ethan Menchinger, Lecturer in Islamic history at the University of Manchester, wrote a letter to The Economist where he pointed out: ‘The fact is, Russia, in its various guises, has an older colonial history than most Western powers. Russian colonialism began in earnest by the mid1500s, with Muscovy’s conquest of the Khanates. The list of peoples and places conquered and incorporated into Russia is long. Kalmyks, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Georgians. Dagestan, Khiva, Kokand. It takes committed expansion over centuries to get as big as the Russian Empire.’ ‘It takes violence, too. Armed conquest, intimidation, forced settlements, deportation, ethnic cleansing, slaughter. Maybe a million Circassians were expelled, resettled, or killed during and after their conquest in the 19th century.’ ‘The Russian nationalist myth of a benign empire has been coupled with the rehabilitation of White Russian emigres since the mid-2000s. Russia has therefore never undertaken any soul searching of its imperial past, continued to glorify the Tsarist Empire and Soviet Union, promote a cult of the tyrant Stalin ignores and downplay his crimes against humanity.’

Russian and Soviet identity were closely integrated in the Soviet Union and most Russians have always understood ‘Russia’ to be larger than the Russian RSFSR or the Russian Federation. A Russian who kept his identity anonymous for security reasons told Belton that Patrushev, ‘is super Soviet KGB,’ and ‘understands everything as if the Soviet Union still existed, and he sees himself in these terms.’ Soviet mythology about the Great Patriotic War became the cornerstone of Russian national identity and a new religious cult— as it had been in Brezhnev’s USSR. Despite little of the Russian SFSR being occupied by the Nazi’s, Russians are presented in official discourse as the main Soviet nationality who suffered from the Nazi occupation and who provided the main contribution to the defeat of Nazism. Putin’s mythical view of the war ignores the three-year long Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939-1941 and the fact that the

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bloodlands of Europe were Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine—not Russia. The source of Putin’s xenophobia and paranoia about Western conspiracies behind colour revolutions and opposition protests lies in his KGB background. In the Soviet Union, dissidents and nationalists were depicted as working against Soviet power on behalf of Western intelligence agencies. In contemporary Russia, civil society groups, independent media and opposition parties are obliged by law to register as ‘foreign agents.’ Russia’s totalitarian dictatorship cannot exist without internal and external enemies against whom violent retribution is undertaken. Russian media and television exceled in fanning hatred, aggression, and xenophobia. The Kremlin’s enemies are three-fold: 1. 2. 3.

The liberal West. A Ukrainian independent state. Traitors and Western ‘fifth columnists within Russia.

The Kremlin believes Russian forces are fighting Ukrainian nationalists and the entire Western world in Ukraine. To a certain degree they are right; many NATO members believe that Russia’s goal is to overturn the international order created after World War II and the liberal order after the collapse of communism in 1991. In July 2022, Putin told the State Duma that the war in Ukraine was ‘the beginning of a cardinal breakdown of the American-led world order.’ Addressing NATO’s Madrid summit Zelenskyy stated: ‘Has Ukraine not sacrificed enough [to join NATO]? Is our contribution to the defence of Europe and of the civilised world still insufficient? What else is needed then? … [Ukraine], which is not a member of NATO, albeit with your support, is holding out against a great power that you all officially identify as the main threat to yourselves. We are holding back Russia from destroying us and destroying you.’

The Kremlin has never viewed colour revolutions in Ukraine as authentic popular protests but instead as Western intelligence operations against Russia with the goal of limiting Russian influence in Eurasia and dividing the ‘Russian (eastern Slavic) people.’ The existence of a Ukrainian nation is a conspiracy devised by Austrians

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and Poles prior to 1914 and the US and EU in the contemporary era to divide the pan-Russian nation. Russian Chauvinist Putin’s second personality trait is his belief in a pan-Russian nation, a myth developed by the Tsarist Russian Empire which remained influential among White Russian emigres. Putin has repeatedly denied the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians, said Ukraine is a Russian land and Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people.’ Putin’s imperial discourse rules out Ukraine existing outside the Russian World. Putin believes his historical mission is to ‘Gather Russian Lands’; that is, rebuild the ‘natural’ unity of the eastern Slavs in the USSR. The eastern Slavic Russian World would be the centre of the Eurasian Economic Union. In Putin’s worldview, a Russian World uniting the three eastern Slavs is tantamount to a modern-day ‘Kievan Russia’ (a Russian nationalist interpretation of Kyivan Rus). Putin’s imperial nationalism is primordial; it is adamant the three eastern Slavs were born in ‘Kievan Russia’ and they should always remain united in the panRussian nation. In such a framework, Ukrainians do not have a right to choose to live outside the Russian World and deny they are Little Russians. In 2016, Putin unveiled a huge monument next to the Kremlin to Grand Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr) who ruled Kyiv Rus over a century before Moscow was founded. Kyiv, whose 1,500th anniversary of its foundation was celebrated in 1982, is 600 years older than Moscow which was only founded in 1146. Russia’s belief it is the ‘elder brother’ of the eastern Slavs has always been a myth with no historical basis. Mafia Don Putin’s third personality is that of a corrupt kleptocrat. Because politics and money are closely connected in Putin’s regime the president must have the greatest volume of financial resources to receive respect from his boyars (oligarchs). The Blackmail State permits the

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oligarchs to plunder Russia and to not be prosecuted only if they remain loyal to the Tsar and do his bidding at home and abroad. In 2010, Spanish National Court prosecutor Jose ‘Pepe’ Grinda Gonzalez first coined the term ‘virtual mafia state’ and he considered Belarus, Chechnya, and Russia to represent this category, believing that Ukraine was moving in that direction. For these two countries and territory, one could not differentiate between the activities of the government and organised crime groups. Edward Lucas wrote, ‘Gangsterdom, spookdom and officialdom are intertwined, to the point that they are really just one pillar with three sides—a kind of unholy trinity.’ In spring 2012, an article in the influential Foreign Affairs magazine included Russia in its list of ‘mafia states’ around the world. Russia’s mafia regime has six features: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Grand theft in government contracts distributed to loyalists close to President Putin. Russian elites hide their assets in other people’s names. Privatisations are rigged by insider deals and through lower than market prices. Law enforcement bodies collude with organised crime at the highest levels. Three quarters of Russian national income is deposited in offshore tax havens. President Putin is reputedly the wealthiest person in the world. Anders Aslund estimates Putin has amassed a net worth between $100 billion and $160 billion. This would make him wealthier than Amazon owner Jeff Bezos.

The Russian authorities do not like spotlights on their kleptocratic behaviour. In December 2020 a new law preserved the right of judges and law enforcement officers to conceal their personal assets to protect them from pressure from those seeking to spotlight Russia’s kleptocracy. The highly corrupt Russian judiciary is sealed off from external pressure and made even more unaccountable to Russian citizens. In 2021, Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was declared an ‘extremist organisation’ and closed because it had exposed widespread corruption in Russia. Navalny

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was poisoned and when the attempt to murder him failed he was imprisoned on trumped-up charges. An important factor why Russia’s kleptocratic leaders cannot leave office is because the totalitarian dictatorship is based on grand corruption. Russian officials are involved at all levels in corruption networks and have extensive ties with organised crime. The authorities do not fight corruption while official anti-corruption campaigns are a political tool to keep elites in line. Russia’s corruption is used to ensure state officials and oligarchs remain loyal to Putin in return for controlling the population and assisting the state in suppressing dissent in their regions. Russia’s ‘blackmail state’ is built on a traditional system of the Tsar (now President Putin) ruling with the boyars (now oligarchs). Boyars and oligarch’s wealth were dependent upon their good relationship with the Tsar/President. An oligarch’s wealth is based on his good relations and provision of services to the president to whom they deliver tribute and who protects them from criminal investigations. The FSB monitor the relationship by keeping files on the oligarchs to ensure they do not support opposition to the president. While promoting xenophobia against the West, Russian elites love to deposit their ill-gotten gains in London, Vienna, Cyprus, and elsewhere in Europe and the US. The US-based National Bureau of Economic Research calculated that three quarters of Russia’s national income is held in offshore accounts and owned by corrupt elites. The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project estimated that Putin and his corrupt associates have stolen $24 billion. Douglas Century, writing in the Globe and Mail newspaper, analysed how Putin, ‘worked hand-in-glove with one of the most violent mobsters in the former Soviet Union’ and ‘Putin and Russian organised crime have been inextricably linked since his emergence as a public figure in the early 1990s.’ Century believes, ‘Putin is the most brazen, powerful and wealthy mobster of all time.’ Putin’s background as a criminal coupled with ‘his early involvement with violent organised crime figures has shaped his ethos.’ The world views of Putin and organised crime leaders with whom he closely

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worked were ‘forged in the decaying Soviet Union when theft from the state, bribery and other crimes were normalised behaviour.’ Putin’s three traits make him one of the most dangerous political leaders in the world. Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, anger with the West, and paranoia deepened during his covid isolation. Putin’s ill-health, about which there has been ample speculation, may have made him fear he has little time left on earth, pushing him to invade Ukraine sooner than later.

Putin’s Cult of the Tyrant Stalin Europe and Russia deal with the end of World War II in two very different ways. On 8 May, Europe commemorates the human tragedy of World War II while on 9 May, Russia celebrates military victory in the Great Patriotic War. Commemoration and celebration are two very different approaches to World War II. Europe’s commemoration combines sadness at huge human suffering together with patriotic pride in soldiers, partisans and civilian volunteers who defeated the evil of Nazism. In contrast, Russia’s triumphalist celebration glorifies military victory, conquest of a new empire in centraleastern Europe and Stalin’s transformation of the USSR into a nuclear superpower. Pride in Stalin’s alleged achievements override his monstrous cruelty and crimes against humanity. In 1964, annual celebrations of the Great Patriotic War were introduced in the USSR which came to overshadow the annual anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Putin revived the cult of the Great Patriotic War as part of his re-sovietisation of Russia. Central to Russia’s cult of the Great Patriotic War is Stalin whose crimes against humanity are downplayed, denied, or ignored. Stalin is instead praised as the builder of a powerful nuclear Soviet superpower the West feared. Imperialism, violent territorial conquest, and subjugation of foreign nations are central to Stalin’s legacy. Stalin’s empire in central-eastern Europe rose on three occasions in 1953 in eastern Germany, in 1956 in Hungary, and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, and each time was brutally suppressed by the Kremlin. In May 2022, the celebration of the Great Patriotic War was expanded to include

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glorification of the ‘liberation’ of ‘ancient Russian lands’ in southeastern Ukraine. The ‘liberation’ of Crimea in 2014 and south-eastern Ukraine in 2022 allegedly proved Russia had revived as a great power. Putin’s fanning of a cult of Stalin has been undertaken throughout his rule of Russia, reversing the more critical view of the Soviet tyrant during Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness) in the late 1980s. Russia has never undergone a similar process of denazification that reshaped post-war Germany and transformed it into a leading European democracy. It is impossible to comprehend Germany led by a former Gestapo officer who, three decades after 1945, would be fanning a cult of Adolf Hitler. Three decades after the USSR’s disintegration a former KGB officer is ruling Russia and has fanned a cult of Stalin. Two decades of Putin’s Stalin cult has led to all age groups in Russia holding a positive view of the tyrant. Nearly half of young Russians aged 18-24, who were born after the USSR disintegrated, had never heard of Stalin’s crimes. A 2019 poll by the Levada Centre, the last remaining independent polling organisation in Russia, found a stunning 70 percent of Russians believed Stalin played a positive role for Russia, up from 54 percent four years earlier. Half of Russians support the erection of a monument to Stalin. Europeans would be very alarmed if half of Germans supported the unveiling of a monument to Hitler. Putin’s cult of war and adoration of Stalin have played important roles in driving his invasion of Ukraine and lay behind unchecked brutality and war crimes of Russian troops. The Kremlin views Ukraine as providing a dangerous and threatening post-Soviet alternative to Russia—and not just as a democracy. The cult of Stalin has underpinned the evolution of Putin’s regime towards a totalitarian dictatorship. This has not suddenly appeared in Russia but has evolved over the more than two decades of Putin’s rule. In 2007, The Economist described Russia as a ‘neoKGB state’ drawing on Russian academic scholarship which showed its roots were in former KGB Chairman Yuriy Andropov’s leadership of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and Putin’s nostalgia for pre-Gorbachev USSR. Important for

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understanding the invasion was that these Soviet and Russian siloviki had never gotten over the disintegration of the USSR, had a mission to restore the power of the state, held a world view infused with domestic and external enemies, treated the population as subjects with no rights and were imperial nationalists towards Ukraine and other neighbours. Although they are convinced only they understand the outside world in fact they are intellectual pygmies, and—as the invasion has shown—tacticians and not strategists. In 2020-2022, after more of a decade of a cult of Stalin, Russia returned to its Soviet Stalinist roots. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan write: ‘In its sweeping reach into domestic society, foreign affairs, and the military, the FSB has begun to look less like its late-Soviet predecessor, the KGB. It now resembles something much scarier: the NKVD, Stalin’s notorious secret police, which conducted the great purges of the 1930s and maintained an iron lock on Russian society into the early years of the Cold War. Instead of the KGB of the 1970s and 1980s, the FSB increasingly resembles Stalin’s secret services, the NKVD, which aimed to a much greater degree at total control of the Russian population.’

Stalin’s NKVD ‘was designed for a regime that was constantly at war, like Putin’s Russia, against domestic and foreign enemies. Soldatov and Borogan write: ‘And what made the NKVD so powerful—and so feared—was that it answered only to Stalin, not to the Communist Party or the Soviet government.’

Decommunisation in Ukraine, Resovietisation in Russia Critical views of Stalin which emerged during glasnost were continued after 1991 in Ukraine and accelerated after the Orange and especially following the Euromaidan revolutions. Ukraine’s nation building process was driven by a desire to put the Soviet legacy behind it and return the country to Europe. Desovietisation and decommunisation assisted Ukraine’s Europeanisation; consequently, only seven percent of Ukrainians hold a positive view of Stalin. Soviet nostalgia has grown to a record two thirds of Russians who

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lament the demise of the Soviet Union while in Ukraine this has continued to decline to only 11 percent. Putin’s resovietisation and re-Stalinisation of Russia has taken place while Ukraine has desovietised and Europeanised. The terroristic destruction of civilian targets, murder of civilians, raping and looting by the Russian army in Ukraine are an outgrowth of Russia’s resovietisation, cult of Stalin, and the cult of militarism and violence. The Russian army in Ukraine resembles to all intents and purposes the Soviet army that looted and raped its way across central-eastern Europe and Germany at the end of World War II. Russia has never dealt with the sins of its past. The origins of Russia’s callous brutality in Ukraine lies with its Soviet legacy. Russian society under Putin has sunk into moral degradation, widespread corruption, and the creation of a mafia state, where there is cynicism, a stagnation of Russians into subjects with no rights, and destruction of civil society. Ukrainian society is dramatically different to that in Russia. 85 percent of Ukrainians say they are citizens of Ukraine, including 78 percent of ethnic Russians and 81 percent of Russian-speakers living in Ukraine. Ukraine has experienced three colour revolutions in 1990-1991, 2003-2004 and 2013-2014, has a vibrant civil society and active citizens, and widespread volunteer movement. Ukraine has pursued desovietisation since the late 1980s, decommunisation after the Euromaidan Revolution and de-Russification (i.e., decolonisation) since the invasion. In supporting Putin’s regime, Russians have deepened their descent into the labyrinth of being only inconsequential subjects with no rights and providing support for imperial wars where tens of thousands die as cannon fodder. In contrast, Ukrainians have demanded their rulers treat them as citizens with rights. Ukraine differs fundamentally from Russia in the resilience of its civil society and civic identity and in its desovietisation and decommunisation. Ukraine has an active and well-developed civil society and strong sense of civic identity. Ukraine’s strong sense of civic identity has deepened in response to Russia’s military aggression in 2014 which following decentralisation diffused to local levels.

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Tymofii Brik and Jennifer B. Murtazashvili write: ‘The seeds of local collective action, which have proved pivotal in this current war, were planted in 2014.’ They continued: ‘A major source of Ukraine’s resilience is this strong sense of local civic identity. It is the backbone of the country’s self-defence, and it helps explain why so many Ukrainians—especially Russian speakers—are so willing to defend their communities against Russian invasion. And it’s no accident that local governments have so much authority. Decentralisation reforms adopted after the Maidan revolution in 2014, which overthrew the Russian-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych and came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, have played a pivotal role in building national unity. The devolution of power has facilitated greater social cohesion by transforming competing ethnic identities from zero-sum competition into positive-sum community pride. A more decentralized government has given Ukrainians the sense that they are building their own country.’

Desovietisation and decommunisation distanced Ukraine from the Soviet Union and brought the country closer to European values. Following Russia’s invasion, the Kyiv-based Rating Sociological Group observed a profound shift in Ukrainian public opinion away from nostalgia for the disintegration of the USSR. Less than one percent of Ukrainians hold a Soviet identity, including only 2.3 and 1.3 percent respectively in the east and south. The Rating Sociological Group reported: ‘Thus, as of the end of April 2022, the lowest level of nostalgia for the collapse of the USSR over the history of observations was recorded in Ukraine (11 percent). Most of the respondents—87 percent—do not miss the USSR.’ Putin’s invasion has destroyed any lingering nostalgia among Ukrainians for an evil empire that they believe continues to exist in Putin’s Russia and which they associate with the former Soviet Union. The Kremlin particularly loathed Ukraine’s 2015 decommunisation laws which emulated those that had been adopted earlier in Poland, the Czech Republic, the three Baltic states and elsewhere in central-eastern Europe, because they provided an alternative future without Soviet nostalgia. Ukraine’s laws removed 6,000 monuments of Soviet leader Lenin, opened Soviet secret services archives to make them one of the most accessible in former communist states, condemned Hitler and Stalin in equal measures as tyrants and criminals, and changed celebration of the 1941-1945

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Great Patriotic War to commemoration of World War II in 19391945. Ukraine’s decommunisation was anathema for Putin as it rejected everything he stood for. In equating Stalin with Hitler, Ukraine undermined Putin’s religious cult of the Great Patriotic War because it shed light on the three-year Nazi-Soviet Pact the Kremlin would prefer to not talk about. Stalin was after all the biggest Nazi collaborator of World War II. In south-eastern Ukraine the Russian occupation authorities have reinstalled Lenin monuments. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes committed by his army are an outgrowth of Russia’s unwillingness to come to terms with Stalin’s crimes against humanity.

Putin’s Obsession with Ukraine Lies at the Heart of the Artificial Crisis Since the 2014 crisis all manner of explanations have been put forward to understand Russian military aggression against Ukraine and most of these have been proven to be wrong. The myth of blaming NATO and the EU enlargement, popular among the Kremlin’s useful idiots on the extreme left and right-wing realists, has been completely debunked by Putin’s justifications for his special military operation against Ukraine. Ukraine has never been offered NATO membership. Vladimir Socor writes that Putin claim it went to war to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO was mendacious: ‘In reality; Ukraine’s NATO membership prospects had receded with every passing year since NATO’s initial 2008 promise. Opponents of that promise in Western Europe soon grew into a critical mass within NATO.’ Socor points out that, ‘When Russia made its decision to invade Ukraine, that country was more remote than ever not only from NATO membership but from any track that might lead to membership.’ Socor wrote, ‘The Kremlin nevertheless invaded in 2022 without any provocation.’ Putin’s invasion was driven by his long-term obsession with Ukraine that became evident in his July 2021 ideological treatise on ‘Russian-Ukrainian unity.’ Only after this did an increasing number of Western commentators come to understand how Russian

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imperial nationalism towards Ukraine and Ukrainians was the root cause of the Kremlin’s military aggression. According to Russian investigative journalist Mikhail Zygar, Putin has been obsessed with Ukraine since his first year in office in 2020. Putin’s obsession is evident in Russia’s daily diatribe disparaging of Ukraine. 40 percent of the Kremlin’s disinformation in the EUvsDisinfo database has targeted Ukraine, a figure higher than Russian disinformation cases against the twenty-seven members of the European Union. The EU’s Disinformation Review writes, ‘Ukraine has a special place within the disinformation (un)reality’ and Ukraine is by far the most misrepresented country in the Russian media. It was not always like this. The Soviet regime recognised a separate Ukrainian people, although it portrayed them as close to Russians. The Ukrainian language was recognised, although Ukrainians were subjected to Russification. The Ukrainian SSR was a ‘sovereign’ republic within the Soviet Union, although Ukrainians who demanded full sovereignty (i.e., independence) were politically repressed. Stalin negotiated three seats at the UN for the USSR (representing Russia), Ukraine, and Belarus. Russia’s initial goal was to undertake regime change by replacing Zelenskyy with a pro-Russian puppet. A detailed investigation by The Washington Post found that Russia had at least two satraps in waiting, Yanukovych who was brought to Belarus in March 2022 in preparation to be reinstalled into power, and Oleh Tsaryov, a former Party of Regions deputy. A third Russian satrap was leader of the Opposition Platform-For Life Party Viktor Medvedchuk. Yanukovych and Tsaryov lived in exile in Russia since 2014 and had been prosecuted in absentia for treason. Medvedchuk was arrested after the invasion and charged with treason. Western intelligence prior to the invasion pointed to Nashi (Ours) Party leader Yevhen Murayev as also a potential Russian satrap. Reinstalling Yanukovych as Russia’s satrap in Kyiv was in accordance with eight years of Kremlin disinformation he had been illegally removed in a Western-backed ‘putsch.’ Returning Yanukovych to power would rewind history by removing the victory of

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Euromaidan revolutionaries and their subsequent policies that allegedly made Ukraine into a US puppet state and ‘Anti-Russia’ outpost on Russia’s border. Returning Yanukovych to power would also have reversed Putin’s personal humiliation of defeat during the Euromaidan Revolution, the second time this happened, with the first being the Orange Revolution. Russia would task a pro-Russian satrap with implementing the Kremlin’s goals of Ukraine becoming part of the Russian World and the Eurasian Economic Union. Zelenskyy never fled and Ukrainians out up a fierce resistance, forcing Putin to temporarily abandon his plans. In July 2022, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: ‘We feel sorry for Ukrainian history, which is crumbling before our eyes, and we feel sorry for those who succumbed to the state propaganda of the Kyiv regime and those who support it, aimed at making Ukraine become the eternal enemy of Russia.’ Lavrov added that Russia would help the Ukrainian people to remove the ‘absolutely anti-national and anti-historical’ [Zelenskyy] regime. Under international law Russia had no right to undertake any such actions in Ukraine. Regime change would return Ukraine to what the Kremlin understands as ‘normality’; that is, a relationship between elder brother Russians and younger brother Ukrainians that had existed in the Soviet Union. After two decades of what the Kremlin regarded as ‘anti-Russian’ nation-building in Ukraine the election of Yanukovych in 2010 brought back ‘normality’ to Russia’s relations with Ukraine. Yanukovych agreed to all of Russia’s demands in the domestic and foreign domains that had been laid out by President Medvedev in his 2009 open letter to President Viktor Yushchenko. Putin pressured Yanukovych to reject European integration and after his re-election in 2015 to make Ukraine a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. In implementing Putin’s plan, Yanukovych would have fulfilled the Russian president’s historic goal of the ‘Gathering of Russian Lands.’ The natural state of Russian-Ukrainian affairs, in the eyes of the Kremlin, was undermined when Yanukovych was ousted from power by an ‘illegal putsch’ during the Euromaidan Revolution. Putin ‘Gathered Russian Lands’ in Crimea in 2014 but his attempt

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at using subversion to mobilise pro-Russian popular uprisings in south-eastern Ukraine failed. In 2022, a full-scale invasion replaced his earlier plans that had failed to separate so-called New Russia from Ukraine in 2014. The Russian media have long depicted Ukraine as a country where ‘fascist’ putschists came to power during the Euromaidan Revolution and who have ruled the country on behalf of Washington as a US puppet state. This myth is the most common theme in Russian disinformation narratives about Ukraine. The Kremlin is adamant Little Russians wished to belong to the Russian World but have been repressed and suffered alleged genocide under the boots of nationalist Nazis and the West. During the ceremony for the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson Putin said: ‘For eight long years, people in Donbass were subjected to genocide, shelling and blockades; in Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, a criminal policy was pursued to cultivate hatred for Russia, for everything Russian.’ The special military operation aimed to liberate and return Ukraine’s Russian speakers to the Russian World. Russia’s 175,000 troops were far too small because the Kremlin had drunk its own Kool-Aid and believed nineteenth century imperial nationalist myths about Little Russians waiting to be greeting them as liberators. A Russian soldier who was part of these invasion forces said they were told they were going to ‘free people’ who ‘are waiting for us’ but ‘we went there and faced the fact that no one was waiting for us.’ The cause of the crisis was nothing to do with NATO or even EU enlargement but Putin’s obsession with returning Ukraine to the Russian World. The Kremlin had failed to accomplish Ukraine’s return to the Russian World through the Minsk peace process and would now undertake this in Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s words by ‘military-technical means.’ This was a warning about Putin’s infamous and illegal invasion of Ukraine that was launched on 24 February 2022.

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Putin’s Imperial Nationalism and Invasion of Ukraine The unbelievable happened when Russia invaded Ukraine in 21st century Europe. The World was faced with a crisis on a magnitude of that which it faced in 1961 in Cuba. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the biggest war in Europe and has produced the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Since the mid-1990s, Russia has demanded Eurasia be recognised as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence where countries could not join NATO and the EU. Russia has also been opposed to Eurasian countries using UN peacekeepers in frozen conflicts that have been artificially manufactured by the Kremlin to thwart proWestern countries integrating into NATO and the EU. Russia has also aggressively opposed the spread of democracy in Eurasia. The existence of a successful democracy in Ukraine is viewed by the Kremlin as a threat to Russia’s totalitarian dictatorship. In 2010-2014, Ukraine pursued a non-bloc (in effect neutral) foreign policy which did not seek NATO membership. Ukraine’s non-bloc status failed to prevent Russia from invading and annexing Crimea in February-March 2014 and launching a military invasion and hybrid warfare against the Donbas. Neutrality is understood by Russia as subservience to its subjugation and not impartiality in foreign affairs. Russia has always interpreted neutrality in a different manner to that of Finland and Austria during the Cold War who did not join the EU or NATO. Finland’s neutrality ended in Spring 2022 when, following Russia’s invasion, it joined NATO. As witnessed by the Kremlin’s aggressive policies towards Ukraine in 2012-2014, Russia understands neutral status as Ukraine returning to the ‘normality’ of being a younger brother within Russia’s sphere of influence. Russia has sought Ukraine’s formal renunciation of NATO membership and its demilitarisation (i.e., renunciation of military cooperation with NATO and Western countries). Since the launch of the EU’s Eastern Partnership in 2010, Russia has opposed EU enlargement alongside its long-standing hostility to NATO enlargement into Eurasia. Russia pressured Yanukovych in 2012-2013 to withdraw from the EU Association

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Agreement and DCFTA (Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement), two elements of the EU’s Eastern Partnership. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has also failed to prevent Ukraine’s integration into the EU which President Poroshenko pursued after the Euromaidan Revolution. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destroyed public support in Ukraine for a pro-Russian orientation in general, and for membership of the Eurasian Economic Union. A June 2022 poll found only three percent of Ukrainians support membership of the Eurasian Economic Union. Ukraine’s parliament is cutting all diplomatic, political, economic, trade, and cultural ties with Russia. Public support for NATO and EU membership meanwhile has gone through the roof in all regions of Ukraine, including in the traditionally sceptical south-east. Key Points 

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There is no evidence of NATO enlargement provoking the 2014 crisis or Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s reaction to Finland and Sweden joining NATO was very muted. Russian military aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and 20222 was driven by imperial nationalist myths about Ukraine and Ukrainians whose roots lie in the rehabilitation of White Russian emigres since the mid 2000s. White Russian émigrés were largely fascists, anti-Semites and Ukrainophobes who denied the existence of Ukraine and a Ukrainian people. These chauvinistic views became mainstream in Putin’s Russia during the decade preceding the invasion. Putin’s long rambling essay published in July 2021 on the unity of Russians and Ukrainians was the ideological treatise driving his special military operation. The goal of denazification would transform Ukraine into Little Russia and Ukrainians into Little Russians while the goal of demilitarisation would transform Ukraine into a Russian satellite state.

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The Kremlin’s goals were to return Ukraine to the Russian imperial nationalist understanding of ‘normality’ in Russian-Ukrainian relations. In 2013-2015, the Kremlin had planned for Yanukovych to reject the EU Association Agreement, become their pro-Russian satrap, and take Ukraine into the Eurasian Union. By subjugating Ukraine, Putin would have fulfilled his destiny and entered Russian history as the ‘Gatherer of Russian Lands,’ Great Russia, Little Russia, and White Russia would be reunited in the Russian World and would lie at the centre of the Eurasian Economic Union. Putin would have reassembled the three east Slavic peoples who had constituted the core of the former Soviet Union. A former KGB general talking about his colleagues to The Economist in 2007 said, ‘They really believed that they were chosen and are guided by God and that even the high oil prices they have benefitted from are God’s will.’ Putin’s military aggression in 2014 and especially in 2022 has led to genocide in the Donbas, Ukraine’s most populous region, with the killing and fleeing of 80 percent (4.88 million) of its 6.1 million inhabitants. Russia’s military aggression and invasion has committed genocide in the Donbas. Russia and Ukraine have developed in fundamentally different ways since 1991. Putin’s has resovietised Russia, promoted a cult of Stalin and replaced Russia seeing itself as part of the common European home by Russia lying at the centre of a unique Eurasian civilisation. Ukraine’s desovietisation and decommunisation have been beneficial to the country’s European integration. Ukraine’s resilience in the war with Russia is an outgrowth of a developed civic identity, organised civil society and active citizens which emerged during three popular uprisings and in response to Russian military aggression. The growth of Russia’s civic identity was stymied under Putin who destroyed Russia’s civil society and where the Russian population stagnated into subjects with no rights.

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Suggested Reading Brik, Tymofii and Murtazashvili, Jennifer B. (2022). ‘The Source of Ukraine’s Resilience,’ Foreign Affairs, 28 June. https://www.foreigna ffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-06-28/source-ukraines-resilience Coalsen, Robert. (2022). ‘Special Operation Z: Moscow's Pro-War Symbol Conquers Russia—And Sets Alarm Bells Ringing,’ RFERL, 17 March. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-letter-z-fascist-symbol/31 758267.html Gessen, Masha. (2022). ‘” Z” Is the Symbol of the New Russian Politics of Aggression,’ The New Yorker, 7 March. https://www.newyorker.com /news/our-columnists/z-is-the-symbol-of-the-new-russian-politics -of-aggression Judah, Ben. (2022). “How Putin Plunged Russia Towards Totalitarianism,” The Slate, 10 March. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/ putin-russia-totalitarianism-soviet-style-oppression.html Kuzio, Taras. (2017). ‘Stalinism and Russian and Ukrainian National Identities,’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 50 (4): 289-302. Kuzio, T. (2019). ‘Russian Stereotypes and Myths of Ukraine and Ukrainians and Why Novorossiya Failed,’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 52 (4): 297-309. Kuzio, T. (2022). Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War: Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality, London: Routledge. Kuzio, T., Zhuk, Sergei and D’Anieri, Paul (eds.). (2022). Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War, Bristol: E-International Relations. https://www.e-ir.info/publication/ukraines-outpost-dni propetrovsk-and-the-russian-ukrainian-war/ Levada Centre. (2022). ‘Conflict with Ukraine,’ 1 September. https://www. levada.ru/2022/09/01/konflikt-s-ukrainoj-avgust-2022-goda/ Motyl, Alexander, J. (2016). ‘Putin’s Russia as a fascist political system,’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 49 (1): 25–36. Navalny, Alexei. (2022). ‘This is what a post-Putin Russia should look like,’ The Washington Post, 30 September. https://www.washingtonpost. com/opinions/2022/09/30/alexei-navalny-parliamentary-republicrussia-ukraine/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=em ail&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A %2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3811d1b%2F63370 dcff3d9003c58fc9069%2F61ab07e99bbc0f79fd6fb24c%2F17%2F72%2 F63370dcff3d9003c58fc9069&wp_cu=9f0d928b04d752d386251f42a9c b6b61%7CD24CF3BF1F671EEFE0530100007F9269

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Oliynyk, Anna, and Kuzio, T. (2021). ‘The Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity, Reforms and Decommunisation in Ukraine,’ Europe-Asia Studies, 73 (5): 807-836. Putin, Vladimir. (2022). ‘Signing of treaties on accession of Donetsk and Lugansk peoples’ republics and Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions to Russia,’ 30 September http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/69465 Soldatov, Andrei, and Borogan, Irina. (2022). ‘Putin’s New Police State. In the Shadow of War, the FSB Embraces Stalin’s Methods,’ Foreign Affairs, 27 July. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/ putins-new-police-state The new Russian cult of war. It has been growing unnoticed for some time. (2022). The Economist, 26 March. https://www.economist.com/brief ing/2022/03/26/the-new-russian-cult-of-war ‘The Stalinisation of Russia.’ (2022). Economist, 12 March. https://www. economist.com/leaders/2022/03/12/the-stalinisation-of-russia Watling, Jack and Reynolds, Nick. (2022). The Plot to Destroy Ukraine, London: Royal United Services Institute, 15 February. https://rusi.org/ explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/plot-destroyukraine

2 Genocide ‘Yes, I called it genocide because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian.’ US President Joe Biden ‘I told them [Russian soldiers] I was not a protest organiser, just a patriot of my country Ukraine. They said, there is no such country.’ Ukrainian volunteer detained by Russian soldiers in Berdyansk

The large number of Western scholarly and think tank publications on Russian information warfare or studies of the Russian media published before and especially after the 2014 crisis ignored the Kremlin’s dehumanisation of Ukrainians. This was surprising in view of the great deal of attention which Russian information warfare devoted to Ukraine and Ukrainians. Of the 8,223 disinformation cases in the EU data base which have been collected since only January 2015, a high 3,329 (or 40 percent) are on Ukraine and Ukrainians. If the data base had gone back to the mid 2000s the figure would have been far higher. Hate speech preceded war crimes in the Holocaust, Holodomor (Terror Famine), the Rwanda 1994 killings, and in the former Yugoslavia. Genocide is undertaken by perpetrators who view their intended victims as less than human; denigrating Ukrainians as subhuman Nazis fulfils that role. The Kremlin has been inculcating the Russia’s population for nearly two decades with books glorifying Stalin, Russian military superiority, and the impending destruction of Ukrainian Nazis. Besides television and social media, the Russian book market was flooded by large print runs of novels with blood curdling titles such as Ukraine in Blood: Banderite Genocide and Ukrainian Hell: It is Our War! For nearly two decades, and especially since the invasion, the Russian media is full of justifications of violence against Ukrainians. Francis Scarr, Senior Digital Journalist at BBC Monitoring, wrote that since 2014, Russian state TV has gradually conditioned people to see Ukrainians as inferior and the war is being as much fought on Russian TV as it by bullets and artillery. In April 2022, military expert Vladimir Yevseyev said on Voskresny Vecher with 67

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Solovyov that most Ukrainian soldiers should be eliminated ‘because I can’t imagine at all how these people can be re-educated.’ Dehumanisation is the same as hate speech. On 18 June 2022, the first International Day for Countering Hate Speech was held following a 2021 UN resolution on ‘promoting inter-religious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance in countering hate speech.’ The UN defines hate speech as any type of communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative discourse with reference to a person or group on the basis of their religion, ethnicity or affiliation. The UN believes hate speech is dangerous and, ‘If left unchecked, hate speech can even harm peace and development, as it lays the ground for conflicts and tensions, wide-scale human rights violations.’ The Kremlin has fanned hate speech against Ukraine and Ukrainians in the media and through political discourse for nearly two decades prior to Russia’s invasion. As the EU Centre to Combat Disinformation pointed out, hate speech is accompanied by disinformation and media manipulation. Meanwhile: ‘Russia’s war against Ukraine demonstrates the deadly effect of hate speech, as it has served to dehumanise the opponent, in this case the legitimate, elected government in Kyiv and the wider Ukrainian population. Once the foe is dehumanised, soldiers on the battlefield do not fight another person like you and me, but rather a lower-ranking group.’

The transformation of Russian security forces into willing executioners of Ukrainians follows the Stalinist template of dehumanisation evolving into genocide in the Holodomor. Prior to Stalinist killings of Ukrainians, Poles, and other nationalities in the 1930s and Ukrainians today they were first dehumanised by the Soviet and Russian regimes respectively. In the words of the EU Centre to Combat Disinformation, the Russian media has long called ‘for their [Ukrainians] eradication in a manner that can only be described as genocidal.’ During the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and since, Russia’s information warfare has gone into overdrive when dehumanising Ukraine and Ukrainians. ‘Almost five years into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Kremlin’s use of the information

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weapon against Ukraine has not decreased; Ukraine still stands out as the most misrepresented country in pro-Kremlin media,’ the EU’s Centre to Combat Disinformation wrote. The Kremlin has a Jekyll and Hyde view that differentiates between ‘bad Ukrainians’ who are depicted as ‘Nazis’ who are hostile to Russia and ‘good Little Russians’ who believe they and Russians are ‘one people.’ While denigrating Ukraine at a level that would make western European colonialists in the nineteenth century blush, Russian leaders continue to claim they hold warm feelings towards Ukrainians because they are the closest people to them. With the Donbas war in full swing, the Russian Information Agency Novosti asked on 13 September 2014 if Ukrainians were now ‘lost brothers’ or a ‘Nazi people?’ The answer was that the Kremlin believed the former was a product of the negative influence of the latter which denazification would destroy. The roots of Russia’s information warfare against Ukraine and Ukrainians lie in two areas; the first is Tsarist imperial nationalism and White émigré nationalism and the second Soviet propaganda campaigns against Ukrainian nationalism. Recent Western scholarship on Russian nationalism ignored both. Two major books on Russian nationalism published in 2016 (edited by Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud) and 2019 (authored by Laruelle) ignored the growing influence of imperial Russian nationalist views denying the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Meanwhile, other scholars took at face value the Kremlin’s definition of ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ and ‘Nazis,’ ignoring how in the Soviet Union these two terms had been applied to any Ukrainians who were critical of the Soviet regime. In the early 1970s, for example, Ukrainian writer Ivan Dzyuba and Soviet Ukrainian Communist Party First Secretary Petro Shelest, both national communists, were repressed and removed from power respectively after the regime accused them of ‘nationalism.’ Ukrainians have long been belittled, ridiculed, and dehumanised by the Russian media and in Russian political discourse. Russia’s dehumanisation of Ukraine and Ukrainians focused on the following ten areas:

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2.

3.

4.

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Crimea was liberated and reunited with Russia which removed an injustice that had happened when the USSR disintegrated. Russians and Russian speakers were being allegedly subjected to genocide by Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis. Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi’s committed war crimes and genocide in the Donbas leading to a ‘civil war’ in 2014 and requiring Russia to launch a special military operation in 2022. Ukrainians are not a separate people; Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people.’ In other words, Russia denies the existence of a Ukrainian nation. Ukrainians are supposedly confused Little Russians who will be re-educated by Russia’s special military operation. The Ukrainian language is artificial and a dialect of Russian. In other words, there is no Ukrainian language. The Russian information agency Rex published an article claiming the ‘Ukrainian language is a weapon in the hybrid war’ with the West and the Ukrainian language is a form of hybrid ‘brain programming’ political technology. The Soviet regime, unlike Putin’s Russia, recognised the Ukrainian language. In the late nineteenth century, the Ukrainian nation was created as an Austrian conspiracy to divide the pan-Russian nation. Soviet leader Lenin encouraged Ukrainians to think of themselves as a separate people by allowing them to have their own Soviet republic. In the twenty first century, the US and EU continue to promote an artificial Ukrainian nation to divide the ‘Russian people. The West has created an ‘anti-Russia’ in Ukraine as part of its struggle against Russia. ‘Anti-Russia’ Ukraine is run by Nazi’s who came to power in 2014 in an illegal putsch that overthrew the legitimate President Yanukovych. Ukrainian Nazis are encouraged and nurtured by the West. ‘Anti-Russia’ Ukraine will be destroyed by Russia’s goal of denazification, one of two goals the Kremlin outlined for its special military operation. The head of Russia’s propaganda channel RT Margarita Simonyan said on state television that

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Russia had to build a future without Ukraine ‘because Ukraine as it currently exists cannot continue to exist.’ ‘There will not be the Ukraine that we have known for many years,’ she declared triumphantly, ‘It won’t be Ukraine any longer.’ Ukraine became a US puppet state after the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and a NATO forward base which threatened Russian security. This builds on deep Soviet and Russian nationalist xenophobia against the West which allegedly, according to a Kremlin manual leaked to Meduza for inculcating the correct understanding of the war, has a 1,000-year tradition (i.e., Teutonic knights, Poles and Lithuanians, Swedes, Austrians, Nazis, and NATO) who invaded, sought to dismember Russia, stole its resources, and attempted to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia is always depicted as the innocent party with the war in Ukraine provoked by the West. One of Russia’s goals in its so-called special military operation was the demilitarisation of Ukraine. DNR propagandist Maxim Fomin described Russia as being not at war with Ukraine but with the West because Ukrainian soldiers are, ‘nothing but British and US infantry’ he said. United Russian Party deputy Andrei Isayev said Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine where Ukrainian soldiers ‘are being used solely as infantry.’ Presidents Poroshenko and Zelenskyy are portrayed as ‘puppets’ of Ukrainian nationalists and the West. The EU vs Disinformation centre described the Kremlin’s discourse on ‘lost sovereignty’: ‘In the context of Ukraine, the pro-Kremlin narrative of ‘lost sovereignty’ takes on an even more sinister, imperialist hue. It denies not only Ukrainian statehood, but also its very existence by alleging that ‘a state of Ukraine has never existed before’. This narrative, along with the myth of ‘Nazi Ukraine’, has been one of the central disinformation tropes justifying Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Related disinformation narratives include claims that Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians are ‘one nation’ and multiple allegations that Ukraine is on the verge of disintegration.’

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FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Putin’s useful idiots, such as well-known US historian Stephen F. Cohen and British political scientist Richard Sakwa, acted as echo chambers for Kremlin disinformation and Russian chauvinist dismissals of Ukraine while providing support for Crimea’s annexation. Cohen described then US Vice President Joe Biden as Ukraine’s ‘pro-consul overseeing the increasingly colonized Kyiv.’ President Poroshenko was not a Ukrainian leader, Cohen wrote, but ‘a compliant representative of domestic and foreign political forces’ who ‘resembles a pro-consul of a faraway great power’ running a ‘failed state’. National Bolshevik Sergei Glazyev, a senior adviser to Putin, wrote in a similar vein: ‘It is obvious that in the top three candidates who won most votes in the first round of the [2019 Ukrainian] presidential ‘election,’ there was not a single candidate who did not swear allegiance to the American occupation authorities.’ 8. Ukraine is an artificial construct composed of ‘ancient Russian lands’ (Crimea, New Russia [south-east Ukraine]), and Little Russia (central Ukraine). Western Ukraine will be retaken by Poland, Hungary, and Romania. 9. Ukraine is a failed state that is unable to survive on its own, requiring it therefore to seek Russia’s assistance. Prior to Putin’s invasion, the Russian media routinely ridiculed the idea of Ukraine possessing strong armed forces and navy. This was especially shrill during the Russian-Ukrainian 2018 naval confrontation in the Azov Sea. Russia’s stereotypes of a Little Russia populated by peasant bumpkins ignored Ukraine’s central place in the Soviet Union as a military industrial powerhouse. This also explains why the Kremlin badly misjudged the strength and resilience of Ukraine’s security forces, believing Kyiv would fall under Russian control within a few days. 10. The EU and West treat Ukraine as a colony supplying raw materials and cheap labour. The EU will never allow Ukraine to join. Ukraine is a corrupt country and Ukrainians are incapable of conducting the reforms required to join the EU. To hammer this home, Russian disinformation claims nobody is waiting for Ukraine in Brussels and that

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eventually Kyiv will understand this and return to Russia. After the invasion, Ukraine was granted candidate status by the EU. Putin first raised the myth of Ukraine as an artificial country in his 2008 speech to the NATO-Russia Council at the Bucharest NATO summit. Ukraine as an artificial state is one of the most common themes to be found in Russian information warfare and appears in different guises. These include Ukraine’s political collapse in 2014 required Russian’s intervention, Ukrainian authorities are incapable of dealing with their problems, Ukraine is not a real state and will not survive without trade with Russia, Western neighbours will put forward territorial claims against western Ukraine while the east is naturally aligned with Russia, and Ukraine was artificially created with ‘ancient Russian lands.’ Other variants of this include Ukraine is a land of perennial instability and revolution where extremists run amok, Russian speakers are subjected to genocide, and pro-Russian politicians and media are repressed. The concept of Russians and Ukrainians as ‘one people’ with a single language, culture and common history has been revived from White Russian émigré writers and generals who have been rehabilitated in Russia since the mid 2000s. These included Ivan Ilyin, who Putin cites, and White émigrés such as Prince Alexandre Wolkonsky and Pierre Bregy and Prince Serge Obolensky, whose books published in 1920 and 1940 respectively denied the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. One hundred White Russian émigrés living in western Europe signed an open letter of support for Russia during the 2014 crisis. White Russian émigrés alleged Ukraine has no independent history and national identity separate to Russian. Ukrainians are a branch of the triyedinyy russkiy narod (triadic united Russian nation) and obschehrusskiy narod (pan-Russian nation). Reunification, Putin repeatedly stated, would inevitably take place; not by Ukrainians voluntarily agreeing but through Russian subversion, as in 2014 or through a special military operation, as in 2022. ‘One people inhabits Ukraine and the Russian Federation, for the time being, divided (by the border)’ hawkish Petrushev said.

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The Ukrainian nation is a conspiracy directed against Russia. This was first promoted by Russian imperial nationalists in the late nineteenth century when the Tsarist Russian and Austrian-Hungarian empires competed over control of western Ukraine. Putin has revived this late nineteenth century Tsarist imperial view of the Ukrainian nation saying, ‘The Ukrainian factor was specifically played out on the eve of World War I by the Austrian special service. Why? This is well-known—to divide and rule (the Russian people).’ Late nineteenth century and post-revolutionary White Russian émigré chauvinistic discourse of Ukraine and Ukrainians have become mainstream in the discourse of Russian leaders. In 2022, Russian leaders were using the same Russian imperial nationalist discourse about Ukraine and Ukrainians that had been used in the 2014 crisis by fascists such as Alexander Dugin and leader of the Russian Imperial Movement Stanislav Vorobyev. In 2014, Dugin had called on Russia to ‘Kill, Kill, Kill Ukrainians!’ and eight years later, Putin was implementing his genocidal rhetoric. In 2014, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also a fascist, called on Putin to use imprisoned convicts to fight Russia’s war against Ukraine and eight years later Putin was implementing his proposal. In December 2021, Zhirinovsky predicted a war with Ukraine would start before dawn on 22 February 2022; he was only two days wrong about the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion. A long period of the dehumanisation of Ukraine and Ukrainians, glorification of Stalin, rehabilitation of White Russian émigré fascists and imperialists and official support for the red (pro-Soviet)-white (pro-Tsarist and Orthodox fundamentalists)-brown (fascist) coalition in the Izborsky Club and elsewhere produced an environment of hate and genocidal discourse. The Levada Centre found the Russian negative view of Ukrainians was just behind that of the US. Russian imperial nationalists called on Putin to undertake even more war crimes and genocide, irrespective of the cost in civilian lives, until Ukraine is subdued. Bogdan Bezpalko, member of the Council for Interethnic Relations under the President of the Russian Federation, argued on Russian television:

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‘As far as what needs to be done, as I previously said, we need to strike the infrastructure—which can’t be separated into military and civilian. If all of Ukraine is plunged into cold and darkness, if they have no fuel, reserve armies won’t help them, and no one will be able to deliver equipment or ammunition... These strikes should go on for two, three, five or six months in a row, leaving not one gas station intact.’

Igor Korotchenko said on another Russian television programme: ‘This is a new reality, which is why we should be acting quickly, harshly, and uncompromisingly. First, we need to scale up our strikes against critical infrastructure in such a way that one region after the next, one district after another, Ukraine is plunged into darkness... By December twenty million residents of Ukraine should flee to the West, to the European Union. This is our goal and the task we should accomplish.’

Genocidal hatred of Ukraine and Ukrainians is being fanned to a frenzy by the Kremlin’s state-controlled media. Alexey Kovalev explained: ‘The level of hatred and derision toward everything Ukrainian in their blog posts is difficult to convey. Ukrainians are described as illegal squatters on Russian imperial lands or followers of the Nazi bandits supposedly governing in Kyiv. Their cities must be “hammered into the Stone Age” while massacres against civilians are gleefully referred to as “pig-butchering.” Even as they throw the Nazi slur at Ukrainians, these Russians’ views are not only genocidal in ways that recall the worst crimes of the 20th century but also, in some cases, openly fascist or neo-Nazi.’

Igor Mangushev, a senior manager at the Internet Research Agency troll factory in St. Petersburg, is, Kovalev wrote, ‘One of the most unapologetically genocidal supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine.’ Mangushev gave a macabre performance in a Moscow club where he presented a human skull that he claimed belonged to a Ukrainian soldier killed from Mariupol. ‘We will burn down your homes, murder your families, take your children, and raise them as Russians’ is a typical post on his Telegram channel. The EU Centre to Combat Disinformation wrote: ‘Few would have expected that, by the middle of 2022, key Russian leaders as well as trend-setting media and opinion formers would openly embrace genocidal views or call for people ‘to disappear.’ Medvedev asked, ‘Who said that in two years Ukraine will even exist on the world map?’ Crimean puppet leader Sergei Aksyonov said in an

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interview in September 2022 with Millet TV Channel, ‘Ukraine will no longer exist within its 1991 borders’ because the special military operation will lead to the ‘complete dismantling of Ukrainian statehood.’ Russian Ambassador to Austria Mikhail Ulyanov said on Twitter: ‘No mercy to the Ukrainian population.’ Dugin’s rant against Ukrainians in 2014 is the same as Medvedev’s Ukrainophobic rant in 2022: ‘We should clean up Ukraine from the idiots. The genocide of these cretins is due and inevitable… I can’t believe these are Ukrainians. Ukrainians are wonderful Slavonic people. And this is a race of bastards that emerged from the sewer manholes.’ (Dugin, 2014). ‘I hate them. They are bastards and degenerates. They want us, Russia, to die. And while I’m still alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.’ (Medvedev, 2022).

Former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. Source: EU vs Disinformation

Vorobyev, Igor Girkin, Putin, and other imperial nationalists view ‘Russians’ as the most divided people in the world because Ukrainians have been encouraged by the West to separate from the Russian World. Vorobyev—like Putin—stressed Ukrainians ‘are not an ethnos’ but a ‘socio-political group of separatists’ who after the USSR disintegrated ‘obtained Russian historic lands of the Russian people: Malorossiya (Little Russia), Slobozhanshchyna (Kharkiv

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region), Hetmanshchyna (central Ukraine), ‘New Russia’ and Crimea, and as a result of this crime they have obtained lands that never belonged to them.’ By the 2022 invasion, Putin had come to espouse the views of Russian imperial nationalists and fascists. And yet Western scholars continued to downplay Dugin’s influence even after the assassination of his daughter, Daryna, in August 2022. After nearly two decades of propaganda and dehumanisation most Russians have become convinced that Ukrainians are being encouraged by the West to break away from their pre-assigned place within the pan-Russian nation. Ukrainians are separatists and traitors because they are seeking a future outside the Russian World. Russian imperial nationalists and the Soviet regime described Hetman Ivan Mazepa as a traitor for having attempted to create an independent Ukraine in the early eighteenth century with Swedish support. Hetman Mazepa believed Ukraine had a right to fight because the Muscovite Tsar had betrayed the promises he had made in 1654 when the Treaty of Pereyaslav was signed. The rehabilitation of the chauvinistic views of White Russian émigré writers and generals has been coupled with the revival of Soviet era abuse of terms such as ‘nationalist’ and ‘Nazi’ that were particularly prevalent against Ukrainian dissidents, nationalists, national communists, and the Ukrainian diaspora. Russia’s quasireligious cult of the Great Patriotic War and cult of Stalin provides the underlying motivation to denounce Ukrainian nationalists as Nazis for seeking to nation build outside the Russian World and integrate their country into Europe. In the USSR, dissidents, nationalists, and national communists could be denounced as ‘bourgeois nationalists,’ ‘nationalist deviationists’, and Nazis. Today, this broad brush is used against any Ukrainians who supported the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and supported Ukraine’s integration into Europe. Following Russia’s invasion, the Kremlin defines any Ukrainian as a Nazi who refuses to accept, he/she is a Little Russian. Russia’s information warfare barrage of Nazis ruling Ukraine accelerated after Euromaidan revolutionaries came to power in 2014 and did not end when Jewish-Ukrainian Zelenskyy was

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elected Ukrainian president in 2019. Zelenskyy has been depicted as weak willed and a puppet of Ukrainian Nazis and Washington. Such attitudes draw upon Soviet propaganda campaigns against the unholy alliance of Ukrainian nationalists and Zionists who were allegedly in the pay of Western and Israeli secret services. Former President Medvedev said Ukraine had fallen ‘under the direct control of the collective West as well as begun to believe that NATO would guarantee its security’ following the Euromaidan Revolution. Medvedev warned: ‘As a result of all the current events Ukraine may lose what’s left of its state sovereignty and disappear from the world map.’ A common theme in Russian information warfare is the claim that ‘nationalists’ and ‘Nazi’s’ ruling Ukraine presented an existentialist threat to Russian speakers. Prior to the invasion, Putin refused to countenance the return of Ukrainian control over the Russian-Ukrainian joint border because of the alleged threat of a ‘Srebrenica-style’ genocide of Russian speakers like that perpetrated by Serbian forces against Muslim Bosnians in July 1995. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine absurdly claimed Kyiv was conducting genocide against Russian speakers in the Donbas. Only 2 percent of Ukrainians believed Russia’s invasion was to protect Russian speakers. Ukraine’s Russia speakers have never asked for Russia to intervene on their behalf; indeed, it was Putin that took upon himself the right to invade on their behalf without first consulting them. The Kremlin and Russians in general are unable to fathom the concept of Russian speaking Ukrainian patriotism and they never learnt the lessons of the failure of Putin’s 2014 project to dismember Ukraine. Most Russian speakers in the southeast backed Ukraine’s civic over Putin’s Eurasian, Russian imperial nationalist, and Soviet identities. The Kremlin has never sought to use terms such as war and invasion to describe its military aggression against Ukraine; indeed, using these two words can lead to criminal prosecution in Russia. In 2014-2021, Kremlin disinformation described the conflict in the Donbas as a ‘civil war’ between Russian and Ukrainian speakers or Russian speakers and Nazis, ignoring the large number of Russophones fighting for Ukraine. In 2022, Russia launched a so-called

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special military operation which most Ukrainians and Western governments have denounced as an invasion. Prior to the invasion, nearly three quarters of Ukrainians but only 25 percent of Russians believed their two countries were at war. Since the invasion, 98 percent of Ukrainians hold a negative view of Russian leaders, a growing number also negatively view the Russian people while three quarters support bans on displays of the symbol’s ‘Z’ and ‘V’ and the St. George ribbon. Two thirds of Ukrainians believe that Putin’s invasion makes it impossible to restore friendly relations with Russia while another fifth think an improvement would take 20-30 years. Even in south-eastern Ukraine, more than half do not believe Ukraine will improve relations with Russia in the foreseeable future. As the failure of Russia’s invasion shows, Putin and the Kremlin’s views of Ukraine and Ukrainians have nothing in common with reality. 91 percent of Ukrainians did not support the Russian imperial nationalist claim that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Ukrainians did not ask to be liberated and there was never any genocide in Ukraine. Putin’s obsession with returning Ukraine to the Russian World drove the 2014 crisis, 2022 invasion and genocide of Ukrainians.

Denazification Putin’s July 2021 essay is the Kremlin’s equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s treatise Mein Kampf justifying the needs for a final solution to the Ukrainian and Jewish ‘questions’ respectively. Meanwhile, the goal of denazification was the Kremlin’s equivalent of the Nazi’s final solution, the former of Ukrainians and the latter of Jews. Russia’s FSB would act in the same manner as the Nazi’s Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads in searching out enemies and denationalising, torturing, deporting, and liquidating them. Prior to the invasion, Russia prepared Kill Lists of Ukrainians and filtration camps. Kill Lists have been used to murder thousands of Ukrainians deemed by the Kremlin to be enemies in every region Russia has occupied—Bucha (Kyiv), Izyum (Kharkiv), Kherson, and Mariupol. Kill Lists already killed thousands of Ukrainians in

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Russian-occupied Donbas from 2014-2022. Drawing on the Chekist experience of ethnic cleansing of national minorities, such as Crimean Tatars, and deportations of hundreds of thousands from the three Baltic states and western Ukraine, Russia prepared filtration camps. These filtration camps have deported at least three million Ukrainians from occupied areas to the depths of Russia. ‘Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izyum,’ Zelenskiy said, ‘Russia is leaving death behind it everywhere and must be held responsible.’ Putin’s fascist Russia has its roots in Stalin’s national Bolshevism which attempted its final solution of the Ukrainian question in the 1933 Holodomor which murdered four million Ukrainians. The FSB is proud of its Chekist traditions and Putin is an admirer of Stalin and former KGB Chairman and Communist Party of the Soviet Union Chairman Yuri Andropov. Hitler’s Nazism sought a final solution of the Jewish ‘question’ by murdering six million Jews in the Holocaust. Putin, Russian leaders, Russian television, and media have never hidden their understanding of denazification as the destruction of Ukrainian national identity. Russia is waging war and committing war crimes to transform Ukraine into a Little Russia, a country that would to all intents and purposes resemble the proRussian dictatorship of Belarus. Denazification carried out by Russia’s special military operation is allegedly intended to ‘liberate’ Little Russia from Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis who have ruled Ukraine since the 2014 ‘illegal putsch.’ The return of Little Russia and New Russia to the Russian World would complete Putin’s ‘Gathering of Russian Lands.’ The Kremlin’s strategy published by RIA Novosti explained: ‘Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians.’ The reunion of the pan-Russian nation would cement the core of the Eurasian Economic Union, reversing some of the negative trends that Putin associates with the disintegration of the USSR. The genocidal message in RIA Novosti is present on Russian television channels and online media.

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The Russian strategy document declared that denazification would mean ‘there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia.’ The EU Centre Against Disinformation wrote: ‘The terms “Nazis” and “Nazism” are again used overwhelmingly in the article to label anything associated with the Ukrainian state, the Kyiv government, or the Ukrainian authorities. The plan calls for the destruction and liquidation of all “Nazis”, and for mass repression against Ukrainians. Apart from strict censorship on any Ukrainian voice, and the introduction of Russian laws and culture, the aim is to ban even the name Ukraine and the term Ukrainian itself. To make Ukraine disappear.’

Since the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine had allegedly pursued ‘anti-Russia’ policies at the behest of Washington. Since the Euromaidan Revolution there has been ‘a large-scale reformatting of the country into Anti-Russia’ in which ‘everything that was the essence of the former Ukraine was to be destroyed: peaceful coexistence and friendship between peoples, the memory of the former common and glorious past, morality, faith, Russian language, traditions, and spirituality.’ What Putin was referring to was reviving the Russian language in Ukraine, over-turning four decommunisation laws adopted in 2015 and more generally reversing the decline in Russian soft power and influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The Russian strategy document also provided a convoluted explanation of why the crisis took place in 2022: ‘Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade—recoding, de-russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum.’ In fact, Russia launched a full-sale invasion in 2022 after creating a fake crisis in Winter 2021-2022. Putin viewed the last eight years since the ‘illegal putsch’ as an aberration in Ukraine’s history because Ukrainians have allegedly always wanted to be closely tied to Russia. Denazification would entail the rooting out of every aspect of Ukrainian national identity and replacing it through Russification, war crimes, and genocide with a Little Russian identity. Putin claimed most of Ukraine is ‘historic Russian land’, Ukrainians are an artificial nation who have been brainwashed, and Ukraine is led by ‘radicals and

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neo-Nazis’ who are ‘instruments of the West.’ Putin uses the term Nazi on five occasions in his July 2021 long, rambling essay. The Russian strategy document stated, Ukrainian statehood ‘will be reorganised, re-established and returned to its natural state in the Russian world.’ The strategy document repeated the discourse of Russian officials that the Ukraine that had existed until 24 February 2022 was no longer to be found, in the words of Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. Putin justified land seizures in Ukraine as following in the footsteps of Tsar Peter the Great who transformed Muscovy into the Russian Empire. The boundaries of Little Russia are yet to be determined and ‘will be decided after an end to the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia.’ Southern-eastern Ukraine would be annexed by Russia or become a separate state within the Russian World and the Eurasian Economic Union. In other words, Putin would be implementing the proposals of the red (pro-Soviet)-white (White Russian Orthodox fundamentalist)-brown (fascist) coalition that had urged him to annex New Russia in 2014. During the eight years since then Putin had evolved into a full-blown imperial nationalist and fascist and in 2022 was implementing the 2014 policies of the red-white-brown coalition. Ukraine’s determined struggle against Russia’s invasion forced the Kremlin to rethink its timeline. Denazification would have to take longer than had been anticipated as, the Russian strategy document pointed out, ‘neo-Nazis will not give up so easily, because the metastases of Russophobia have already struck the entire Ukrainian body.’ The FSB, Russia’s domestic security service and GRU military intelligence, are conducting a denazification ‘kill list’ in Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages that have been ‘liberated.’ Pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western politicians, religious leaders, think tankers, academics, civil society activists and journalists are being kidnapped, tortured, murdered and ‘disappeared.’ The UN has documented nearly three hundred cases of ‘arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance’ of civilians in Russian-occupied Ukraine but the true figure is over ten thousand. Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister

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Emine Dzhaparova accused Russia of kidnappings on a ‘massive scale.’ The OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism report provided details of mayors, local pro-Ukrainian ‘activists’, journalists and ‘volunteers’, who had been ‘abducted’ which they defined as ‘arrested and made to forcibly disappear.’ There were cases of the ‘arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of local officials in regions under the control of Russian forces’ and the ‘arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of twenty-one journalists and civil society activists who vocally opposed the invasion in Kyiv, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.’ A denazified Little Russia would implement ten policies that would transform the rump of former Ukraine into a pro-Russian dependent state akin to Lukashenka’s Belarus. These policies were implemented in the DNR and LNR in 2014-2022 and were planned to be implemented in Russian-occupied Ukraine: 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

The installation of a pro-Russian satrap would impose an authoritarian regime. This would have to be a dictatorship because pro-Russian forces in Ukraine have no support whatsoever in Ukraine. The only political forces allowed to operate would be drawn from traitorous elements within the former Opposition Platform-For Life, Nashi, Communist Party of Ukraine and Russian proxies in the DNR and LNR. All religious confessions other than the Russian Orthodox Church would be banned. The educational system would utilise Russia’s educational materials and teachers imported from Russia. These textbooks would deny the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians and portray the country as Little Russia and its people as Little Russians. The Russian language would become the state language and the Ukrainian language would no longer be used in schools or local state institutions. The Ukrainian language would be banned. Hostility to the Ukrainian language is widespread among Russian elites. Nikita Mikhaikov, head of the Russian Cinematographers Union and a film

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The Kremlin views its special military operation in Ukraine as part of a broader war between Russia and the West that aims to change the global system from a US-led unipolar to multipolar world. The Russian strategy document stated the special military operation, ‘is a response to the geopolitical expansion of the Atlanticists, this is Russia's return of its historical space and its place in the world.’ Furthermore, ‘Russia has not only challenged the West, but it has also shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over.’ Anti-Atlanticist discourse, lifted from Dugin’s Eurasianism that he has propounded since the 1990s has become Putin’s foreign policy. The Russian strategy document warned that a reunified Russian World would be ‘acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole’ within Russia’s ‘historical borders.’ Belarus, with a population a quarter that of Ukraine’s, had shown in its weaponisation of migrants how Russia could use the country’s strategic location in its proxy war with the West.

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Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism Russia’s military tactics do not resemble those of an army; they resemble those of a state sponsor of terrorism. Russia has fired far more missiles and other forms of military projectiles at civilian targets than at military ones. In the first six months of the war, Russia shelled over 22,000 civilian and about 300 military objects in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy has repeatedly described Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism saying, ‘No nation on earth poses as great a terrorist threat as Russia. No other state in the world destroys peaceful cities and the lives of ordinary civilians with cruise missiles and artillery every day.’ In an April 2022 mobile telephone call to his father in Russia, intercepted by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine), Stanislav Shmatov with Russia’s 15th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade, bragged his unit had attacked a Ukrainian village with missiles from Grad multiple-rocket launchers and machine-gun fire after surrounding it with armoured personnel carriers on three sides. ‘We were shooting at everything—at houses, cars, everything. We…ripped apart all the houses with tanks and APCs,’ Shmatov said, using expletives frequently. His unit took two Ukrainian civilian prisoners and ‘cut off one of their ears.’ His father Aleksandr asked: ‘What for?’ to which Shmatov replied: ‘He didn't want to talk, so his ear was cut off.’ Following the July 2022 missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Vynnytsya, Zelenskyy called upon the West to designate Russia as a ‘terrorist state,’ to set up a special international tribunal to investigate Russia’s crime of aggression and war crimes, confiscate Russian oligarch and state assets that were frozen and are located in the West, and impose new sanctions. Russia is deliberately destroying Ukraine’s health care, education, culture, economy and trade through missile, artillery and tank attacks and naval blockade of its Black Sea ports. President Zelenskyy said on 27 June 2022: ‘The Russian strike at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk is one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history. A peaceful city, an ordinary shopping mall with women, children, ordinary civilians inside...’

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Zelenskyy continued: ‘Only totally insane terrorists, who should have no place on earth, can strike missiles at such an object. And this is not an off-target missile strike, this is a calculated Russian strike—exactly at this shopping mall.’

Zelenskyy added: The Russian state has become the largest terrorist organization in the world. And this is a fact. And this must be a legal fact. And everyone in the world must know that buying or transporting Russian oil, maintaining contacts with Russian banks, paying taxes and customs duties to the Russian state means giving money to terrorists.’

The Kremlin’s genocidal tactics are not new as Putin has used them in Chechnya when he came to power and destroyed the Chechen capital city of Grozny and in Syria where opposition-controlled towns were flattened. In all three cases—Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine—Russia’s wonton destruction aimed to sow terror into the hearts of civilians, anti-regime combatants and soldiers. Russia’s criminal destruction is accompanied by terror and looting by Russian soldiers. Olesya Vorotnyk, a professional ballerina and volunteer in the Territorial Defence Force, said: ‘There was this myth of the great Russia, and its great army,’ but with all the pillage and looting, ‘we see the truth: they come here to steal our toilets.’ One Ukrainian soldier made a video where he laughingly recalled returning to his home to find it had been looted by Russian soldiers who had stolen the contents of the laundry basket, including dirty underwear. Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office has registered 15,000 criminal cases of sexual abuse by Russian occupation forces. They believe the figure is higher because earlier wars have shown how many women who have been sexually attacked do not come forward for many years. Sexual crimes have undoubtedly taken place in south-eastern Ukraine which remains under Russian occupation. There are recorded cases of paedophile rapes of under-age girls and boys. The OSCE’s April 2022 Moscow Mechanism report provided many reports of women and girls being raped and sexually abused by Russia’s armed forces, including 23-year-old Karina Yershova

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from Bucha, near Kyiv who was abducted, raped, tortured, and killed by Russian troops. The report also highlighted twenty-five girls aged fourteen to twenty-four who were kept in a basement in Bucha and gang-raped by Russian troops, resulting in nine becoming pregnant. In addition, a one-year-old boy was sexually abused, and a 78-year-old woman was raped by Russian troops. Looting by Russian troops was sanctioned by officers and therefore systematic, the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism reported. Washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, jewellery, automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles, dishes, carpets, works of art, children’s toys, cosmetics, and dirty laundry were looted. A video from a CTV camera in a Belarusian post office showed Russian soldiers with a stolen Russian drone they were sending home. Reports have surfaced that upwards of half of what was posted was stolen by Russian postal workers on route to Russian addresses, a reflection of the deep levels of stagnation and corruption in the Russian mafia state. Russia’s invading army includes a high proportion of national minorities such, as Buryats and Chechens and Russians living in the most economically depressed regions of the Russian Federation. These soldiers were stunned at the higher standard of living in Ukraine and were encouraged to loot by their officers. Little has changed since the Soviet army encouraged its soldiers to conduct sexual crimes and loot during World War II. Using Hunger as a Weapon of Terror—Again Anne Applebaum’s majestical book on the 1933 Holodomor points to the roots of Russia’s dehumanisation and disinformation lying in Stalinism. She writes that the Holodomor was accompanied by ‘virulent and angry forms of propaganda’ against Ukrainian national identity. Putin’s cult of Stalin showed him to be his disciple in both his denazification and return to the use of hunger as a weapon of terror. The Kremlin’s planned and implemented murder of Ukraine’s elites draws upon the Stalinist template of the murder of Ukrainian elites in the 1930s and Polish elites in the forest of Katyn. Putin’s revival of the Stalinist Holodomor template is evident in

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Russia’s destruction of crops, illegal export of Ukrainian grains and using blockades of exports to spread hunger in the developing world. The Kremlin denied the existence of the Holodomor until as late as 1990, only a year before the Soviet Union’s disintegration, and the denial has been revived in Putin’s Russia. In his 2009 open letter to President Viktor Yushchenko, President Medvedev denounced Ukraine’s condemnation of the Holodomor as a genocide which had been codified in law three years earlier. Russian media have reverted to the pre-Gorbachev era in denouncing the Holodomor as a myth invented by the Ukrainian diaspora and Washington. Applebaum writes that Stalin and Putin both spoke obsessively about losing Ukraine. She writes that debates about the Holodomor are in fact, ‘proxies for arguments about Ukraine, Ukrainian sovereignty and Ukraine’s right to exist.’ Putin is a critic of Lenin for creating a USSR with republics which he claims artificially created a Ukrainian nation. Putin supported Stalin’s counter proposal to create a Russian federal state with autonomy for non-Russians. Lenin believed that Stalin’s proposals would have been only a small improvement for non-Russians over their status within the Tsarist Empire. Putin’s support for Stalin showed him to be a proponent of imperial nationalism. Putin’s Russia has added food to energy, which Russia has been using since the 1990s, as a geopolitical weapon. ‘The United States is not sanctioning food or fertilizer,’ U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. ‘The reality is it's Russia that started this conflict, it's Russia that's destroying grain and stealing grain and making it harder for farmers to plant for the next harvest.’ Russia’s blockade is having a major impact on the export of wheat and increasing wheat prices. Russia and Ukraine account for 30 percent of the world’s wheat exports, 17 percent of corn, thirty two percent of barley and 75 percent of sunflower seed oil. Ukraine is the world’s fifth biggest wheat exporter. Higher prices mean higher import bills. African and Middle Eastern countries who import Ukrainian wheat are being forced to remove subsidies on bread, triggering food riots and political instability. Fourteen countries rely on Ukrainian food imports for more than ten percent of

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their requirements. Egypt, with a large population, is particularly vulnerable as 86 percent of its imports of wheat were from Ukraine and Russia. Other countries reliant on Ukrainian wheat included Lebanon (50 percent), Libya (43 percent), Yemen (22 percent), Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh (20 percent each). Maize, another staple in the Middle East and Africa, is also affected as Ukraine is the world’s fourth biggest exporter of maize. Used for animal feed, higher maize prices mean increased meat prices in Egypt and higher maize porridge prices in Southern Africa. Cooking oil is another scarce commodity because Ukraine is the world’s biggest exporter of sunflower oil and seed. Sunflower oil is used in a variety of products, such as cosmetics and potato crisps. Higher prices are leading to increased import costs, inflationary pressures, and balance of payments crises in Africa and the Middle East.

Illegal and Criminal Weapons Cluster bombs are banned in one hundred countries under a 2008 treaty, which has not been ratified by the US and Russia. Submunitions in cluster bombs are released over a wide area but not all of them explode immediately. Unexploded cluster bombs make them dangerous for civilians and children. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said: ‘We have seen the use of cluster bombs and reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law.’ The UN human rights office said it had received ‘credible reports’ of several cases of Russian forces using cluster bombs in Ukraine, adding that indiscriminate use of these weapons could amount to war crimes. ‘Due to their wide area effects, the use of cluster munitions in populated areas is incompatible with the international humanitarian law principles governing the conduct of hostilities,’ UN spokesperson Liz Throssell said. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said: ‘Russia is committing many war crimes now—that is the word that needs to be said’ and ‘What is happening is a large-scale war crime.’ Borrell added that Russia uses its entire military arsenal against Ukraine and its civilian population:

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‘So it's not even a war. This is the destruction of the country without any respect as its laws.’ The UN warned that attacks against civilians and civilian objects using cluster bombs ‘as well as so-called area bombardment in towns and villages and other forms of indiscriminate attacks’ are prohibited under international law and constitute war crimes. Russia’s illegal use of cluster bombs in Ukraine has been investigated by Bellingcat and condemned by Human Rights Watch. The exact number of Russian cluster munition attacks is unknown, but hundreds have been documented, reported, or have occurred, mostly in populated areas. Eight of Ukraine’s twenty-four oblasts have been struck by cluster munitions: Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Sumy. Evidence of the use of cluster bombs have been found in the wreckage of cars, streets, civilian buildings, and dead bodies. In May 2022, Human Rights Watch stated: ‘Russian armed forces have used at least six types of cluster munitions in attacks that have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and damaged civilian objects, including homes, hospitals and schools.’ Russia’s invading forces are also using flechettes (French for little arrows) which in Bucha were fired by a Russian 122mm 3sh1 artillery round. Russian artillery usually uses fragmenting rounds and are issued with flechette rounds for defensive purposes. Flechettes are contained in tank or field gun shells with each containing 8,000 of the little arrows. Once fired, the shells burst from a timed detonation releasing flechettes which disperse in a conical arch. On impact the flechettes bend into a hook while the arrow’s rear, made of four fins, breaks away causing a second wound. The flechettes are less than 3cm long, have an unsavoury reputation and are rarely used by modern armies; therefore, it remains baffling why Russia is using them in Ukraine, except as an instrument of terror against the civilian population. International human rights groups have criticised the use of flechettes because they are indiscriminate and likely to hit civilian targets even when used against military formations. Flechettes are not banned by international law but, Amnesty International stated, they should never be used in built-up civilian areas.

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Russia is also using white phosphorous bombs which are prohibited in international law from being used in civilian areas. Phosphorous bombs can be used to provide cover in open terrain for troops but in Ukraine are used for other purposes against civilians. Russia’s fires the greatest number of FAB-250 military projectiles against Ukrainian civilian targets. Very inaccurate they are designed to be dropped on surface military fortifications. The USSR and Russia used FAB-250 bombs extensively in Afghanistan and Syria respectively. Russia’s terror tactics against Ukrainian civilians are a copy of those it used against Syrians.

Genocide After visiting sites of the executions of Ukrainians near Kyiv, President Zelenskyy called those who had committed these war crimes ‘concentrated evil’ composed of ‘murderers, torturers and rapists’ who pretend to be an army. Women were raped and killed in front of their children and looters murdered people for their possessions. These Russian war criminals are ‘deprived of everything human. They have no soul. No heart. They deliberately killed and with pleasure.’ Children have also been murdered. In Bucha, thirty-one children under the age of eighteen were killed and nineteen wounded. The region’s chief prosecutor said, ‘all children were killed or injured deliberately, since Russia’s soldiers deliberately shot at evacuating cars that had the signs CHILDREN and white fabric tied to them, and they deliberately shot at the homes of civilians.’ The OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism report details children who had witnessed the executions of their parents, relatives, and friends ‘with impacts that will last for generations.’ Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s office is investigating 45,000 war crimes and crimes of aggression. Her office received information about 200-300 Russian war crimes each day. Six hundred suspects had been identified and eighty prosecutions begun, although most of the trials would be held in absentia. The number of registered war crimes will increase when Ukraine has access to regions that are currently by Russian forces.

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Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin was the first Russian soldier to be sentenced to life in prison for murdering Ukrainian civilians. Two other soldiers, Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov, were sentenced to 11.5 years imprisonment for ‘violating the laws and customs of war’ when they were members of a Russian artillery unit that shelled civilian buildings. Russia’s deliberate destruction of civilian buildings has been enormous. The total costs of Russia’s wanton destruction in Ukraine after six months of invasion and occupation amounted to a staggering $113.5 billion, according to the KSE Institute at the Kyiv School of Economics. Two think tanks, the New Lines Institute in Washington DC, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in Montreal, found there were ‘reasonable grounds to conclude’ that Russia is in breach of two articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Their report concluded: ‘Russia is responsible for (in) direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and (ii) a pattern of atrocities from which an inference of intent to destroy the Ukrainian national group in part can be drawn; and the existence of a serious risk of genocide in Ukraine, triggering the legal obligation of all States to prevent genocide.’

The report accused Russia of Incitement to Genocide under Art. III (c) of the Genocide Convention where direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a distinct crime whether genocide follows. The report describes ‘Russia’s State-orchestrated Incitement to Genocide’ as including the ‘denial of the existence of a Ukrainian Identity.’ Senior Russian officials and state media ‘repeatedly and publicly deny the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity’ and imply that those who identify as ‘Ukrainian threaten the unity of Russia or are Nazis and are therefore deserving of punishment.’ The report argues that the ‘denial of the existence of protected groups is a specific indicator of genocide under the United Nations guide to assessing the risk of mass atrocities.’ The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believed, ‘Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely setting conditions for the coerced cultural assimilation of displaced Ukrainians in Russia to erase

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their Ukrainian cultural identity.’ Over 3 million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia after processing through filtration camps and ending up inside Russian ‘adaptation centres’ where a key focus would be their Russification and cultural assimilation. In August 2022, Putin signed two decrees allowing Ukrainians to indefinitely live and work in the Russian Federation with certain social payments. Putin’s decrees are meant to set conditions for Ukrainians forcibly deported to remain in Russia permanently with the purpose, ISW believed of, ‘forming the backbone of an extended campaign to a population transfer between Ukraine and Russia with the purpose of Russifying Ukraine.’ ‘Adaptation centre’s’ would, ISW wrote, ‘serve as a form of cultural reprogramming to erase Ukrainian cultural identity from displaced Ukrainian who either fled to Russia or were deported.’ UK Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the UN Security Council briefing on Ukraine, ‘Russia may in fact be using forced deportations and displacement in an attempt, forcibly, to change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine.’ Shew believed this shows Russia, ‘act as if the Charter and international humanitarian law do not apply to them.’, Woodward added that Russia is seeking to destroy Ukraine’s democracy and identity and culture with denazification a cover for de-Ukrainianisation and territorial annexation. The report pointed out that use of ‘accusation in a mirror’ is a ‘powerful, historically recurring form of incitement to genocide.’ This is where, ‘A perpetrator accuses the targeted group of planning, or having committed, atrocities like those the speaker envisions against them, framing the putative victims as an existential threat makes violence against them appear defensive and necessary.’ Putin and the Kremlin made the ‘utterly false claim’ Ukraine had committed genocide against Russian speakers in the Donbas and used this as its ‘pretext for invading Ukraine.’ The report critically evaluated denazification as one of the main goals of the invasion and condemned its accompanying dehumanisation of Ukrainians as subhuman (‘zombified,’ ‘bestial,’ or ‘subordinate’), diseased or contaminated (‘scum,’ ‘filth,’ ‘disorder’)

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and existential threats and the epitome of evil (‘Nazism,’ ‘Hitler youth,’ ‘Third Reich’).’ The report continued: ‘This rhetoric is used to portray a substantial segment or an entire generation of Ukrainians as Nazis and mortal enemies, rendering them legitimate or necessary targets for destruction.’ The report discussed dehumanisation in a broader context to include ‘conditioning the Russian audience to commit or condone atrocities.’ Russia is not surprisingly denied its forces have committed war crimes and even that they have targeted civilian buildings, showing to what degree they live on a different planet as the first war to be so heavily documented in social media. At the same time, the Kremlin has ‘rewarded soldiers suspected of mass killing in Ukraine, enabling soldiers to commit, and the Russian public to condone, further atrocities.’ Hook writes that: ‘No genocide takes place without bystanders, who may not approve of the Russian government’s actions but do little to stop them.’ Zelenskyy agreed and said: ‘We must remember that when evil takes on such proportions, people's silence approaches the level of complicity. And the rejection of the real fight against evil becomes the assistance to it. Therefore, if you have Russian citizenship and you are silent, it means that you are not fighting, it means that you are supporting it. And no matter where you are—both on the territory of Russia and abroad—your voice should sound in support of Ukraine, and therefore against this war.’

For nearly two decades prior to the invasion, White Russian émigré texts republished in Russia have been circulating among Russian officials, politicians, siloviki and school children and students. The EU Centre Against Disinformation wrote: ‘Putin’s article has been distributed to soldiers in the Russian army in what appears to be a modern version of the political education of soldiers in the former Soviet army.’ The report makes plain the Kremlin ‘incites the public by funnelling and amplifying their propaganda through a controlled media landscape and extreme censorship around the war.’ This leads to Russian soldiers internalising and echoing Russian state propaganda campaigns while committing war crimes, and threatening to rape ‘every Nazi whore’ in the hunt for and

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liberation from Nazis with the purpose ‘to cleanse you from the dirt (following a public execution).’ The EU vs Disinformation centre explained: ‘This continued maelstrom of “disappear / cease to exist / hate them” is one big green light for soldiers to go ahead with any action one could imagine. After months of fierce fighting, after having lost battles and withdrawn from Kyiv, having heard almost apocalyptic-like nuclear sabre rattling every other day, the words “have them disappear” is likely perceived in such a way that the enemy is every Ukrainian; they must be killed and annihilated.’

Dmitry Rogozin, former Deputy Prime Minister, former Russian Ambassador to NATO and reputed to be Putin’s governor for the occupied territories, proposed to put an end to Ukrainians ‘once and forever.’ Ukraine, or in Rogozin’s words ‘what appeared in the place of Ukraine,’ represents ‘an existential threat to the Russian people, Russian history, Russian language and Russian civilisation.’ Deputy State Duma Chairman Petr Tolstoy described Ukrainian Nazism as an ‘ideology based on hatred of Russia’ promoted by the West in Ukraine so it would act as a ‘counterweight to Russia.’ Tolstoy, like Putin and the Kremlin, views the very existence of Ukraine as constituting an anti-Russian act, claiming ‘the only ideological basis for the existence of a Ukrainian state is hatred of Russia.’ A person holding a Ukrainian national identity personifies ‘Anti-Russia’ and should be eradicated. The report discussed Russia’s intention to destroy Ukrainians as a group which was ‘reviewed relative to Russia’s area of activity or control.’ As the report made clear: ‘Russian forces have left a trail of concentrated physical destruction upon retreat from occupied areas, including mass close-range executions, torture, destruction of vital infrastructure, and rape and sexual violence. The selective targeting of Ukrainian leaders or activists for enforced disappearance or murder is further evidence of intent to destroy the Ukrainian national group in part, as those figures are emblematic of the group or essential to the group’s survival.’

Four of the five genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm, deliberately inflicting physically destructive conditions of life, and forcibly transferring children to another group are being undertaken by Russia in Ukraine; there is yet no evidence of Russia

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imposing birth prevention measures. Russia’s genocidal plan ‘to destroy the Ukrainian national group in part may be demonstrated by the incitement to genocide driving the current invasion or by the striking patterns or methods of atrocities suggesting military policy.’ Russia’s acts of genocide against Ukraine have included the following ten policies: 1. 2.

Mass killings. Deliberate attacks on shelters, evacuation routes, and humanitarian corridors. 3. Indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas. 4. Russian military sieges and deliberate and systematic infliction of life-threatening conditions. 5. Destruction of vital infrastructure. 6. Attacks on health care. 7. Destruction and seizure of necessities, humanitarian aid, and grain. 8. Military bombardment against other sites that have threatened civilian lives. 9. Rape and sexual violence. 10. Forcible transfer of Ukrainians.

Fascist Cleansing of South-East Ukraine Russia’s genocide and destruction of Russian speaking cities and regions has left many Western observers and scholars perplexed. Putin’s genocidal plan for Ukraine is to destroy, depopulate, denazify, and resettle Russian-speaking south-eastern Ukraine. The port of Mariupol, which was controlled by Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov and voted for the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc, one of two successors to the pro-Russian Party of Regions, was destroyed. Over a quarter, that is 100,000 out of Mariupol’s pre-war 450,000 inhabitants, died. The figure is likely to be higher as many dead are buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings and Russia has been hiding evidence of killed civilians by using mass graves and mobile crematoriums. Six hundred civilians inside and outside the Mariupol Drama Theatre were killed when it was bombed by Russia.

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Borrell said, ‘What is happening now in Mariupol is a large-scale war crime, the destruction of everything, the bombing and killing off everyone, indiscriminately.’ Russia has also bombed the Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv daily. Destroying Ukraine’s south-east draws upon the fascist ideological premise of a cleansing of the past followed by the rebirth of what Putin repeatedly described as ‘ancient Russian lands’ and now calls ‘liberated territories.’ George F. Will compared Mussolini’s fascist Italy to Putin’s Russia in The Washington Post, writing: ‘The fascist aesthetic of redemptive, regenerative violence serves the fascist philosophy of national purification through the “self-detoxification of society” (Putin’s phrase). So, genocide, understood to encompass the erasure of an entire people’s cultural identity, flows inexorably from fascism.’

In Putin’s dystopian criminal mindset, it is precisely Russianspeaking regions that need to receive in Timothy Snyder’s words a ‘cleansing violence’ from their ‘contamination’ by Nazi’s (i.e., Ukrainian nationalists). The anchor of ‘An Evening with Vladimir Solovyov’ asked ‘When a doctor is deworming a cat—for the doctor, it's a special operation, for the worms, it's a war, and for the cat, it's a cleansing’ ‘because Ukraine as it was, cannot continue to exist.’ On ‘60 Minutes’, another Russian television programme, the host Olga Skabeyeva described Ukraine as a ‘non-existent’ country. Such genocidal discourse is commonplace in the Russian media. Snyder believes a ‘time traveler’ from the 1930s would have no difficulty identifying the Putin regime as fascist and genocidal. Indeed, nearly half of Ukrainians describe Putin’s regime as fascist and Nazi. 89 percent of Ukrainians believe Russia’s military actions in Ukraine constitute genocide; only nine percent disagree. There is barely any difference between the views of Ukrainian speakers (92 percent), bilingual speakers (89 percent) and Russian speakers (eighty percent) or between attitudes in western (92 percent), eastern (86 percent) and southern (85 percent) Ukraine. Snyder writes: ‘The symbol Z, the rallies, the propaganda, the war as a cleansing act of violence and the death pits around Ukrainian towns make it all very plain.’

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The second stage in Putin’s genocidal plan is to depopulate Ukraine’s south-east. Russia is a militocracy ruled by the former Soviet secret services and military who have historical experience in ethnic cleansing and conducting large population expulsions from Poland, western Ukraine, Crimea and the three Baltic states. The OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism report pointed out the deportations represented ‘a relatively consistent pattern of behaviour on the side of the Russian Federation, when the military occupation of a certain area is followed by abductions, interrogations, mistreatment and sometimes killings of important public figures, such as mayors or local journalists.’ US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, ‘The unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians and is a war crime.’ Robert Goldman, a war crimes and human rights expert at American University, told The Washington Post: ‘It just adds to the sad litany of systematic violations of the most basic prohibitions that we have in the law for things that we did not think that we would see again, since World War II, but they’re happening.’ Goldman is of the opinion that the deportations of Ukrainians constitute genocide under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The US estimates up to one and a half million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia. Russian officials have openly admitted a higher figure of over three million so-called Ukrainian ‘refugees’ who are in Russia. Russia has admitted that half a million children have been deported to Russia. 10,000 orphans have been given for adoption to Russian families. The Ukrainian foreign ministry said 1,000 ‘Ukrainian children from the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol were illegally transferred to third parties in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and the Altai Territory. Another 300 children are being held in specialised institutions in the Krasnodar Territory.’ This war crime violates the 1949 Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian persons in time of war, which requires occupier-states not to change the civil status of children. The war crime also violates the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ukrainians have been rounded up by the Russian security forces, herded on to buses and trains and driven to Russian

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occupied Donbas or the Russian Federation. Little fresh water and food has been provided. Medical care for those who were wounded was non-existent. There were no toilet facilities on the means of transportation. After being delivered by Russian soldiers to filtration camps, the FSB have taken over their interrogations. Human Rights Watch described the purpose of filtration camps as weeding out Ukrainian patriots where ‘the Russian authorities mark for death, disappearance, or torture those detainees deemed irredeemably Ukrainian.’ Deputy Head of the U.S. mission to the OSCE Courtney Austrian said Russian officials and pro-Russian proxy groups had set up eighteen identified filtration camps in schools, sports centres, and cultural institutions in occupied areas of Ukraine. Testimonies given to The New York Times and other media by escapees have provided harrowing accounts of interrogations, beatings, and torture of those who had held ties to Ukraine’s security forces, and of their disappearances. After the filtration camps, Ukrainians have been sent to Russian regions near China or Japan. The OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism report describes how deportations began: ‘At night, a man with a gun entered the shelter, claiming it was an evacuation. People who had been in the shelter for about 20 days were let out, put in cars, and driven somewhere, only to realize they had been taken somewhere out of Ukraine. They were then loaded onto trains and transported to the Russian Federation’s hinterland.’

Filtration camps, like Kill Lists, were prepared before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US Ambassador to the UN Linda ThomasGreenfield said that filtration camps aimed to, ‘identify individuals Russia deems insufficiently compliant or compatible to its control’ and, ‘those considered threatening to Russian control because of perceived pro-Ukrainian leanings are ‘disappeared’ or further detained.’ This process was being coordinated by ‘Russia’s presidency’ which ‘is not only coordinating filtration operations but is providing lists of Ukrainians to be targeted for filtration,’ she added. Austrian said, ‘Russian officials likely created lists of Ukrainian civilians deemed threatening to Russia’s control of

100 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukraine, including anyone with pro-Ukraine views, such as political figures and activists, as well as security personnel, for detention and filtration.’ Putin is a true disciple of Stalin. Austrian described the filtration camps as a ‘Stalinist process’ and ‘the latest in a long Russian history of using mass deportation and depopulation to try to subjugate and control people.’ In the eight years of war from 2014 to the Russian invasion an estimated 2,000 disappeared in Russian-occupied Crimea and the Donbas. Since the invasion, Ukrainian television journalist Katya Osadcha, who set up the volunteer group Telegram group, said: ‘There are over ten thousand that we know are missing, but this is certainly an underestimate.’ Over the three months from 24 February when Russia invaded and 24 May, Ukraine’s Police force submitted over 9,000 missing-person reports in the Donetsk region alone. The numbers are undoubtedly higher if we included Russian-occupied Luhansk, Mariupol, Zaporozhzhya and Kherson. Russia’s destruction of Mariupol created a major black hole. During the filtration deportees, even old age pensioners, were brutally strip searched and checked for Ukrainian tattoos such as tryzubs (tridents) as well as callouses and bruises received from the firing of weapons. Their Ukrainian documents were confiscated. Deportees were fingerprinted, photographed, and treated as war criminals. The contents of their mobile phones, which they were ordered to unlock, were downloaded to computers and photos on them were scanned. Denazification has led to Ukrainians being ‘disappeared,’ a war crime Russian security forces earlier used in Chechnya and Syria. If pro-Ukrainian videos or social media messages were found on mobile phones, or if they had given answers deemed to be ‘suspicious,’ the owners of the mobile phones were taken to separate rooms and never seen again. It is most likely that most of those who have been taken away were executed. Something as innocuous as a social media post disparaging the Russian military or supporting Ukrainian troops was enough to lead to a person’s disappearance. The fate of most victims remains unknown, but evidence from liberated areas such as Bucha to the north of Kyiv and accounts from those who have returned from

GENOCIDE 101 captivity indicate that instances of torture and execution were widespread and commonplace. The United Nations Office of Human Rights stated that Russian troops executed civilians in over thirty Ukrainian settlements, such as in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy oblasts. In June 2022 the Ukrainian parliament endorsed an appeal to the UN: ‘trying to legalise the abduction of Ukrainian children who do not have natural parents and cannot fully protect themselves, the President of the Russian Federation on 30 May 2022 signed a decree on the simplified acquisition of Russian citizenship by forcibly resettled orphans and children deprived of parental care from Ukraine, as well as children who are in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson oblasts, which will allow the Russian authorities to adopt kidnapped Ukrainian children in the future.’

The appeal continued: ‘Thousands of children who ended up in the temporarily occupied territories and the territory of the aggressor state are hostages of the occupying state. Children are very easy to manipulate and to be used for their own purposes, including for propaganda. The forced removal by the Russian Federation of Ukrainian children, especially orphans and children deprived of parental care, children whose parents died in the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine, is a gross violation of the rights and freedoms of such children.’

The Kremlin’s plan to resettle south-east Ukraine is like what took place in that region after Ukraine was depopulated by the Holodomor, Great Terror in the 1930s and Nazi occupation. Fifteen million Ukrainians died at the hands of Stalinists and Nazi’s. Destroyed cities such as Mariupol would be repopulated by re-Russified locals who have survived filtration and exile in Russia and Russian citizens who have been re-settled in the ‘liberated territories.’ Millions of ethnic Russians and other nationalities were resettled in southeastern Ukraine after World War II when the Donbas became a mini version of the Soviet Union that incorporated tens of different nationalities. The Donetsk clan, local organised crime groups and oligarchs drew on this Soviet melting pot to create the Ukrainophobic Party of Regions. The Kremlin’s goal of the resettlement of

102 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukraine’s south-east is to return the region to a mythical earlier era that had allegedly existed before it was ‘contaminated’ by three decades of ‘Nazism’ (i.e., nation building in the independent Ukrainian state). Key Points 

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Nearly two decades of dehumanisation of Ukraine and Ukrainians prepared the ground for Russia’s invasion, denazification campaign, and genocide. The Kremlin’s goals are the destruction of the Ukrainian state and genocide of the Ukrainian nation. Under Putin’s rule of Russia, the rehabilitation of White Russian émigré imperial nationalism provided the ideological material for Putin’s long essay published in July 2021. White Russian émigré imperial nationalism denies the existence of Ukraine and believes its people are a Little Russian branch of the pan-Russian nation, alongside Great and White Russians. Putin’s July 2021 long rambling essay was his ideological treatise to justify Russia’s special military operation. US intelligence revealed that Russian planning for the invasion of Ukraine began in summer 2021 and therefore the essay should be seen as Putin’s ideological thesis for Ukraine’s destruction and the genocide of the Ukrainian nation. Putin’s July 2021 essay is the Kremlin’s equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his treatise to justify the criminal destruction of Jews and slavery of Slavic peoples. Russia is committing genocide by denying the existence of, and seeking to destroy, the Ukrainian state, national identity, and language. Putin’s Russia—in the same way as the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany—is more than an imperialist power. Putin is following Stalin and Hitler’s goal of committing genocide against ethnic groups, in this case Ukrainians, using torture, executions, bombardment of civilians, rape, and filtration camps for millions of deported Ukrainians.

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Denying the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians constitutes a crime of genocide. Putin’s declared goal of denazification is a call for the genocide of Ukrainians. Ukrainians who do not acknowledge they are Little Russians are Nazis and should be Russified or eradicated. Russian officials and media have used genocidal discourse supporting the murder of millions of Ukrainians. Russia’s occupation of Ukraine has committed countless war crimes that have included destruction of buildings and infra-structure, use of banned military equipment such as cluster bombs, murder of over one hundred thousand civilians, forcible deportation of over three million Ukrainians, rapes, and looting. The OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism report stated, ‘Russian forces carried out targeted, organised killings of civilians in Bucha’ who were ‘frequently found shot dead, hands tied behind their backs.’ There were 1,400 extra-judicial executions in the Kyiv region alone. In Zabuchchya, a village in the Bucha rayon (district), ‘Eighteen mutilated bodies of murdered men, women, and children were discovered in a basement: some had their ears cut off, while others had their teeth pulled out.’ Putin’s goal of converting Ukrainians into Little Russians has been made impossible by Russian military aggression and genocide that has fundamentally transformed national identity in south-eastern Ukraine. Russia’s invasion has forged national integration and removed regional divisions between eastern and western Ukraine.

Suggested Reading An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent. (2022). Washington DC and Montreal: New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, May. D’Anieri, Paul. (2019). Ukraine and Russia. From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hook, Kristina. (2022). ‘Why Russia’s War in Ukraine Is a Genocide,’ Foreign Affairs, 28 July. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/whyrussias-war-ukraine-genocide

104 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Human Rights Watch. (2022). ‘“We Had No Choice”. “Filtration” and the Crime of Forcibly Transferring Ukrainian Civilians to Russia,’ 1 September. https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/01/we-had-no-cho ice/filtration-and-crime-forcibly-transferring-ukrainian-civilians Kolstø, Pål and Blakkisrud, Helge. (2016). (Eds.). The New Russian Nationalism Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kovalev, Alexey. (2022). ‘Putin Has a New Opposition—and It’s Furious at Defeat in Ukraine,’ Foreign Policy, 12 September. https://foreignpoli cy.com/2022/09/12/russia-ukraine-war-defeat-opposition-putin-st ab-in-the-back-conspiracy-theory-far-right/ Kremlin Hate Speech Incites War Crimes in Ukraine. (2022). EU vs Disinformation, 9 June. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/kremlin-hate-speech-in cites-war-crimes-in-ukraine/ Kuzio, T. and D’Anieri, Paul. (2018). Chapter 2 ‘The Soviet Origins of Russian Hybrid Warfare’ In: The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics: Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order, Bristol: E-IR Publishers, 25-60. Kuzio, T. (2019). ‘Old Wine in a New Bottle: Russia’s Modernisation of Traditional Soviet Information Warfare and Active Policies against Ukraine and Ukrainians,’ Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 32 (4): 485-506. Kuzio, T. (2020). Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism, and War, Bristol: E-International Relations. https://www.e-ir.info/ publication/crisis-in-russian-studies-nationalism-imperialism-racis m-and-war/ Kuzio, T. (2022). Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War: Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality, London: Routledge. Laruelle, Marlene. (2020). Russian Nationalism. Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields, London: Routledge. Minchenia, Alena, Tornquist-Plewa, Barbara, and Yurchuk, Yuliya. (2018). ‘Humour as a Mode of Hegemonic Control: Comic Representations of Belarusian and Ukrainian Leaders in Official Russian Media’ In: Niklas Bernsand and B. Tornquist-Plewa (eds.), Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia, Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 211–231. Putin, Vladimir. (2021). ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,’ 12 July. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 Report of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism’s mission of experts entitled ‘Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine Since 24 February 2022. (2022). 13 April. https://www.osce. org/odihr/515868

GENOCIDE 105 Russia: Forcible Disappearances of Ukrainian Civilians. (2022). Detainees Unlawfully Transferred to Russia, Possibly Held as Hostages, Human Rights Watch, 14 July. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/14/ russia-forcible-disappearances-ukrainian-civilians Ukraine: Torture, Disappearances in Occupied South. (2022). Apparent War Crimes by Russian Forces in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia Regions, Human Rights Watch, 22 July. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/ 07/22/ukraine-torture-disappearances-occupied-south When Words Kill—From Moscow to Mariupol. (2022). EU vs Disinformation, 17 June. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/when-words-kill-from-mosc ow-to-mariupol/

3 Disinformation Ukraine and its government have utilised their experience with disinformation since 2014 to dominate the information space in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Since the annexation of Crimea and military aggression against the Donbas, Russia has used a variety of methods to sow confusion and mistrust though coordinated disinformation campaigns and informal use of proxies to spread false narratives—perhaps most infamously following the shooting-down of Malaysian Airways flight MH17 over occupied Donetsk oblast in 2014. Russia’s information warfare covers a range of activities: from suppression of its domestic media to filling online spaces with narratives which range between outrageous lie and twisted half-truth. From the paid online trolls of the Internet Research Agency to Western citizen bloggers who readily share Russian narratives, there is a multi-vectored approach to information warfare which Ukraine has embraced as a battlefield of sorts in the months since the invasion. Russian State TV deals in bravado and hyperbole, containing bombastic discussion aimed at maintaining domestic support for its special military operation. While the control of this information space has been vital since 2014, it became an acute need in early 2022 as Ukraine attempted to prevent panic, disseminate vital information, and control the battlefield narrative from the outset of the invasion. From a united news broadcast to the adept use of social media from the Zelenskyyy team; Ukraine has dominated– at least in most Western circles—which have become increasingly wise to Russian disinformation tactics. It’s clear that lessons have been learned in Ukraine since the beginning of hostilities eight years ago, during which time the country’s mass media was subject to some limited reform allowing independent, government-critical outlets to thrive; the Russian experience however was somewhat different. Its media continued to be shackled by a consolidation of state control, where any criticism was swiftly and often- violently snuffed-out—leaving barely a 107

108 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE handful of critical publications left by the time of invasion. That is not to say the two post-Euromaidan presidencies have a perfect record on the media, it certainly contrasts with its Eastern neighbour. Russia’s response to sanctions and among other things the removal of RT International from televisions in the West was to ban social media like Instagram while foreign journalists were added to increasingly long blacklists. Leaving only the most vociferous supporters of the invasion visible on television, on radio and online. While Russian state-approved media spewed propaganda about Ukrainian Nazis and fantasised about potential nuclear strikes at countries like the United Kingdom, there was a lack of independent, online media to counter the official narrative. Those few who remain operate in exile beyond Russia’s borders. Unlike in Ukraine where a thriving media ecosystem away from the largely oligarch-owned broadcasters was at work. Staffed with mainly young, tech-savvy professionals who turned their ire at Russia’s invasion into a key source of investigative journalism— not to mention being a valuable outlet for sharing the work of hundreds of volunteer organisations set up since 2014 which have been working to support the Ukrainian army and the country’s wartime society more broadly since February. So why is this important? The shocking nature of Russia’ invasion could well have sown extreme panic among Ukraine’s population—many of whom, anecdotally, did not believe war was coming and were out to dinner or socialising in bars just hours before missiles landed across the country. The control of information was key in those initial days, especially in the face of a Russian propaganda machine, itself on a war footing, ready to declare the capitulation of Kyiv at a moment’s notice.

United News and Independent Media Images showing missile launches and strikes against Ukraine flooded the country’s main news channels in the early hours of 24 February—much like they did on networks across the world. CCTV pictures showed Russian forces crossing from Crimea—annexed in 2014—into Southern Ukraine, while other clips showed troops

DISINFORMATION 109 entering the north of the country from where they had been massed in Belarus. In response, each of the country’s main news broadcasters launched their own special programmes focused on Russia’s invasion with analysis and mobile phone footage showing the aftermath of Putin’s initial strikes on the country. By the next day, viewers may have been left wondering why the country’s main news outlets (Suspilne 1+1, ICTV, Ukraine 24, Inter, UA: Pershyy) were all showing the same broadcast. The country’s largest broadcasters united for what has since been dubbed the ‘national tele marathon’—a singular 24-hour broadcast showing the same content on each channel, also made available online through YouTube and Ukraine’s government app-portal Diya (Action). In a practical sense, this meant that resources—like reporters, producers and crew—could be shared between broadcasters. While guests—chiefly members of the government—were able to deliver a single message which would be heard by different audiences. It meant that political and military analysts weren’t being exhausted by repeating the same interview numerous times. With Kyiv under serious threat, many news operations simply couldn’t work as they had done before and, while viewer numbers swiftly increased, revenue from advertising fell off a cliff. Initially coordinated by the Minister for Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko, license conditions for each broadcaster were eased meaning that a national television and radio marathon were possible. Each news organisation was to work in 5-hour shifts, with bulletins on the hour detailing the latest from the front lines and relaying the latest information from the government in Kyiv. The united broadcast was backed by the Presidential Office, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the country’s National Security and Defence Council and other key offices of state. This early decision was key—NATO research into strategic communications conducted in 2015 suggested that the spreading of rumours, alongside other information operations was, ‘one of the most effective tactics of a social cyber-attack.’ The united news broadcast would be a counter to this threat. For the Ukrainian government, uniting news broadcasts was an effective way of ensuring the control of information

110 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE disseminated through the media with the purpose of countering Russian propaganda and disinformation. When announcing United News, broadcasters were clear that this was their aim, indicating the dangers of Russian disinformation both inside Ukraine and beyond. Their statement at the time read: ‘It is extremely important that people around the world have access to reliable and truthful information relating to the Russia’s war against Ukraine and the course of hostilities here.’ Showing a realisation that, after eight years of disinformation and propaganda relating to the Donbas War, Ukraine needed its own, singular narrative—an authoritative voice that could be heard by its own citizens and crucially by foreign networks. They added: ‘We understand how powerful the Russian propaganda machine is and what kind of effort the aggressor makes to spread fake news to cynically fool people. We absolutely oppose this!’ Alongside their stated commitment to fighting disinformation, Ukraine’s main news channels appealed to their Western colleagues asking them to ‘turn off’ Russian television networks like RT and Sputnik—at the time still-available in multiple languages globally. With Ukraine relying on the help of Western military and humanitarian aid, it is clear how important the control of the flow of information from Ukraine would be to the broader war effort. As an example, while international news outlets like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera were displaying images of Russian missile attacks, RT was airing ahistorical documentaries which supported the widely-debunked Russian casus belli—that Ukraine was ruled by a fascistic Nazi regime. At the same time in Ukraine, alongside the tanks and fighter jets sent into Ukraine by Russia, dozens of fakes appeared on social media (mostly through the social messaging app Telegram) with the clear aim of reducing the morale of the Ukrainian public, an attempt to present Russia’s political aims of taking Kyiv quickly and replacing Zelenskyy as President as fait accompli. For example, videos and pictures began circulating on pro-Russian Telegram channels suggesting elements of the Ukrainian army had refused to fight or had quickly surrendered. Elsewhere, pro-Russian figures in Ukraine like politician-turned-defector Ilya Kiva (wanted in

DISINFORMATION 111 Ukraine for treason and living in exile in Russia) claimed, on the second day of the invasion, that the war was lost, that Russian tanks and special forces had control of Kyiv and that Zelenskyy had to resign. Taking turns broadcasting under the banners of each different news outlet, presenters welcomed guests—some to their existing or makeshift studios, others remotely—and brought the country minute-by-minute updates on the invasion. Alongside ‘traditional’ news bulletins, some even delivered from underground bomb-shelters, the public heard from politicians, volunteer organisations, military experts and public figures. Initially reporters used their mobile phones to file images and stories back to their newsrooms. Those living in the areas around Kyiv documented the early Russian attempts to capture key infrastructure, like the battle for the airfield at Hostomel, near Kyiv. But there was focus on practical information for viewers too, for example a segment in late February featured members of Kyiv Territorial Defence forces leading a workshop of sorts, teaching viewers how to make Molotov Cocktails. Similarly, adverts on the national radio broadcast regularly give advice on what people should do if they discover unexploded ordinance or what to do in the event of a chemical weapons attack—with the same infomercials played out on the radio. In March 2022, the Ukrainian Parliament passed legislation that recognised the importance of Ukraine’s united national news in the time of war. The new law codified this tele marathon under the name of United News and compelled any channel that aired news prior to the invasion to broadcast the unified output. Writing in the same month, Svitlana Ostapa, deputy head of media monitoring at Detector Media NGO echoed the government’s view, saying the: ‘tele marathon is the information war equivalent of our anti-aircraft systems and I think it’s the most optimal option for Ukraine right now. It helps protect Ukrainians from Russian fakes and prevents panic among the population.’ Alongside the united broadcast, the very content shown to viewers and discussed changed almost immediately from the first day of the invasion. Patriotic slogans and banners littered screens

112 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE while guests were greeted with Slava Ukrayiny (Glory to Ukraine) as they appeared, obviously tired, to discuss Ukraine’s new reality. Though with journalists on television and radio spread across the country, away from their normal studios, it’s an achievement to have set this operation up at all. The realities of war often made themselves clear to viewers, with presenters reading bulletins from makeshift studios in bunkers, while others were forced to leave their seats mid-broadcast because an air-raid warning had sounded. With Russian intelligence having been proven wrong and Zelenskyyy’s government in place, attacks on broadcast infrastructure followed. Five people were killed in Kyiv after a missile struck the city’s TV tower, while in occupied areas of the country, Russia was hasty in reprogramming and reformatting television broadcasts replacing the United News with Russian news propaganda. While several stations were reported to have briefly gone off air because of the attack, the decision to unite news output was perhaps vindicated in those moments. The decision to unite news broadcasts in the early weeks of the war may, in hindsight, be seen as a success by the Ukrainian government, but it has not been without criticism. Journalists and media monitors alike have warned that information normally distributed by these newsrooms may be being supressed or withheld under the guise of national security. There are fears elsewhere that Zelenskyy and his team may later use their newly formed news monolith as a vehicle for the promotion of their own political ends. Critics, particularly since the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kyiv, have pointed to the promotion of Zelenskyy’s comedic friends on the national news marathon, as well as the lack of participation from channels owned by the Presidents predecessor and political rival, oligarch Petro Poroshenko. There have since been calls for broadcast news to return to how it was pre-invasion; with those within the media, and beyond, praising the United News for the purpose it served in the early weeks of the war, but acknowledging that it was perhaps now time to change once again. Nevertheless, the importance of television news in Ukraine can’t be understated. In the three decades since Ukraine declared

DISINFORMATION 113 its independence in 1991, the country’s media landscape has been dominated by television, despite the growth of independent media—particularly since 2013-14. A survey from 2019, conducted by the NGO Detector Media suggested nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of Ukrainians used television of a way of finding out information about their country and the world. In comparison, Ukrainian internet media was only cited by 27.5 percent of respondents as a primary source with social media following closely at 23.5 percent. Television has been a key tool in gaining political influence and furthering the commercial interests of oligarchs and political figures—often, as is the case in Ukraine, the same people. It’s no surprise that during the 1990s and 2000s, Ukraine’s oligarchs consolidated their control over the country’s media more broadly leading Reporters Without Borders to characterise Ukraine’s media landscape as, ‘diverse, but remains largely in the grip of oligarchs who own all of the national TV channels—except the state broadcaster Suspilne.’ Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014 marked a watershed in the country’s political and societal development, cementing not only Ukraine’s European geopolitical ambitions—its orientation towards Brussels rather than Moscow—but also its citizens’ desire for transparency and fairness in domestic life. Reform of the police; the creation of a High Anti-Corruption Court and the introduction of an online declaration system for Ukraine’s politicians are all examples of institutions created in response to the demands of the country’s mass democratic movement. While many of the post-2014 institutional changes were brought in as conditions woven into Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the European Union and as part of the deal allowing access to valuable capital from international groups such as the IMF, the year also saw the beginning of some reforms in the media. As well as a need for propaganda and information control, independent Ukrainian online media outlets have also been vital in documenting the activities of Russians soldiers in occupied territories. Following the collapse of Russia’s northern axis of attack which

114 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE focused on Kyiv, war crimes—rape, torture, and summary execution—committed in towns like Bucha and Irpin were discovered. Ever since, independent media organisations have turned their attention to investigating these crimes, specifically using social media to find the perpetrators and gather evidence of their complicity. Among others—online outlets Slidstvo.info, Bihus.info and Telebachennya Toronto have all published their own investigations on YouTube looking into Russian war-crimes—coupling testimony from Ukrainian victims with open-source intelligence-gathering to identify those responsible. These smaller, more autonomous media outlets also played a part in giving an alternative to the news that was being broadcast as part of the United News. Those involved in these predominantly YouTube-based news shows—particularly those focused on satirical skewering of the public figures of the day—realised quickly that there was space for them to take a granular view on issues like the plight of refugees or the looting of Ukrainians’ homes. In an interview with Ivano-Frankivsk based talk show KURS (Course), Maksym Scherbyna—a host with online outlet Telebachennya Toronto—which produced a semi-satirical weekly news digest—outlined how they saw themselves working as this alternative. Making the point that most people were glued to the national news marathon, were listening to it in their cars and had already joined dozens of Telegram channels—so most knew that news already, and that the pace of war was such that their show would be outdated before it was even made. Their programme, like others, reorientated to focus on what they called ‘ridiculous news’ from Russia—exposing the most farfetched of fakes and providing Ukrainians with some light relief alongside morale-boosting news from Ukraine. The team moved from producing a weekly show to broadcasting daily online with much of the team having relocated hundreds of miles from Kyiv in the first days of the invasion. The show featured appearances from volunteers’ groups, a charismatic military psychologist and often featured a jarring-yet-jovial rundown of updated Russian losses from that day, complete with upbeat music.

DISINFORMATION 115 The point being that while the united broadcasts of the traditional outlets was serving its own purpose in providing a linear and consistent stream of verified news, online broadcasters and independent media were able to focus on granular detail, while also providing an organic morale-boosting antidote to the news of war and, crucially, be independent from government or ‘official’ channels. Reporting in English language media from Ukrainian journalists was equally important in those early days of the war. While many veteran Western reporters had parachuted into Kyiv in the preceding weeks, there was less coverage of the country than in 2014 and 2015. The conflicts frozen nature and distractions elsewhere meant that people in the West had, in a colloquial sense, forgotten about Ukraine. It is here where publications like the Kyiv Independent have played a crucial role. The 20-something team of reporters spread across Ukraine saw their readership increase from tens-of-thousands to millions within the first weeks of the war. Helped by the online-only nature of their reporting, the journalists were able to quickly adapt to their new reality. Their already-comprehensive knowledge of Russian propaganda allowed them to play a useful role in identifying it for western audiences, and debunk them. Kyiv Independent journalists have been interviewed for newspapers across the world and appeared on dozens of television shows explaining—crucially in English—the grim realities of war, and also providing an expert voice to counter Russian disinformation.

Social Media in Ukraine As with the election of Donald Trump in the United States in 2016, the election of Zelenskyyy as Ukraine’s president in 2019 saw social media being used to great effect during his campaign. Zelenskyyy, an actor and comedian at the helm of a production powerhouse, knew how to use social media to his advantage—something that would serve him well after Russia’s invasion. In his popular sitcom ‘Servant of the People’ Zelenskyy’s character Vasyl Holoborodko rose from the position of an ordinary teacher to president after

116 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE going viral online, which would later be mirrored by his real-life campaign. Zelenskyy achieved a landslide victory with over 73 percent of the vote after a campaign focused on virality and online communication not seen before in Ukrainian elections. The campaign’s use of micro-targeting—where audiences receive specific, targeted content based on their demographic (i.e., age, location, and profession) helped greatly in him achieving victory. Furthermore, as part of the same campaign, Zelenskyy’s team largely bypassed traditional news, eschewing them in favour of speaking directly to the electorate through social media platforms like Telegram and Facebook. The team appealed to voters to recommend policies for his electoral manifesto and solicited recommendations for potential candidates for cabinet positions and senior roles in a future government. While most of the country said they used television as their main source of news, surveys conducted in the year leading up to invasion suggested that over two-thirds used at least one form of social media—mainly Facebook, since Russian platforms VKontakte and Odnoklassniki were banned in 2017. In the years since the war in the Donbas began, smartphone usage in Ukraine has increased dramatically, from just nine percent in 2013 up to 85 percent just five years later. Ukrainians are also a broadly tech-savvy nation, according to similar studies, with most consumers owning an average of three or four tech products. So, at the time of invasion Ukrainians were broadly online and their social media usage has only increased in the last eight years. Zelenskyy and his team had experience of communicating directly with their supporters using channels not traditionally used by political forces in Ukraine. And when it came to the first days of the war, similar tactics would be applied again—most notably in the key address released on the evening of 25 February. Filmed using what appeared to be the front-facing camera of a mobile phone, Zelenskyyy—flanked by his prime minister, chief of staff and other aides all wearing matching camouflage—assured his country that ‘The president is here.’ With rumours flying and a Russian disinformation campaign underway, Zelenskyy drew comparisons with

DISINFORMATION 117 British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill as he told his nation: ‘I remain in the capital; I am staying with my people.” And assured them that, “We're all here. Our military is here. Citizens in society are here. We're all here defending our independence, our country, and it will stay this way.’

In releasing this style of message, analysts have praised Zelenskyy for his apparent authenticity—even suggesting that its familiar appearance, like an ordinary video call with a friend or family member, would have resonated with viewers. Incidentally, this specific video received over three million views on Instagram alone within an hour of being uploaded. In that moment, Zelenskyy became Ukraine’s most powerful online influencer, with his nightly messages gaining worldwide coverage. The authenticity of both the message and the medium largely helping with this success. It is no surprise that these videos of the president continue to be released on a nightly basis—a regular fixture in Zelenskyy’s communication with the Ukrainian people. But it wasn’t just the content and delivery of these messages which showed Zelenskyy’s social media acumen—his experience of campaigning meant that he knew how to connect with an online following, but also ensure that connection would result in virality. At the time, the world’s eyes were largely on Ukraine and any message from the president would need to be powerful, direct, and easy to digest. Similarly, Zelenskyy has used his public social media accounts as a parallel form of communication between himself and other foreign leaders. While details, discussions and negotiations were taking place in private, the ability to share content so easily across social media meant that an appeal for anything from weapons and sanctions from Ukraine was immediately shared tens of thousands of times, reaching the eyes of millions of social media users with relative ease. Ukrainians themselves have been encouraged to share these and other messages with friends, family, and colleagues around the world. Instagram, which boasts around 1.2 billion users globally has proven a fertile space for Ukrainians wishing to share, in

118 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE English and other languages, what is going on it their homeland. Accounts like Svidomi have produced numerous infographics and guides to help outside observers, who may not be versed in the nuances of the war in Ukraine, with easy-to-digest facts and analysis. Similarly, accounts and online portals that previously used to give tourist information to Ukraine’s international visitors became online hubs of information about the war. The homepage of Visit Ukraine now carries information for refugees, links to humanitarian aid fundraisers and a section called ‘Truth About Russian Aggression.’ The site’s corresponding Instagram channel used to carry stylised footage of Ukraine’s beauty spots, urging tourists to visit the country for the first time. While the account still does promote Ukraine’s natural beauty, it also carries images of destruction caused by Russian forces. In a similar vein to Svidomi, a daily digest of war news and updates is published for Ukrainians to share among their friends and publicly on their stories. The importance of messaging in the early days of conflict were compounded by the tricky situation Ukraine found itself in—that the government and the armed forces needed to project strength in the face of a vicious enemy, but also that it desperately needed additional help from friendly governments and NATO allies. Zelenskyy admitted in a subsequent video that he was the primary target of the Russian assault on Kyiv, shouldering responsibility, embodying the threat faced by Ukrainians across the country. For Zelenskyy a further moment of online virality came after he was reportedly offered a way out of Kyiv by the United States. At the time, the Ukrainian Embassy in the UK reported that the President had responded with, ‘The fight is here; I need ammunition not a ride.’ The latter part quickly being transformed into widely shared online memes which, in turn, began to appear in the real world as slogans at protest marches and emblazoned on t-shirts seemingly garnering further international support and respect which rallied a nation. Even Zelenskyy’s physical appearance became something of a brand. In each appearance, his all-khaki attire gave him a connection to the military, without overtly becoming militaristic. Zelenskyy’s new ‘uniform’, also emulated by his government colleagues,

DISINFORMATION 119 gave the impression that he had done away with the civil niceties of peacetime life. It’s perhaps telling that when French President Emmanuel Macron released official photographs from the Elysée Palace showing him discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with international leaders, he was wearing a similar green khaki t-shirt. But social media hasn’t only been useful in delivering government messaging, it has proven valuable as a way of widely-publicising both the bravery of Ukrainians in their fight against Russia to outside observers but also in documenting Russian atrocities committed in occupied spaces. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), for example, regularly publish what they claim are intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families with some explaining, in explicit detail, what exactly they had been doing to citizens in the places they had captured. Through the power of social media (and English-language translation) these were quickly spread around the world, drawing condemnation. The proliferation of social media in Ukraine meant that Ukrainians living in Russian occupied areas could, in real time, pass details of Russian positions and equipment to their armed forces. Hotlines and digital repositories were set up to collect, verify and distribute this information. In effect, Ukraine utilised its population as a broader arm of its information intelligence forces. Beyond the recruitment efforts of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, social media has been useful in attracting foreign volunteers to join the fight. Globally, TikTok feeds began to fill up with videos taken from the front lines of battle, accompanied with invitations to Ukraine’s foreign friends to help join the battle. Elsewhere, the need for ‘good news’ in the early weeks of the conflict gave immense value to what was and, perhaps more crucially, what wasn’t published online. The overwhelmingly emotive response to Putin’s invasion in the West gave Ukraine fertile ground for goodnews narratives which played for both domestic and international audiences. Like the hero soldiers of Snake Island who said: ‘Russian Warship go Fuck Yourself!’ and the mystical Ace fighter pilot dubbed ‘The Ghost of Kyiv’—Ukraine was able to quickly turn these stories into online rallying points for their citizens.

120 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE And the battle for the information space was not only dominated by memes and jokes—Ukrainians have made, and continue to make, good use of social media to strengthen global resolve to resist Russia. A video of a seven-year-old singing the Disney hit ‘Let It Go’ while in a bomb shelter spread quickly around the world, while a sombre cello performance from Kharkiv, with the musician surrounded by rubble and debris garnered a similar reaction. These clips, and many others, all fed into a wider information resistance undertaken by Ukrainians. Their authenticity, silhouetted by their stark and shocking surroundings, allowed Ukrainians to tell their fellow citizens around the world what was really happening. And while Ukrainians in sharing this content showed their stalwart resistance to its aggressor-neighbour, they also kept the moral high ground. Alongside this vital antidote to Russian disinformation, the use of memes and jokes on social media have provided a vital morale boost, while poking fun at the invading army. Images and jokes about tractors flooded Ukrainian social media, for example, after images showing Ukrainian farmers towing abandoned Russian equipment from their fields, in their eyes refuting the claims that Russia possessed the second strongest army in the world. Another symbol of Russian incompetence, meme-fed and shared with glee, arose from the multiple failed attempts by the Russian army to capture an airfield on the outskirts of Kherson near the town of Chornobaivka. Ukrainian forces beat back more than two dozen Russian attacks on the airfield, which led to jokes including stills from the film Groundhog Day and edited motorway signs with every direction pointing to Chornobayka. While the images provided respite for Ukrainians, a moment of levity during heinous trauma—they also served to minimise their opponent—it was a way of making it clear that the stated aims of Vladimir Putin—that Kyiv would fall within seventy-two hours—were nonsense. Ukrainians have also used social media to share information about volunteer and humanitarian initiatives—building upon the civil society developments in the country since 2014. Ukraine has a strong core of volunteerism in its society; one that has been especially active since the occupation of the Donbas. Ordinary citizens

DISINFORMATION 121 have self-organised in support of their army and continue to do so today with many giving up their businesses and livelihoods to focus on equipping frontline troops. While Ukraine’s armed forces have improved since the occupation of the Donbas, the troops’ need—say the volunteers—have shifted from boots and uniforms to high-tech equipment like drones and night vision optics. Such is the high-tech knowledge in Ukraine, some volunteer organisations have, in the months since February 2022, used 3D printers to create drone attachments that allow them to carry and release grenades. Much of the money used to fund such endeavours is raised through informal groups on social media. In a similar vein, the methods in which these volunteer organisations collect funds has developed, with many accepting donations in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. In addition, the use of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet connections have enabled Ukrainians to stay online despite the destruction of communications infrastructure across the country.

Russian Disinformation and Ukrainian Countermeasures Russian disinformation is not a new phenomenon, especially for Ukraine—which has faced a barrage of manufactured narratives since 2014. Even before the annexation of Crimea, Russia was categorising the protestors of the pro-democracy Euromaidan movement as Nazi’s beginning the start of what became a Russian tendency to apply labels such as these to anything that countered the Kremlin’s specific narrative. Most notably, during the annexation of Crimea, Russia initially claimed that its forces were not involved in the seizure of the peninsula, and that the armed men appearing on the streets were local citizens. These false narratives are disseminated in a hybrid fashion, both by social media trolls and Russian state-controlled media at home and abroad. An example being the response to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in the UK in 2018. The purpose of Russian disinformation—particularly since its invasion of Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea six years

122 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE later—is to cloak the reality of events as they happen and are an active attempt to deceive international audiences. In the creation of its disinformation narratives, Russia positions itself as a rational actor responding lawfully to crises as a ‘helpful neighbour’—crises it has itself provoked. The disinformation apparatus then served to deceives outside observes while reinforcing Russia’s position as an innocent actor. Another characteristic of these disinformation tactics is to flood information spaces with conflicting and contradictory narratives to confuse and distract Western audiences. These narratives create an abstract which—particularly in Crimea in 2014—prevent any decisive action from Western governments and international institutions, while also giving Russia deniability when accused of breaking international law. However, as on-the-ground situations develop, the need for deniability changes—for example despite initially claiming no Russian military personnel were involved in the annexation of Crimea, this was later contradicted by the Russian government who eventually acknowledged the presence of their military, there supposedly to aid local anti-Ukrainian forces. Similarly, emails and documents hacked from Russian government institutions and individuals with close ties to the Kremlin, like those of Vladislav Surkov and Yevgeny Prigozhin, have revealed the methods and structures through which the Russian government has created its misinformation narratives through control of the media over the last decade. The leaks also give examples of how Russia has attempted to physically manipulate the on-theground situation in Ukraine through false-flag activities and providing support for agitators of so-called separatism in the country’s East and Crimea. But Russia’s disinformation campaign has not only manifested as a response to several singular events. With hindsight, it has become clear that there has been a consistent attempt by Russia to dominate its domestic information space—concurrently through control of state media narratives, and also the often-violent suppression of any dissenting domestic voice in the media or political opposition. This has served to prepare the ground for the 2022 invasion by summarily dehumanising Ukrainians in television

DISINFORMATION 123 broadcasts and continually pushing stories claiming the Ukrainian state is perusing a fascistic, genocidal attack on Russians and Russian speakers. While many observers outside Russia are still reeling from the invasion, over two-thirds of the Russian population back the military action according to polling data from June 2022—military action characterised as a special military operation. Even the new symbology of the Russian military of ‘Z’, ‘O’, and ‘V’ have even become popular among the country’s population—appearing in an array of media from government messaging to social media avatars as a sign of support for the war. Taking Putin’s address to his people in the early hours of 24 February, we can see how the filo-like layers of disinformation narratives have reached their zenith. In announcing his special military operation Putin brought together the strands of the various disinformation campaigns waged by his government since 2008 and used them as a collective pretext for invading Ukraine. Most critically, outlining the purpose of the invasion, Putin claiming his intent was to: ‘… protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine.’ This can be seen as a crystallisation of the previous decades’ worth of disinformation to provide a—widely-criticised—pretext for invasion. Though with nearly a decades’ worth of experience combatting Russian disinformation campaigns, Ukraine has developed networks of fact-checkers and open-source intelligence organisations which have become adept in fighting back. Organisations such as Inform Napalm—an open-source intelligence collective that has focused on debunking Russian claims that its armed forces were not involved in the war in Donbas. It’s founder, originally Crimea-based journalist Roman Burko, initially used his own personal network of contacts on the peninsula to counter Russian public claims about their activities there and later broadened out to include volunteers and supporters from Europe and the United States—each writing and publishing their own investigations contradicting the various false Russian narratives at the time.

124 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Since the invasion, Ukrainian media monitors, fact-checkers and NGOs have been proactive in countering Russian disinformation narratives. The fact-checking service Stop Fake—headed by Yevhen Fedchenko—has built up years of experience and knowledge of Russian disinformation. The organisation has sought, according to its founder, to monitor Russia’s disinformation and provide analysis on who, and how, these disinformation narratives were spread. Fedchenko’s staff at Stop Fake became experts in Russian disinformation, claiming they could predict its government actions by changes in patterns and volume of fakes pushed by Russia and its proxies. And this expertise seems to have been noticed beyond Ukraine; so much so that NGO Freedom House cited the organisation as a model for countering disinformation in neighbouring Moldova, describing the organisation’s work—alongside others—as an ‘efficient early warning system against propaganda and disinformation.’ Similarly, Stop Fake have been employed by Meta—Facebook and Instagram’s parent company—as a third-party fact checker. Ukrainian mass media has also been vital in projecting Ukrainian counter-narratives to audiences in Ukraine and beyond. It was, for example, quick to publish interviews with victims of the Russian bombing of Maternity Hospital No Three complex in Mariupol in early March. Russia’s Ministry of Defence justified the bombing, claiming elements of the Ukrainian Armed forces were present, but these interviews quickly provided a first-hand counter to the Russian line. Ukraine has sought to debunk myths quickly, recognising that the pace of modern communications can often lead to corrective activities and investigations being lost as conversation cycles move on at pace. Similarly, in providing an up-to-the-minute response to Russian disinformation, groups like media monitoring Detektor Media NGO have produced live blogs recording any instance of Russian disinformation and providing facts to counter these lies in real time—crucially in multiple languages including English. This is vital for foreign media to report factually, while also avoiding inadvertent boosting of Russian falsehoods.

DISINFORMATION 125 Russia has been using its various disinformation tactics since its invasion of Georgia in 2008, but the advent and wide proliferation of social media—particularly Facebook and Twitter in the late 2000s—meant that it was the invasion of the Donbas and annexation of Crimea where Russia’s information warfare practises were first unleashed in full. Since then, the Ukrainian government, civil society and media have gained experience in identifying and countering disinformation. Groups like Inform Napalm and Stop Fake have been vital in the Ukrainian response to Russian disinformation campaigns—developing an intuitive knowledge of how and why these Russian measures have been successful. Key Points 

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Ukraine was quick to combat Russian disinformation at the onset of the full-scale invasion by uniting news broadcasts. This was effective as it gave citizens a single place to find out verified updates on the progress of the invasion, and a single space to look for official updates from government figures and ministries. The developments in non-traditional media since 2014 have provided vital investigations into war crimes and Russian atrocities in languages other than Ukrainian to inform the world of what is really happening in Ukraine. Similarly, English language reporting has allowed for further dissemination of information with ease President Zelenskyy’s knowledge from his time as a successful executive producer allowed him to communicate in ways which made online virality a regular occurrence. His government also used multiple methods of communication—television, radio, online and through social media networks—to reach as many Ukrainian citizens as possible, regardless of how close to the front lines they were. The increased proliferation of social media, particular Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram since 2014 meant that the government had multiple ways of communicating with its citizens who may not have been able to access Ukrainian television due to invading forces.

126 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE 

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Ukrainians used social media to tell the world about what was happening in their towns and cities to both highlight their plight and counter Russian disinformation narratives. They used online memes and humour to highlight Ukrainians bravery in the face of their invader. These ironic and humorous images and videos ridiculed Russian assumptions about Ukraine and highlighted their military incapability providing a valuable morale-boost. The speedy reorientation of existing social media accounts associated with tourism, for example, were used to spread information about the war to millions, while the same accounts were also used to address and counter Russian propaganda and misinformation. Ukrainians were able to add to their already strong volunteer networks by using social media to raise funds and awareness globally. This included the acceptance of cryptocurrencies as donations for the Ukrainian army. Ukraine used its experience combatting Russian disinformation since 2014 to effectively get in front of Russian attempts to sow disarray and confusion in the early hours of the war. The country also already had dedicated counter-disinformation projects in place which warned about fakes, gave examples and fact-checked erroneous Russian claims in real time.

Suggested Reading Drach, Maryana. (2020). ‘What social media shaped Zelenskiy’s victory in Ukraine,’ Reuters Institute and University of Oxford, March. https:// reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-08/RISJ_ Final%20Report_Maryana%20Drach_2020_Final%202%20%289%29. pdf Gaufman, Elizaveta. (2015). ‘Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis,’ Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, 1 (1): 141-175. Inform Napalm, http://informnapalm.rocks/

DISINFORMATION 127 Korbut, Anna. (2021). ‘Strengthening public interest in Ukraine’s media sector,’ Chatham House, 23 April. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/04/ strengthening-public-interest-ukraines-media-sector/02-ukraines-m edia-landscape Lange-Ionatamishvili, Elina and Svetkova, Sanda. (2015). Strategic Communications and social media in the Russia Ukrainian conflict, Riga: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. https://ccdcoe.org/ uploads/2018/10/Ch12_CyberWarinPerspective_Lange_Svetoka. pdf Makhortykh, Mykola and Sydorova, Maryna. (2017). ‘Social media and visual framing of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine,’ Media, War, and Conflict, 10 (3): 359-381. Mejias, A. Ulises and Vokuev, Nikolai, E. (2017). ‘Disinformation and the media: the case of Russia and Ukraine,’ Media, Culture & Society, 39 (7): 1027-1042. Nyrgren, Gunnar, Glowacki, Michal, Hok, Joran, Kiria, Ilya, Orlova, Dariya, and Taradai, Daria. (2018). ‘Journalism in the Crossfire. Media coverage of the war in Ukraine in 2014,’ Journalism Studies, 19 (7): 1059-1078. Peisakhin, Leonid and Rozenas, Arturas. (2018). ‘Electoral Effects of Biased Media: Russian Television in Ukraine,’ American Journal of Political Science, 62 (3): 535-550. Stop Fake, https://www.stopfake.org/en/main/ Warner, Berhard. (2022). ‘A Ukrainian journalism professor has fought Putin’s disinformation machine for 8 years—with surprising success. Here’s why he’s convinced fake news can be defeated,’ Bain and Company, 28 June. https://fortune.com/2022/06/28/ukraine-russia-war -disinformation-fake-n

4 Military ‘Russian forces are cowards who fight civilians. Scoundrels who having escaped from the battlefield, try to do harm from far away. You will be always terrorists.’ President Zelenskky to His Russian Counterpart After Russia Attacked the Karachunovsky Reservoir Dam, Kryvyy Rih ‘The war in Ukraine pits a top-down attack against a bottom-up response. Ukraine’s response is society-wide, starting with its elected government but involving almost all the country’s citizens. One key aspect of the astonishing advance of Ukraine’s army in the east—and the astonishing collapse of Russian forces—is the gap in morale. Ukraine’s soldiers are fighting for their country and freedom. Russians are fighting out of fear and for money.’ Fareed Zakaria

A bizarre factor in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that most Western experts on the Russian military agreed with the Kremlin that Russia had a powerful army which would defeat Ukraine within two to three days. While there has been much analysis, including by this author, of how Russian imperial nationalist stereotypes of Ukrainians made them miscalculate there has been no investigation of why Western experts exaggerated the strength of the Russian army and underplayed Ukraine militarily and as a resilient society. This chapter begins with an analysis of the sources of the exaggeration of Russian and under-playing of Ukrainian capabilities. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recalled that when the invasion began, ‘most people who called me—well, almost everyone—did not have faith that Ukraine can stand up to this and persevere.’ National Security and Defence Council Secretary Olexiy Danilov remembered the West believed Ukraine had, ‘almost zero chances to succeed.’ The views of experts shaped Wester policymakers in two ways. The first was since the 2014 crisis most experts opposed the West sending arms to Ukraine. In a February 2015 survey by Foreign Affairs which asked, ‘Should the United States Arm Ukraine,’ 18 experts disagreed and only nine agreed to the sending of arms. Prominent among those who disagreed were scholars of Russia and Eurasia, such as Angela Stent, Anatol Lieven, Robert Legvold, Ian 129

130 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Bremmer, Robert Jervis, Jack Snyder, William C. Wohlforth, Mary S. Sarotte, Keith Darden and Valerie Bunce. Darden writing in the New York Times, Charles A. Kupchan in The Washington Post, and Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy strongly opposed sending weapons to Ukraine believing it would be a major mistake. Walt claimed sending weapons to Ukraine would be a ‘a really, really bad idea.’ Michael Kofman wrote in the New York Times ‘For the U.S., Arming Ukraine Could Be a Deadly Mistake.’ Realists, such as Rajan Menon, Eugene Rumer, John J. Mearsheimer and Samuel Charap were even more adamantly opposed to supplying weapons to Ukraine. Charap wrote in Foreign Policy that sending arms would not make any difference anyway as Ukraine would be defeated by Russia. Charap called for Western restraint (which Ukrainians and others viewed as appeasement) towards Russia and for Ukraine to agree to territorial compromises by forgoing its territorial integrity. Realists made exaggerated assessments of Russia’s military power and belittled Ukraine’s chances in discourse that at times was orientalist in nature. Writing in the Financial Times, realist Eugene Rumer claimed arming Ukraine risked another Black Hawk Down and anyway Ukraine ‘should be told it cannot win.’ Realists Rajan Menon and Kimberly Marten writing in Foreign Affairs repeated the same arguments. Meanwhile, Menon and Ruger wrote in Foreign Affairs that sending weapons to Ukraine ‘would backfire.’ The second was that the opinion of Western experts hardened views in the West opposed to sending military equipment prior to the invasion because of the fear of a repeat in Ukraine of the rout of the Afghan army after the US had withdrawn leading to the Taliban taking power in Afghanistan. Convinced that Ukraine would be quickly defeated, expert advice influenced Western governments and NATO to only consider sending military equipment suitable for partisan warfare against an occupying force. Western experts believed Russian claims they had reformed their army since it had badly performed in the 2008 invasion of Georgia. They also counted the number of pieces of Russian military equipment and simplistically assumed they would overwhelm the smaller Ukrainian army. Russian policymakers and Western

MILITARY 131 experts were both convinced Russia would quickly take control over the sky above Ukraine. Kofman and Jeffrey Edmonds and Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds discounted Ukraine’s air defences as capable of preventing Russia’s combat aircraft dominating the skies. Western experts believed the claim Russia had one million powerful security forces which would quickly defeat a weaker and less experienced Ukraine. As we have seen in the first eight months of the war, the Russian army has been shown to be far weaker than imagined. Writing about ‘rampant’ misconceptions of Russian military power, Orysia Lutsevych, head of Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum, asked: ‘why do experts keep overestimating Russian strength and underestimating Ukraine’s military capabilities, and how can they avoid doing so again?’ Ian Matveev questioned whether Russian forces in Ukraine can be even described as an ‘army’ rather than, ‘a kind of military grouping in which the army is not in command everywhere and not always.’ In the first six months of the war Russian forces in Ukraine showed no evidence of a unified command, never had air superiority, and have never launched combined arms operations. Looting, war crimes, poor organisation, and lack of discipline have been shown to be endemic features of the Russian army. Subsequently, Western experts have talked back military reforms and stated they had been less successful than had been claimed. As the war in Ukraine has shown, they have had limited if any influence on Russian military’s operational effectiveness. In many ways, the Russian army still resembles the former Soviet army in its mentality, hierarchical structure, poor quality officers, bad and low levels of training, ill-discipline, poor logistics, and corruption. The war in Ukraine pits a vertically structured Russia with a subject population against a horizontally structured Ukraine composed of citizens. During Vladimir Putin’s 22 years ruling Russia as president and prime minister he has re-Sovietised the country, fanned militarism, promoted a quasi-religious cult of the Great Patriotic War and Joseph Stalin and destroyed civil society and volunteer groups. In Ukraine the opposite has taken place in each of these areas. Ukraine has undergone de-sovietisation since the late 1980s

132 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE and decommunisation since the 2013-2014 Euromaidan Revolution, has denigrated Stalin as a tyrant, switched from military celebration of the Great Patriotic War to commemoration of World War II, and built a dynamic civil society and volunteer movement. Ukrainians have organised three popular revolutions since 1990 to demand their rights; Russia’s last revolution was over a hundred years ago. Perhaps the biggest mistake was to ignore the impact of corruption on Russia’s military effectiveness. Russia was first described as a ‘mafia state’ as long ago as in 2010 by a Spanish judge investigating ties between the Russian state and Russian organised crime. Russia has stagnated in every meaningful manner since then, especially in corruption, and elites’ disdain for and cynicism towards the Russian population. Kofman was convinced Russia would invade and Ukraine would be defeated. Writing three days before the invasion in Foreign Affairs, Kofman and Edmonds predicted ‘Russia’s Shock and Awe. Why Moscow Would Use Overwhelming Force Against Ukraine.’ Such articles showed to what degree Western experts believed in the mythology of Russian military power by ignoring the corrosive impact of three decades of stagnation and corruption on the operational effectiveness of the Russian military. The factors discussed above influenced pessimistic predictions of a Ukrainian defeat espoused by the Pentagon, US intelligence, German and Western European politicians and think tanks like the Rand Corporation, Carnegie Endowment and RUSI (Royal United Services Institute). Watling and Reynolds writing The Plot to Destroy Ukraine, published nine days before the invasion by RUSI, outlined a large list of victories Russia would score in the event of an invasion—none of which have come about. They described Ukraine as corrupt, badly divided, with ‘widespread penetration’ of Ukrainian politics and government by Russian intelligence agents. In the opening phase of the war, they wrote that Russia would destroy Ukraine’s defence, command-and-control, and other military installations. Ukraine’s best armed forces were in the Donbas and because of Russia’s advantage in artillery, armour and aircraft, Watling and Reynolds claimed the invasion would ‘likely

MILITARY 133 lead to the rapid overrunning of Ukrainian conventional units’ with Kyiv ‘enveloped within days.’ Why did Western experts not factor into their analyses the impact of the Russian mafia state and deep-seated stagnation and corruption on the Russian security forces which inevitably would have influence their operational effectiveness. For anybody who has been following the war the evidence of this corruption is both vast and mind boggling, from the use of outdated food rations, supply of Soviet medical kits, issuing of weapons dating from the 1980s war in Afghanistan, inadequate logistical supplies for troops in the field, theft of the best food rations, and tanks and other military equipment supplied to front line troops that were stripped of anything valuable. The extent of Russia’s dog-eat-dog world could be seen in the estimated half of the loot stolen in Ukraine being stolen by Russian postal workers when it was sent from Belarus back home to Russia. Corruption has plagued Russia’s so-called security services making it doubtful we can still describe them as intelligence services. Funds allocated for intelligence operations in Ukraine were stolen by the FSB and their Ukrainian interlocutors. Added to this, the FSB’s Ukrainian interlocutors told them what they wanted to hear about Little Russians eager to welcome the Russian army as liberators. As observers of Russia’s army in Ukraine have pointed out, field military and intelligence reports become increasingly exaggerated as they are sent up the security hierarchy until they eventually arrive on Putin’s desk. Nobody after all, wants to deliver bad news to a dictator. Added to this is that barely anybody among Moscow’s policymakers, journalists, think tanks, or academics understand Ukraine because they view Ukrainians through outdated imperial nationalist stereotypes. This clearly explains why Russia’s invasion force was only 175,000 strong to occupy a large country with security forces at that time which were more than twice as large. While corruption in Russia was ignored, corruption in Ukraine was exaggerated and presented as a factor in making Ukraine into a weak state. Corruption in Ukraine had no bearing on the stability and national unity of the state or Zelenskyy’s

134 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE patriotic commitment to defending it. Meanwhile, Americans pointing their fingers at corruption in Ukraine and elsewhere might want to read the great book by Casey Michel entitled American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. An added important factor has been widespread views the Ukrainian state is weak and badly divided between ‘pro-Russian’ eastern and ‘pro-Western’ western Ukraine. In the last three decades the greatest number of articles published in the media and by think tanks and academics on Ukraine has been on regional divisions and the country split between a pro-Russian east and nationalist, pro-Western West. In Moscow and among Western experts, Ukraine’s Russian speakers were deemed to be inherently unreliable and likely to swing to supporting Russia if Moscow invaded the country. A shock-and-awe style Russian invasion of Ukraine would exert tremendous pressure on Ukraine’s regional divisions leading to the state’s fragmentation and the collapse of the Ukrainian army (as in Afghanistan). This did not take place and the reason why it did not was because Ukraine was never a regionally fractured country, its Russian speakers were Ukrainian patriots and there was never any possibility the Ukrainian army was going to disintegrate in the same manner as the Afghan army. Watling and Reynolds believed Russia would be able to promote political instability forcing Ukraine to bow to Russian pressure. Russian military power and economic pressure would ‘break the cohesion of the Ukrainian state,’ Watling and Reynolds wrote. They made the unverified claim Russia had two companies of spetsnaz in Kyiv prior to the invasion who would act as agents provocateurs disguised as protestors and police and undertake sabotage operations and cyber warfare attacks. No such protests took place and Russia has failed to launch successful, major cyber-attacks against Ukraine since the invasion began. Watling and Reynolds were confident enough to claim, ‘Russia has a bureaucracy in waiting’ after the plan was implemented to decapitate the government. Following a quick Russian military victory, the West would

MILITARY 135 pressure Ukraine to accept territorial losses in return for peace. None of this transpired. Western exaggerations of Ukraine’s regional divisions were in effect a lighter version of harder Russian views of an artificial Ukraine. Ukraine was de facto viewed as a kind of appendage of Russia and Russians and Ukrainians could not be separated. Western historians in particular viewed Crimea as always having been Russian territory which could only be the case by ignoring its history prior to the Tsarist Empire’s conquest in 1783. Applying how Western historians of Russia view Crimea, the beginning of American, Canadian, and Australian histories begins with the founding of Jamestown and Quebec, and the arrival of Captain Cook. Ukraine was not viewed as a fully functioning real country, brittle, and easily fractured by internal divisions over languages, history, and identities. Lutsevych wrote: ‘By focusing on military hardware, experts often miss the “software” of war: the quality of leadership, morale, and motivation, decision-making and governance and the engagement of society.’ Lutsevych continued: ‘War is an expression of political culture on the battlefield. And there are stark differences between Ukrainian and Russian culture. Many in the west mistakenly thought Ukraine was just like Russia, but weaker, more corrupt, and chaotic. In fact, while Ukraine is by no means perfect, it is more agile and decentralised, compared to the autocratic and rigid Russian state.’

Western experts got the Russian military and Ukrainian resilience wrong because of the way post-communist studies is structured in universities and think tanks. Western experts continue to believe they are experts on both Russia and the remainder of the USSR. In no other region of the world is this the case. An expert on Argentina, for example, is not an expert on Latin America and an expert on Japan is not an expert on eastern Asia. Expert on Russia believe they are also possessing expertise about Ukraine and other nonRussian republics of the former USSR. This is especially true since 2014 when the number of Ukraine experts expanded manyfold. Russian experts and scholars have therefore tended to look at Ukraine through the eyes of Moscow. Western media outlets and companies were nearly always headquartered in Moscow—as in

136 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE the USSR—and their journalists and employees rarely travelled to Ukraine. Lusevych writes that this led to: ‘At best, Ukraine was viewed as being, well, like Russia; but maybe worse. It was seen as unstable, prone to uprisings and at the mercy of its oligarchs—more corrupt, more divided, more trouble than the behemoth next door. And because it was viewed as a weak state it was assumed that Ukraine was doomed to collapse in the face of a Russian invasion.’ Western experts on Russia have always been reluctant to use sources of information from Ukraine and Ukrainian opinion polls which I described as academic orientalism in my 2020 book Crisis in Russian Studies? Western experts exaggerated Russian military power, downplayed Ukrainian military power, ignored corruption in the Russian military, believed fairy tales about Russian military reforms, exaggerated regional divisions and under-estimated national cohesion in Ukraine. Western military reforms in Ukraine since 2014 were ignored. Meanwhile, changes in identity since 2014, the factors behind the failure of Putin’s New Russia project in 2014 and the loyalty of Ukraine’s Russian speakers were not considered. Western experts exaggerated the effectiveness of the Russian military and downplayed the cohesion of the Ukrainian state and its military. The on-going war has brought out how they were wrong on the outcome of Russia’s invasion and how Ukraine would respond. The remainder of this chapter analyses why Western experts and the Kremlin were wrong about the invasion and war and why Ukraine will defeat Russia.

Russia’s So-Called Special Military Operation Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was prepared by Putin and Russia’s intelligence agencies rather than Russia’s military high command. Russia’s intelligence forces are neither intelligent nor intelligence forces. Their primary focuses are corruption (as an integral part of the Russian mafia state), they are Putin’s sycophants, fearful of advising the Russian dictator of truths, and blinkered and lacking a deep analytical understanding of Ukraine, other Eurasian neighbours, and the West. As in the Soviet Union,

MILITARY 137 fake reports are sent to senior officers and politicians glorifying successes on the battlefield that have nothing to do with reality. A culture of lying is very deep in Putin’s political system as it is in the armed forces. Reports sent to senior officers are exaggerated and full of fake news on how successful military campaigns have been. As these reports travel up the hierarchy, they become more and more embellished by fake news. False reporting is widespread and affects all branches of Russia’s armed forces. Reports of the number of training exercises are exaggerated because officers’ pocket budgetary funds allocated to conduct them. Soldiers have no trust in their officers who lie to them about Ukrainian forces having been suppressed or forced to retreat only to find they have been sent into suicidal battles that lead to very high casualty rates. To put it succinctly, Russia’s intelligence organisations do not understand how Ukraine or Western democracy’s function. Dictators such as Putin are not told the truth by their subordinates perhaps because they don’t want to be on the next cattle train to Siberia. Although both have no military experience, Putin is—unlike Zelenskyy—a micro manager who interferes in military planning. Russia’s goal of capturing the city of Kyiv within two to three days was as ambitious as it was fanciful. Russian soldiers were issued with parade uniforms to hold a victory parade on the Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main thoroughfare, resembling that of the Nazi parade in conquered Paris in 1940. The plan to quickly capture Kyiv was based on Russian intelligence ignoring three factors and a fourth because of a reliance on biased sources. The first was Russia not changing its invasion plan after it had been leaked by US intelligence to Zelenskyy on 12 January 2022 and to America’s European allies. The second was ignoring the transformation of Ukraine’s armed forces through NATO training. The third was ignoring large amounts of survey data by Ukrainian sociologists about Ukrainian identity showing there had been a great deal of national integration since 2014, including among Russian speakers. The final factor was Russia’s intelligence paid and relied on biased sources in Ukraine, such as from political technologist Mikhail Pogrebynsky and politicians in pro-Russian political parties who told Moscow what they wanted to hear.

138 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE The FSB were tasked with organising the decapitation of Ukraine’s leadership with Zelenskyy killed, captured, or forced into exile. A pro-Russian satrap would be installed setting Ukraine on a path to becoming a Little Russian variant of White Russia under Lukashenka. In fact, as in 2014, the FSB was incapable of fomenting pro-Russian uprisings and protests. Much of the funds earmarked for such operations were either pocketed by the FSB or given to Ukrainian sources who also pocketed the funds and told them fake news. Medvedchuk accepted copious amounts of Russian funding for the Opposition Platform-For Life Party and proRussian television channels but was unable to create a network of agents and informants. Based on a lack of real intelligence and nineteenth century myths of Little Russians eagerly awaiting their liberation, a light and rapid assault by Russian airborne and spetsnaz forces on Kyiv was planned which—not surprisingly to this author– completely failed. Wishful thinking behind Russian military planning led to a fiasco in the Kyiv region and Russian troops suffering heavy casualties and withdrawing with their tails between their legs. Putin’s chauvinism and arrogance towards Zelenskyy treated him as a fake politician and leader who would flee as soon as the invasion began. Ukrainian Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak and Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov received telephone calls from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitriy Kozak and Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu respectively on the day of the invasion demanding Ukraine capitulate. Yermak hung up while Reznikov told Kozak, ‘I am ready to accept the capitulation of the Russian side.’ Zelenskyy remained in Kyiv and refused to flee to either western Ukraine or the West. Famously he replied to an American offer of evacuation with the phrase ‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’ Zelensklyy has shown himself to be far more a commander-in-chief than Putin who has never once visited his troops in Ukraine; Zelenskyy has visited Ukrainian troops in the Kyiv region, Kharkiv and the south of Ukraine. Charismatic and media savvy, Zelenskyy has also been excellent in giving speeches to parliaments and international organisations, hosting visiting delegations, and lobbying for military assistance. Lutsevych wrote that Zelenskyy:

MILITARY 139 ‘Was extremely effective in stabilising the situation by demonstrating personal bravery, staying in the capital and delivering regular briefings. This wasn’t just a media exercise; his work in boosting morale and organising society around supporting the war effort in novel ways has been crucial to Ukraine’s success.’

The one success the Kremlin had because of treason and incompetence was the occupation of Kherson, the only oblast centre Russia’s invading forces captured. The three bridges across the Dnipro River to Kherson were never blown up and Russian forces from Crimea captured the city intact. The head of Kherson’s SBU ordered his subordinates to abandon the city when Russia invaded. Senior SBU officer Oleh Kulinich was arrested as a sleeper agent whose handler was Volodymyr Sivkovich, a Party of Regions politician living in exile in Russia and sanctioned by the US in January 2022. Kulinich installed Andriy Naumov as the head of the SBU’s counter-intelligence department who blocked the dissemination of a warning Russia was preparing to invade Kherson from Crimea. Kulinich was detained in Serbia in June 2022 with $700,000 in cash and gems. The Kremlin prepared in advance: 1.

2.

3.

Kill Lists: These were prepared for the Einsatzgruppen FSB to murder patriotic Ukrainians in all walks of life (see chapter two). Following the Kharkiv offensive, evidence was uncovered of nearly five hundred civilians and soldiers who had been tortured and executed. In some cases, executed soldiers had their genitalia cut off. No doubt, evidence of similar war crimes would be uncovered in Kherson and southern Zaporizhzhya oblasts, and especially in Mariupol. Filtration Camps: These were prepared for the filtration of Ukrainians to be executed or deported to Russia (see chapter two). Regime Change: Pro-Russian governments in-waiting were prepared which would be led by satraps, such as former President Yanukovych, Medvedchuk, Murayev, and Tsaryov.

The first two have been implemented in areas under Russian occupation. The third is no longer possible after Russia failed to capture

140 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Kyiv in February-March 2022. Russia does not have the military, economic and financial resources to capture Kyiv and all of Ukraine and is unable to compete with Western military assistance to Ukraine.

Russia’s 21st Century Invasion Failed Because It Was Based on 19th Century Myths Russia invaded Ukraine based on nineteenth century myths about Little Russians eager to embrace Russian liberators. In the first six months of the war, Russia mobilised only 200-250,000 forces for its Ukraine war. In 1968, the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia (then with ten million population) using a quarter of a million troops and in 1979 the USSR invaded Afghanistan (then with 13.5 million population) using 100,000 troops. Ukraine has a far larger population of 45 million and therefore Russia’s initial invading force of 175,000 was very small in comparison to those used in the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Of these Russian forces, the US estimated 80,000 were killed, wounded, deserted, missing, or taken prisoner. This US estimate is lower than the Ukrainian of over 80,000 dead which, based on a ratio of two wounded to one dead would mean an even higher 150,000 Russian forces were put out of action. An estimated 85 percent of the Russian BTG (Battalion Tactical Groups) sent to Ukraine have been either destroyed or severely depleted. Irrespective of whether the real casualty figure is 80,000 or 150,000 the number is very high compared to the 15,000 Soviet dead in Afghanistan over an entire decade. Russia sent a low number of forces to Ukraine for two reasons. The first was that nineteenth century stereotypes led the Kremlin to believe Little Russians would welcome and assist them in fighting a supposed minority of Nazis (nationalists) who had taken power in the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity ‘putsch.’ Putin’s mythology ignored 100-150 years of nation-building in Ukraine since the mid nineteenth century. This fallacious assumption was quickly rebuffed by one elderly woman in the port city of Henichesk who bravely offered up her thoughts to her new Russian occupiers,

MILITARY 141 saying to one heavily armed solder: ‘You are occupants, you are fascists! … Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down [dead] here.’ Transforming Ukrainians into Little Russians would have required the Kremlin to implement genocide on an industrial scale. The second, as this chapter analyses, was Russia did not have more armed forces to send. The so-called special military operation was not defined as an invasion but as a surgical intervention to remove Nazis from power and assist Little Russians to ‘reunite’ with Great and White Russians in the Russian World. To have launched a full-scale invasion would have required a formal Russian declaration of war against Ukraine and Russia’s full mobilisation. Six months on, changing the special military operation into a formal war would require changing Russia’s official discourse of fighting only a small number of Nazis to accepting a Ukrainian nation existed and admitting Russia is at war with Ukraine. Putin looked very weak following Ukraine’s successful offensive in retaking Kharkiv. His answer was two-fold. The first was to launch ‘partial mobilisation’ of the Russian army. The second was to hold fraudulent referendums for the annexation of Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, and Donbas regions. Russia had attempted to fight its war in Ukraine using volunteer battalions, imprisoned convicts recruited by the Wagner PMC (Private Military Company), Cossacks, Chechens, and forcible recruitment in occupied regions of Ukraine. Nevertheless, these cobbled together mobilised forces (many of whom have appeared on social media in poor order, drunk and violent) and national guard (Rosgvardiya) units are no match for Western trained Ukrainian forces—as seen in their rout in Kharkiv in September 2022. The Institute of War think tank commented, ‘The formation of such ad-hoc units will lead to further tensions, inequality, and an overall lack of cohesiveness between forces.’ This was because: ‘All these groups have different levels of military training, decentralised command structures, and different perceptions of the war and motivations to fight, which makes conflict and poor unit coordination more probable. The one thing they have in common is wholly inadequate training and preparation for combat.

142 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE The ISW commented on Putin’s ‘partial mobilisation’: ‘The Kremlin’s contradictory statements and procedures demonstrate the fundamental nature of the systemic weakness of the Russian military establishment that have characterised the entire invasion. Russian officials continue to execute a supposed reservist call-up as a confused undertaking somewhere between a conscription drive and the declaration of general mobilisation, likely issuing conflicting orders to already flawed bureaucratic institutions.’

The ISW reported that: ‘Putin bypassed the Russian chain of command on numerous occasions when making decisions regarding the progress of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine, likely because he had lost confidence in the Russian MoD. The contradictory and inconsistent narratives used by Kremlin officials and the Russian MoD about mobilisation procedures could indicate that Putin, as the supreme commander, issued divergent or contradictory orders.’

In contrast to Russia, Ukraine launched full mobilisation and has one million under arms for, as a Financial Times editorial wrote, ‘to fight an existential war its forces cannot afford to lose.’ Invading armies should have two to three times the number of forces as those defending to succeed. Clearly this is not the case as Ukraine has over four times as many security forces as Russia. Ukraine’s one million under arms includes about 650-700,000 armed forces, 40,000 Security Service (SBU) personnel, 100,000 Border and National Guard, and upwards of 200,000 Territorial Defence Forces. As chapter five shows, Ukraine also has a nation-wide volunteer movement. Russia’s high level of attrition of manpower and military equipment points to its inability to prosecute the war longer than 2023. Russian elite forces, such as airborne, marines and spetsnaz, have suffered some of the highest casualty rates leading to a reliance on inferior quality forces. Much of Russia’s best military equipment has been destroyed leading to a growing reliance on mothballed tanks. Western sanctions are preventing Russia’s military industrial complex from building new equipment.

MILITARY 143

Russian Military Losses in Ukraine. Source: Ragnar Gudmundsson, Icelandic Data Analyst.

144 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE

Russian Tank Losses in Ukraine. Source: Ragnar Gudmundsson, Icelandic Data Analyst.

An example of the high level of Russian attrition is the elite 1st Guards Tank Army which was formed in 1942 and took part in the battle of Berlin. The 1st Guards Tank Army occupied eastern Germany and the GDR from 1945-1994 and together with other Warsaw Pact military formations participated in the suppression of the Prague spring in 1968. The 1st Guards Tank Army was disbanded in 1998 and re-formed in 2014 as the elite 1st Guards Tank Army for the defence of Moscow and to lead counterattacks in a Russian war with NATO. In 2022, it led the assault on Kyiv; after this failed it withdrew in late March and was depleted during fighting in Chernihiv. The 1st Guards Tank Army was effectively put out of action during Ukraine’s September 2022 Kharkiv offensive when the 4th Guards Tank Division, one of its best, lost over 100 of its tanks

MILITARY 145 through their destruction or capture. It will take many years for the 1st Guards Tank Army to rebuild itself into a fighting force. Although military defector Pavel Filatyev was from Russia’s airborne forces, he was given a broken machine gun he had to repair and was forced to buy his own body armour and communications equipment. His experience is quite common. Uniforms and boots are stolen and resold through AVITO, Russia’s answer to eBay. Military equipment such as radios are faulty, missing, or nonexistent. Forcibly conscripted forces from the Donbas (Donetsk Peoples Republics [DNR] and Luhansk Peoples Republic [LNR]) are given outdated equipment such as helmets dating from World War II, no body armour and used military uniforms. Russia’s Donbas proxies are used as front-line cannon fodder whose high casualty rates can be ignored by the Russian media. Although DNR-LNR proxies have the worst conditions, Russian soldiers also report basic and short periods of training before being sent to Ukraine. These Russian proxy formations provide little military value, have rebelled against their poor conditions, and have refused to fight for regions other than their own (i.e., LNR forces refusing to fight in the DNR).

Fake News: The Russian Army is the Second Greatest Army in the World The Russian army continues to be basically a Soviet army with little modernisation and reform. Three areas where Western experts on the Russian military believed it had an advantage over Ukraine were not evident in the war. The first was the expectation Russia would dominate the sky assisting it to quickly capture Kyiv and Ukraine. In fact, it is Ukrainian jets and helicopters that have dominated the battlefields, not Russian. Six months into the war, Lawrence Freedman wrote that Russian air power ‘has been effectively neutralised.’ The second was Russian BTG’s have not practised combined arms bringing together troops, armour, artillery, and air support. Coordination between these four has been chaotic, and the

146 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv showed a far better combined arms strategy than anything Russia has shown. The third is poor communications equipment and lack of encrypted communications. Social media host many intercepts of Russian military communications. Russian soldiers continue to carry mobile phones and their calls are intercepted by the SBU and Ukrainian military intelligence, revealing important intelligence about morale, living conditions, locations of military units and war crimes they have committed. Russian positions which have been overrun by Ukrainian troops have found atlases of the Soviet Union that were used for driving around Ukraine; these would have been useless as Soviet and Communist toponyms (towns, cities, streets) have been changed. Officers Russia’s military officers are abysmal, dishonest, incompetent, and uncaring. Russian officers allowed soldiers to dig dugouts in radiated soil in the Chornobyl nuclear reactor zone, most likely giving them a shorter life span. Officers and soldiers do not have clear goals in Ukraine, unlike Ukrainians whose goal is their country’s national liberation. The Kremlin’s goals have been vague, unclear, shifting, and confusing. The terms denazification and demilitarisation are thrown about Russian television but are unclear terms to Russian soldiers who in the early months of the war searched for ‘Nazis’ only to find none. The personal motivation of Russian forces is weak while the Ukrainian is high. An inability to understand the Kremlin’s goals is also because a high proportion of Russian soldiers are from impoverished regions, especially those with national minorities such as Buryats, and have low education levels. They are stunned to find provincial Ukraine is wealthier than backwater Russia where there is no running water or even electricity making the washing machines they looted from Ukraine useless. 35 million Russians live in houses and flats without indoor toilets, 47 million don't have hot water, 29 million don’t have running water in their homes and 22 million don't have central heating.

MILITARY 147 Poor quality training is combined with inflexible military leadership. Russian soldiers sent to Ukraine have complained about inadequate and short training by poor quality instructors. Budgetary funds allocated for military training is stolen leading to shorter training sessions. Alternatively, Russian soldiers are used for construction, building of dachas, agricultural work and male prostitution and the income earned from these illicit activities is pocketed by officers. Soviet and Russian officers lead a rigid and hierarchical army where they and their soldiers have not been trained to react independently to changing circumstances. When they are ambushed, the tendency is to group together rather than disperse. When Russian officers fled, as in Kharkiv in September 2022, their soldiers were rudderless because they lacked training what to do in these circumstances. They also fled leaving behind their wounded, huge stocks of military equipment and evidence of war crimes. Senior Russian officers are cowards ordering, World War I style, suicidal assaults by their soldiers while they hide in bunkers. Writing on Twitter, Chris Owen pointed out how stagnation in the Russian army is deep, widespread and would take years to change. Transforming Russia’s military culture would be a long and difficult process that would require replacing thousands of officers and sergeants. Putin’s Sovietisation of Russia’s political system has exacerbated the Sovietisation of Russia’s military which the Kremlin has no interest in changing because it is integrated into the cult of the Great Patriotic War. The problem lies not only with bad military decisions made by officers and Putin, but also with an entire rotten, corrupted, and ineffective military system. A stagnant military has severely dented Russia’s image as a great power and led to an inability to control its self-proclaimed sphere of influence in Eurasia. The Ukrainian war has brought into full view a major disconnection between the rhetoric of the Kremlin and Russian imperial nationalists of Russia as a great power and the reality of a Potemkin power and military. Russia’s military defeats in Ukraine are not solely a product of superior Western military equipment. Russian soldiers are fearful of being in combat with Ukrainians who are far better trained and

148 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE have higher morale. Russia instead relies on Stalinist military tactics of pulverising town and cities into rubble and in the process killing Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. The goal of the special military operation was supposedly to liberate the Donbas, but Russia’s Stalinist tactics have instead destroyed the region, murdered hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants and depopulated the region by turning 80 percent of its pre-2014 six million inhabitants into IDP’s. Writing just over a month before the invasion, Charap and Scott Boston, both at the Rand Corporation, argued ‘The West’s Weapons Won’t Make Any Difference to Ukraine;’ they were very wrong. Russia’s Stalinist tactic worked for only two months until Ukraine was supplied with HIMARS and howitzers from Norway, Germany, France, and Poland which out-performed Russia’s artillery. HIMARS destroyed many Russian ammunition stocks, artillery pieces and command control centres, turning the tide in Ukraine’s favour by July-August 2022. Without Russia’s ability to use destructive Stalinist artillery tactics, Ukraine can take advantage of its superiority in close combat. Corruption and Logistics Surprisingly Western experts ignored Russia has been described as a mafia state for over a decade. Russian’s army and security forces cannot be treated separately from high levels of corruption in Putin’s Russia. Corruption in the Russian state breeds cynicism in politics, society, and the security forces and a climate of high-level impunity. Russian officials and military personnel have been allowed to steal while dossiers (kompromat) are collected on this. The kompromat is kept under lock and key if those who are stealing provide political loyalty to the tsar; if they dissent, the kompromat is used to imprison them on charges of corruption. This has been described as a blackmail state. Russia’s mafia and blackmail state has had a profound impact upon the performance of the Russian military which is plagued by logistical problems. Russian soldiers live in dire conditions and their food is abysmal or is simply lacking. They are often lacking

MILITARY 149 implements such as shovels to dig trenches. Food rations are years out of date. A lack of food supplies has led to the looting of shops and farmers livestock. Russian military food kitchens are a disgrace and when found by Ukrainian soldiers are ridiculed by them on social media. The best parts of supplies (e.g., cigarettes, chocolate, canned meat, good clothes) to Russian troops are stolen in the rear and resold to soldiers. Packages from home disappear on route to Russian soldiers. Poor quality supplies, theft of supplies, lack of military equipment, under-manned military units, poor training, sent on suicidal missions by officers and low morale add up to a Russian army that cannot win the war in Ukraine. Uniforms and boots are of very poor quality and quickly fall apart, they are not fire resistant and thin and unable to keep out the cold. One hacked mobile phone call had a Russian soldier complaining how unlike them, Ukrainian soldiers were issued with warm socks. Russian soldiers in the Kyiv region caught frostbite in Spring 2022. On YouTube one can compare videos and photographs of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers to see how poorly Russian soldiers are kitted out. Medical supplies are basic or non-existent. Some medical kits issued to soldiers were from 1978 which meant they were out of date and useless. Ukrainian soldiers each carry small medical kits. Russian soldiers do not have tourniquets to halt bleeding from wounds, Ukrainians have them included in their medical packs (while Russians were advised to take tampons with them to

cover wounds). Medics are embedded in Ukrainian military units to provide medical attention to wounds prior to evacuation to rear field hospitals. The first one to two hours after being wounded are critical as to whether a soldier’s life can be saved. Russian soldiers do not have the luxury of rapid medical attention, frontline medical support, or evacuation to rear field hospitals. Russian wounded are left on the battlefield, or they are executed by their officers, so they do not fall into Ukrainian hands. The lack of interest on the part of Russian political and military elites in the fate of their soldiers reflects the Sovietised regime in place in Russia, Russians debased as subjects with no rights and an army

150 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE that has changed little in identity from the Soviet era. Tens of thousands of casualties have been left to rot where they fell in battle by the Russian army with only Ukrainians willing to provide them with a Christian burial or send them in frozen rail wagons to Russia. Russia is experiencing a decline in demand for its two principal exports—energy and weapons. Western sanctions and Russian energy boycotts are leading the EU to wean itself from Russian oil and gas by 2023 while the poor performance of Russian military equipment in Ukraine is leading to cancelled export orders. Philippines, India, and Turkey have cancelled military contracts with Russia. Russian air defence, once touted as advanced, is unable to detect HIMARS rockets fired by Ukraine. US supplied HARM (High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles) missiles fitted ingeniously on Soviet fighter jets flown by Ukraine have destroyed Russian radars and air defence systems, allowing the Ukrainian air force to dominate the sky. The Economist wrote: ‘The missiles represent a serious challenge to Russia. Even if not fired, the threat they pose can force radar operators to turn off their sets and lie low. Ukraine’s air force, as a result, may not quite fly with impunity, but it has greater freedom than before.’

The poor state of Russian military equipment is linked to a stagnant economy and to corruption. Contracts to supply military components are skimmed by corrupt officers and intermediaries and the cheapest parts are used. Very expensive military vehicles running into the tens of millions of dollars have become stuck because of a combination of using cheap Chinese tyres that cannot carry heavy loads in muddy fields, and poor maintenance—another casualty of corruption. Russian columns were forced by the late winter mud (rasputitsa) to use main roads and highways leading to a 40mile-long column of men and materiel forming north of Kyiv. A small force of special IT operators, known as Aerorozvidka, were able to pilot multiple night-time drone attacks on the column’s supply elements— effectively grinding the Russian Northern advance to a halt. The drones, equipped with night vision capabilities and innovative

MILITARY 151 weapons systems were mostly crowdfunded by the highly specialised IT experts who formed this small unit. Alongside the drones and Western weaponry, Ukraine made use of light vehicles—buggies and electric motorbikes—to conduct night raids deep into the rear of the lumbering Russian column. While these attacks were sustained and deadly, the Ukrainian strategy was effective as it avoided broad, large-scale engagement with Russian forces—which they favoured. Comparatively, the poor state of Russia’s military equipment can be seen in Putin going cap in hand to China, Turkey, and Iran. China refused to provide military equipment to Russia while Turkey refused to sell it Bayraktar drones. Russia stooped to purchasing drones from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea. Turkey’s Bayraktar company flatly refused to sell its products to Russia while selling them to Ukraine, donating them free of charge to crowdfunded projects and jointly setting up a factory to produce them in Ukraine. The success of the Bayraktar drone in the war in Ukraine has led to popular songs being made about them. One of these songs by Taras Borovok sings, ‘The occupiers came to us in Ukraine… They wanted to capture us right away. And we lay in offensive ambush for the orcs (derogatory term for Russian invaders). They [Bayraktars] made Russian bandits into ghosts. Bayraktar!’ Turkish and Israeli drones assisted Azerbaijan in defeating Armenia in the Second Karabakh War in 2020. Nevertheless, Russia did not take note and never invested in a major way in military drones. Russia’s Kronshtadt Orion drone is not a patch on Israeli or Turkish drones. The world’s biggest drone exporters are the US, China, Israel, and Turkey. Without a civil society or volunteer movement, and with Russian subject’s passive, Russia does not have a volunteer movement as in Ukraine where a ‘drone army’ has been purchased through crowdfunding. Morale Morale is a key factor for ground combat soldiers that is based on their prospects towards the enemy, past experiences, and future

152 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE anticipations. Morale is a product of the wider political military context the army operates within. Lutsevych explained that: ‘The high morale of the Ukrainian armed forces reflects the general societal resolve to resist Russian aggression. Ukraine’s military budget is in effect much larger than the official state funding. Ukrainian citizens and the private sector work to support the army every day, and every company, family and city is providing additional support to soldiers on the battlefield. News outlets fundraise and buy drones for units where their journalists are serving. Agricultural companies send night vision goggles, used all-terrain vehicles, mobile showers, chocolate and much more to employees who have signed up to fight. Private companies of all sizes invest millions in upgrading Soviet equipment with modern microchips and electronics, add armour to vehicles, assemble drones and retune communication devices. Millions of these invisible threads connect soldiers to families and companies back home. They feel they are supported; they know there is a home front.’

Russian morale is low because the Russian state and officers don’t care about their soldiers, the Ukrainian population hates them, and they are unclear why they are fighting Ukrainians. For example, Ukrainian morale is high because Ukrainian soldiers know what they are fighting for and receive nation-wide support from civilians. Russian prison convicts will only serve to degrade morale even further while training in the UK and elsewhere in the West will boost Ukrainian morale. Intercepts of Russian soldiers talking to family members on their mobile telephones shows an army in crisis with very low morale. Dire food and living conditions, poor quality officers and high casualties have sapped the morale of Russian troops in Ukraine. Russian soldiers, when they are alive or killed, are treated in a disrespectful manner by their officers. They are lied to; for example, being told they were on military manoeuvres rather than invading Ukraine. Because of manpower shortages they are not rotated and therefore exhausted and unable to perform well in battle. Long deployments are because of a lack of reserves to replace exhausted and demoralised troops. High casualty rates cannot be hidden from the Russian public. In the 1980s the Soviet Union could not hide the high Soviet casualty rate in Afghanistan. Mobile phones, social media, and interaction of people and troops ensures details of casualties are reaching

MILITARY 153 the Russian public. These high casualty rates make the war in Ukraine far more dangerous than earlier wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Libya, and Syria. Stories and memories of severe military conditions and very high casualty rates in the war in Ukraine become diffused through personal conversations, rumours, mobile telephone calls and social media. The high level of casualties and wounded soldiers demotivates Russians from signing contracts. The unlikely prospect of full mobilisation would be undermined by Russians bribing and finding other means to escape being called up. The unpopularity of joining the Russian military and fighting in Ukraine has led to soldiers being unable to leave when their 1year contracts have ended. Russian Brutality and the Ukrainian Response Within days of invasion, reports of Russian brutality and accusations of war crimes were emerging—from civilian infrastructure being targeted by indiscriminate bombing to specific instances of execution and torture. As harrowing as many of these accounts were, they back up the uncaring, undisciplined, and genocidal tendencies of the Russian armed formations. And as more Ukrainians read and watched these reports, the more determined they were to resist. Firstly, by invading, and secondly through his army’s behaviour since then—Putin has effectively snuffed out sympathetic attitudes towards Russia and Russians among the Ukrainian population. As images of innocent civilian cars being shot to pieces by Russian soldiers as they attempted to escape filled news programmes and social media, long queues of Ukrainians were seen to be snaking their way around military conscription offices around the country. All spheres of life were represented in these queues, from 80-year-old pensioners to famous musicians and sports stars—the brutality of Russian initial advances quickly built an unprecedented, for Putin at least, popular front in Ukraine. While Russian forces were present in the area north of Kyiv, those who’d escaped occupation had warned about indiscriminate killing, torture, and rape. Civilians and their property were targeted by an invading force which lacked discipline and, it seems,

154 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE any sense of humanity. While this galvanised defending Ukrainians—the true horror of what had transpired north of the capital was only realised once those areas had been liberated. This was especially so in the cases of Bucha and Irpin, two commuter suburbs north-west of Kyiv. Upon the withdrawal of Russian troops, evidence of torture, summary execution and war crimes were made public and met with shock and disgust. The Ukrainian government described what was left behind as a ‘scene from a horror movie’ and accused Russia of conducting genocide against Ukrainians. The Hague-based International Criminal Court is now investigating scores of accusations levelled at Russia’s invading forces. Residents of both towns described streets strewn with dead bodies and incidents where locals had been shot for simply answering back to their occupiers. Investigators from international NGO Human Rights Watch described the town as a crime scene that felt like ‘death was everywhere.’ Describing the Russians’ attitude towards civilians, investigators found evidence that suggested, ‘… Russian forces occupying Bucha showed contempt and disregard for civilian life and the most fundamental principles of the laws of war.’ Many of the bodies discovered after withdrawal had had their hands tied behind their backs and women and men alike described days of endless physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Russian soldiers, who were often drunk. Similarly, civilians have described how Russian soldiers would randomly remove them from their shelters and check their phones for any anti-Russian activity—humiliating, maiming, and killing those deemed to have been in possession of any pro-Ukrainian materials or sentiment. Further evidence also indicated that residents had been ‘forcibly disappeared’. By the end of their investigation, in Bucha alone Ukrainian authorities declared they had found 458 civilian bodies, of which 419 had signs of shooting, torture or violent trauma. Neighbouring Irpin, like Bucha, saw heavy fighting during the Kyiv offensive in March 2022. The town was also the site of numerous other Russian war crimes, most infamously the shelling of a civilian evacuation column. Human Rights Watch accused the

MILITARY 155 Russian military of deliberately directing fire at civilians trying to flee the town which was the site of a fierce battle. Witnesses reported that shells were landing at an intersection of the P-30 highway being used by fleeing civilians every ten minutes for hours. Following the eventual Russian withdrawal, the city’s mayor claimed that Russian forces had killed over 300 civilians during their brief but bloody occupation. The mayor also described how Russian soldiers used tanks to crush the bodies of those who had been killed and, in grim parallel with its neighbour, there were widespread accusations and evidence of rape and torture. Russian brutality of the kind described here has been repeatedly witnessed and documented across those areas of Ukraine that have experienced occupation during this invasion. None more so than in the south-eastern port city of Mariupol, where a particularly intense brutality accompanied the Russian advance. The city, with the help of the early incarnation Azov regiment, fought back Russian regular and separatist forces in 2014 and has been a key objective for Russia ever since. The city has a value in its geography—it sits on the Sea of Azov and forming part of any land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea—and importance from a propaganda perspective. The Azov regiment garrisoned in the city was a focus for Russian information warfare operations and the brutality with which Russia besieged and eventually occupied the city was, in part, revenge for 2014. Emblematic of this was the airstrike on the city’s Drama Theatre, where hundreds of civilians were sheltering from the violence which had engulfed Mariupol. Around 600 are thought to have died in the strike on the theatre, which had the word ‘CHILDREN’ written in giant Cyrillic letters outside—clearly visible from high above. The name Mariupol, alongside others like Sarajevo and Grozny, will now be synonymous with a brutal and bloody siege that is estimated to have killed more than 100,000 people.

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Not Fake News: Ukraine Has One of the Best Armies in Europe Russia’s initial goal of capturing Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv failed and will no longer be possible. In all these offensives, there have been decisive battles where Ukraine has proven its worth as the best military in Europe currently. In Kyiv, this was the battle for the Antonovskyy Airfield in the town of Hostomel. As part of Putin’s failed blitzkrieg, this airport was given particular focus as the desired landing space for tenthousand men of the elite 76th Guards Air Assault Division. Had the Ukrainians not defended the airport as they did, Russia may well have taken Kyiv within its 96-hour deadline. Russia attacked the airport numerous times using elite paratroopers and helicopters—destroying in the process the world’s largest cargo plane and symbol of Ukrainian engineering might, the Antonov Mriya-225. Their objective was to secure the landing strip for 18 Il-76 transport planes waiting in Belarus—two of which were eventually destroyed, along with the several hundred troops onboard. The surprisingly swift nature of Russia’s initial attack meant that the airport was initially abandoned as waves of specialist airborne forces descended. There were also issues of internal sabotage; as a relative of one of the airport’s employees was reported to have been paid to give away information as to its defences. However, decisive orders given by head of the armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy—who recognised the defence of the airport as vital to Kyiv’s survival—meant that an initially inexperienced garrison was relieved by a mechanised brigade and focused artillery and air force strikes degraded the airport’s runway. Over the first days of Russia’s invasion, control of the airport remained mainly in Russian hands—which allowed Russian troops to continue attacks on towns like Bucha and Irpin which formed Kyiv’s northern suburbs. But crucially, they were not able to create the conditions that would allow for successful troop landings on a decisive scale.

MILITARY 157 Much like they have in Kyiv and Kahrkiv, Russian forces will lose Kherson and southern Zaporizhzhya, undermining their strategic goal of cutting Ukraine from the Black Sea. Russia’s control of the Donbas will be contested and may be defeated; at the very least, Putin’s goal of the ‘liberation’ of the entire Donbas will not happen. Although Zelenskyy has outlined a goal of liberating Crimea this would be militarily more difficult. Rob Lee, an expert on the Russian military, believes Ukraine has an advantage over Russia that would grow over time because of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Manpower. Learning lessons. Interior lines. Command-and-control and leadership. Clearer strategic goals. Precision firing. Morale. Ability to strike behind Russian lines (partisans). Training of volunteers.

A tenth factor is Russia’s inability to take Ukraine and Ukrainians seriously, even after their rout in Kharkiv. Russian television could not admit it was Ukrainians, a nation that they deny exists, who defeated Russian forces in Kharkiv and instead blamed this on Ukrainian forces including many foreign mercenaries and NATO soldiers who have allegedly been in Ukraine since 2014. Being chased by a superior NATO force is lass humiliating than being chased by Little Russians masquerading as Ukrainian Nazis. Russian television uses explicitly racist language when attacking US volunteer Malcolm Nance. The Kharkiv operation was a Ukrainian maskirovka that inept Russian intelligence failed to detect. The main operation was to take place in Kharkiv with a maskirovka making Russia believe it would be taking place in Kherson to which Russia transferred its best troops. Writing in The Atlantic, Phillips P. O’Brien described the Kharkiv offensive as one of the greatest military strategic successes since the end of World War II. O’Brien wrote: ‘The Ukrainians

158 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE wrote a script, and the Russians played their assigned role.’ Ukrainians trained in the UK and elsewhere a large, fast moving, strike force of special combat brigades that used lighter and faster military vehicles whose rapid speed sowed panic in Russian troops demoralised by the fleeing of their officers. Russian military equipment lost during the Kharkiv offensive is found in 8 battalions or 2 and half brigades, and included:    

102 tanks. 108 infantry fighting vehicles. 86 armoured personnel carriers. 66 Artillery pieces.

When Russia invaded, Ukraine’s 250,000-strong army was the third largest army in Europe and had gained extensive experience from eight years of Russian hybrid warfare in the Donbas. Since Russia’s invasion Ukraine’s army has trebled and is now the most battle hardened in Europe. The Ukrainian army has proven it is more agile than its Russian opponent and is effectively using Western weapons to defeat Russia in a similar manner to how Azerbaijan defeated Armenia. Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia are for similar reasons Azerbaijan won the 2020 Second Karabakh War against Armenia. The two factors that distinguish Ukraine now and Azerbaijan then are officer training and military equipment and tactics. In effect, Ukraine is fighting, and Azerbaijan fought, 21st century wars against 20th century Russian and Armenian armies. Azerbaijani officers were trained for a decade to NATO standards in Turkish and US military academies. Turkey and Ukraine trained Azerbaijani air force pilots and how to operate drones. Ukraine’s air force pilots are given greater autonomy and have proven to be a match for Russia’s larger air force, shooting down hundreds of jets, bombers, and helicopters. Azerbaijani and Ukrainian special forces were developed and trained by the US, Turkey, and other NATO members. Ukrainian and Azerbaijani special forces are superior both in their agility and ability to launch attacks compared to spetsnaz found in the Russian

MILITARY 159 and Armenian armies who have been trained using out of date Soviet tactics. Russian spetsnaz have little similarity to Western special forces as they are not as well trained and they are larger in number. Evelyn Farkas, senior Pentagon official for Ukraine and Russia in the Barack Obama administration, said current and former U.S. officials praised the sophistication of the Ukrainian preparations for the September 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive. Ukrainian special forces have been trained for eight years by US and other NATO member ‘Special Ops’, he said, in areas such as irregular warfare and as intelligence operators for ‘deception and psychological operations.’ Farkas believed, ‘The decision by Ukraine to tout its counteroffensive in the south before striking in the northeast is a standard technique for misdirection used by the American Special Operations troops, who have been training the Ukrainians since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.’ Since the 2014 crisis, eight NATO members provided handson training with Ukrainian instructors. NATO training created noncommissioned (NCO) officers which Russian and Armenian forces do not possess. NCO’s provide links between senior officers and troops. In the absence of NCO’s, Russian generals have been forced to become more involved in daily fighting and twenty of them have been killed in the early stage of the war in Ukraine. Over 2,000 middle ranking Russian officers have been killed in the war in Ukraine (see graphic 2). NATO introduced mission command where senior level combat goals are transmitted lower down the chain of command where they are implemented in a flexible manner. This is impossible in Russian and Armenian forces which are more hierarchical and inflexible. The Ukrainian armed forces learnt to make decisions at lower levels in the chain of command where officers would know how to act in changing situations without waiting for orders from military headquarters or senior officers. Ukrainian officers have been trained to use initiative that builds on an independent civil society and horizontal volunteer movement, traits which are absent in the Russian army and society. Ukrainian and Azerbaijani forces can adapt to fluid military environments. Russian and Armenian military tactics are the same as in the Soviet era, and thereby

160 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE predictable. In contrast, Ukrainian and Azerbaijani forces are unpredictable allowing the sowing of chaos into their opponents ranks. Other areas of NATO training that have become noticeable include fighting urban warfare, countering Russian hybrid warfare, and intercepting military communications, including phone hacking. Ukrainian intelligence and volunteers routinely hack Russian military communications and provide the collected intelligence to the military to plan attacks and ambushes. Armenian military communications were as poor as those used by Russian forces in Ukraine, and soldiers in both armies have given their positions away when using mobile phones and unencrypted communications. Western military support has not only been within the realm of military equipment. Three additional crucial areas include: 1.

2.

3.

Combatting cyber warfare and hacking. Russia was projected to take down the Ukrainian government and military ahead of the invasion but failed to do so. Since then, Russian cyber-warfare attacks have been unsuccessful. Providing high-level intelligence on the location of Russian senior officers, command-and-control bases, and military convoys. The US European Command is in direct contact with its Ukrainian equivalent. Specialised training of Ukrainian pilots, special forces, and artillery. The UK, with input from a myriad of NATO members, has become a training ground for Ukrainian troops to undertake offensive operations.

NATO training has been undertaken on Western military equipment supplied to Ukraine, including NLAW’s, Stingers, Javelins, Turkish Bayraktar drones and others. The Ukrainian troops who fired a Neptune missile that sunk the Moskva flagship of the Black Sea Fleet were trained by the US. Hand-held anti-tank weapons are perfectly suited for small, autonomous, and agile military units and special forces who can attack rigid, long, and unprotected Russian and Armenian military columns. Azerbaijan and Ukraine are the first countries to use drones in a major way in wars. Their use in the

MILITARY 161 2020 Second Karabakh War and Russian-Ukrainian war were decisive factors in Azerbaijan and Ukraine destroying a large volume of Armenian and Russian military equipment. In the first six months of the war, Forbes magazine estimated that Ukraine destroyed $16.6 bn worth of Russian military equipment. According to the volunteer group Russo-Ukrainian War Spotting, in the first six months of the war Russia has lost the following:               

1,121 tanks. 2,033 armoured personnel carriers. 176 infantry vehicles. 175 command-and-control posts and communications centres. 25 anti-tank systems. 94 air defence systems. 119 towed artillery pieces and 211 self-propelled howitzer artillery. 108 multiple rocket launchers. 30 radar jammers. 203 engineering vehicles. 1,603 military transportation vehicles. 54 jet fighters and bombers. 46 helicopters. 126 drones. 11 vessels.

Why Russia Will be Militarily and Morally Defeated Nine factors explain why Russia will be defeated by 2023. The first is poor living conditions in winter, low morale, and poor logistics for Russian troops in comparison to far higher morale, local support, and better winter conditions and supplies for Ukrainian forces. Russian soldiers already face cold barracks because budgetary funds allocated for heating them are often stolen. The second is dysfunctional and poor-quality Russian officers compared to higher quality and Western-trained Ukrainian officers. The third is high levels of attrition of good quality military equipment and

162 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE replacement by inferior and old equipment for Russian troops. T72 tanks delivered to Russian soldiers in March 2022 had missing electronics, optics, and engines that had been stolen; only ten percent of them were usable. Western supplies of higher quality military equipment to Ukraine, possibly including long-range missiles, tanks, and jets, will continue. The fourth, Ukraine’s liberation of Kherson, will lead to the beginning of the disintegration of Russia’s occupation of southern Ukraine. Ukraine is likely to open a third front in southern Zaporizhzhya oblast towards Melitopol and Berdyansk whose liberation would threaten Russian control over Mariupol. The fifth is Ukraine will halt Russian military advances in Donetsk oblast and liberate a large proportion of Luhansk oblast, returning Russian and Ukrainian control over the Donbas region to a similar position to that which existed prior to the February 2022 invasion. The sixth is Russian opposition to the war will grow following Russian military defeats in Kharkiv and Kherson and Western sanctions will begin to bite more severely on the Russian economy. The impact of sanctions, military defeats, growing and high military casualties and restrictions on Russians visiting Europe may become the tipping point for anti-Putin discontent in Russia. The seventh factor is Putin will not go quietly and will answer military defeats with brutal missile strikes against Ukrainian civilian targets and infra-structure. War will continue if Putin is Russian president. The eighth is the likelihood the US Congress will work around opposition from President Joe Biden and the State Department to declare Russia to be a state sponsor of terrorism, thus joining Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran as international pariahs. Finally, an international tribunal will be established to criminally charge Putin and other Kremlin leaders, political technologists, and journalists with war crimes and possibly genocide against Ukrainians. The final factor is Russia will continue to be plagued by manpower shortages for its army. Putin, fearful of political instability, will continue to oppose full mobilisation despite recently announcing a partial mobilisation of 300 thousand men. Putin’s dilemma is that a special military operation cannot fulfil his declared goals, full

MILITARY 163 mobilisation would lead to political instability while a Russian withdrawal would pave the way for the end of his presidency. Putin’s dilemma can be summarised as follows: 1.

2.

Special Military Operation: Acts to obfuscate from the Russian public the reality of a full-blown war in a similar, but larger, manner to the Kremlin’s fiction of a ‘civil war’ in 2014-2022. Continuing a special military operation would lead to a Russian defeat and would rule out a military victory and the fulfilment of the Kremlin’s war goals. Conscripts are not legally allowed to serve in the special military operation because there is no official declaration of war. Contract soldiers (kontraktiki) can serve in the special military operation but can also quit. Full Mobilisation: a. Full (Not Partial) Mobilisation: The Kremlin has been reluctant to institute a full mobilisation as this would require a formal declaration of war against Ukraine and the dropping of the fiction Russia is only fighting ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine. A Russia at war with Ukraine would be a Russia at war with all Ukrainians. With 70 percent of Russians bribing their way out of conscription, full mobilisation could not work as information about high casualty rates will lead to an even higher bribery rate. The Russian army is staffed by soldiers who cannot afford to bribe their way out, are less fit, and from lower educational and socio-economic groups. Full mobilisation would not have an immediate impact as conscripts need to be trained and integrated into the armed forces which will take months. A full mobilisation would mean the Kremlin could no longer hide the war from the Russian public and would have to explain why there are very high casualty rates for, as Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage write, an ‘ill-conceived imperial project.’ b. Fake Full Mobilisation: Instead of full mobilisation, Russia is recruiting prison convicts, mercenaries,

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3.

volunteers, and Cossacks and forcibly conscripting Ukrainians living in occupied territories. As the Institute for War has written, this will not improve Russia’s military’s performance as they will be faced by a larger and better trained force trained by NATO members in Britain and elsewhere. Withdrawal: a. Kremlin Instigated: Russia could withdraw to the status quo that existed prior to the invasion with Crimea and 40 percent of the Donbas occupied. It is difficult to see how this could be spun to hide the fact it was a military defeat as the primary goal of the invasion was to ‘liberate’ the Donbas from a fictitious Ukrainian ‘genocide’ of Russian speakers. In addition, the situation is different to that between 2014-2022 when Ukraine did not undertake military campaigns. Ukraine would not agree to Russia controlling 40 percent of the Donbas and would continue to launch military campaigns towards the liberation of all the region. b. Ukrainian instigated: The Russian military could slowly stagnate into an ineffective fighting force or implode, as in 1917, or Russia could be defeated in battle and must withdraw from Ukrainian territories, including all the Donbas, but possibly not Crimea.

Key Points   

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Western appeasement of Russia has failed. Western credible deterrence is needed to thwart Russian imperial nationalism and revanchism. Putin is an egomaniacal sociopath obsessed with Ukraine whose invasion has led to tens of thousands of dead lives, war crimes, huge destruction, and a global crisis. The Russian Army is not the second greatest army in the world. The Russian Army has no NCO corps, values, or morals and its stagnant condition is a product of being part of a mafia state built by Putin.

MILITARY 165 

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Ukraine, with one of the best, largest and the most battlehardened army in Europe, is eligible for NATO membership. Russia’s army will be defeated in 2023 and be forced to withdraw from most regions of Ukraine; the possible exception could be Crimea. A combination of high casualties, attrition of military equipment and harsh winter conditions will have a negative impact upon the Russian military.

Suggested Reading Daalder Ivo. H. and Lindsay, James. M. (2022). ‘The West Holds Firm. Why Support for Ukraine Will Withstand Russian Pressure,’ Foreign Affairs, 15 September. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-feder ation/west-holds-firm-ukraine-support Freedman, Lawrence (2022). https://substack.com/profile/69709932-lawr ence-freedman Freedman, L. (2022). ‘Why War Fails. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and the Limits of Military Power,’ Foreign Affairs, 101 (4): 10-23. Fix, Liana, and Kimmage, Michael. (2022). ‘Putin’s Next Move in Ukraine. Mobilize, Retreat, or Something in Between?’ Foreign Affairs, 16 September. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/putins-next-mov e-ukraine Institute for the Study of War. https://understandingwar.org/publicat ions?type[]=map&tid[]=300&field_lastname_value=&sort_by=creat ed&sort_order=DESC Kahn, Lauren. (2022). ‘How Ukraine Is Remaking War. Technological Advancements Are Helping Kyiv Succeed,’ Foreign Affairs, 29 August. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-ukraine-remaking-war Lee, Rob. (2022). ‘Moscow’s Compellence Strategy,’ Eurasia Program Analysis, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 18 January. https://www.fpri. org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy/ McDermott, Roger. N. (2022) ‘Did Russia’s General Staff Miss Warnings of a Hard Campaign in Ukraine?’ Royal United Services Institute, 10 May, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ did-russias-general-staff-miss-warnings-hard-campaign-ukraine Miller, G. & Belton, C. (2022) ‘FSB errors played a crucial role in Russia’s failed war plans in Ukraine’ Washington Post 19 August. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia-fsb-inte lligence-ukraine-war/

166 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Packer, George. (2022). ‘Ukrainians are Defending the Values Americans Claim to Hold,’ The Atlantic, 6 September. https://www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2022/10/ukraine-invasion-civilian-volunt eers-survival/671241/ Sherman, Justin. (2022). ‘Untangling the Russian web: Spies, proxies, and spectrums of Russian cyber behaviour,’ Atlantic Council of the US, 19 September. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads /2022/09/Untangling-the-Russian-Web-Spies-Proxies-and-Spectru ms-of-Russian-Cyber-Behavior-1.pdf ‘Six months of the war in Ukraine. The toll of Russia’s invasion is high with no end to the fighting in sight,’ Reuters, 24 August. https:// graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/jnvwenoqdvw/ Vershinin, Alex. (2022). ‘The Return of Industrial Warfare,’ Royal United Services Institute, 17 June. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-researc h/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare Vindman, Alexander. (2022). ‘Stop Tiptoeing Around Russia. It Is Time to End Washington’s Decades of Deference to Moscow,’ Foreign Affairs, 8 August. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/stop-tiptoeing-around-russia Watling, Jack and Reynolds, Nick. (2022). ‘Ukraine at War. Paving the Road from Survival to Victory,’ Royal United Services Institute, 4 July. https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resour ces/ukraine-war-paving-road-survival-victory

5 Volunteers and Geeks If you tell a [Ukrainian] volunteer, you need a nuclear warhead it will take them about two hours to put one together and deliver it to the specified address. Along with tea and cookies.’ Ukrainian Anecdote ‘Vladimir Putin. 1952-2022. Go fuck yourself. Never forgive, and never forget.’ Tombstone erected on a roadside between Dnipro and Nikopol

The 2014 Ukrainian crisis and 2022 full-scale invasion are the first occasion where a military is supported by crowdfunding. Ukraine has developed the biggest volunteer movement in Europe. Ukraine’s tradition of societal resilience, volunteerism, and civil society came of age following the invasion because private companies and civilians are able to broaden the range of how states fight wars which Lauren Kahn describes as ‘democratising warfighting.’ Volunteerism in both 2014 and 2022 has increased Ukrainian patriotism, alignment with Europe and turn away from Russia. Anne Applebaum describes Ukraine’s resilience and resistance as forging an identity against ‘a Russian autocrat that suppresses spontaneity and creativity’ that will continue to influence Ukrainian politics after the war has ended. The cultural explosion brought about by the 2014 crisis and 2022 invasion Russia have led to the rise of a new generation of Ukrainian patriots and a new generation in film, photography, design, and music. Ukraine’s ‘cultural ferment’ is being buttressed by ‘unbelievable bravery,’ Jason Farago wrote in the New York Times. Applebaum’s detailed analysis of the ‘unprecedented social movement’ in Russian-speaking Odesa shows how civic mobilisation and Ukrainian national identity is growing in Russian-speaking regions of south-east Ukraine. Volunteerism is an outgrowth of Ukrainian patriotism.

Ukraine is not Russia In launching his invasion on 24 February 2022, Putin did not understand Ukrainian national identity or the resilience of Ukrainian 167

168 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE society. Jason Farago, after traveling to Kyiv, Lviv and several heavily damaged towns around the capital to explore the war’s impact on Ukrainian culture, wrote in the New York Times Ukraine is proving that ‘civil society can make a difference against a superior military force.’ Cultural power is important in the war with Russia because, Farago explained, ‘culture, as much as arms, is keeping all of our democratic dreams alive.’ Ukrainian opinion polls show many Ukrainians who have volunteered. On the eve of the invasion, nearly half of Ukrainians stated their readiness to participate either as soldiers, territorial defence, or as volunteers. The readiness of Ukrainians to volunteer did not differ between regions and pro-Western political forces. Between 27 and 33 percent of Fatherland, Servant of the People and European Solidarity party voters are volunteers while this is the case for only 3 percent of pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life voters. Similarly, between 20 and 33 percent of the voters for these three pro-Western parties have joined the armed forces which is only true for 7 percent of Opposition Platform-For Life voters. Ukraine’s volunteer movement re-emerged in response to Russia’s invasion in a massive manner. A June 2022 survey by the International Republican Institute found that 37 percent of Ukrainians were involved in volunteer work. Natallia Voronkova stands for hours, patiently listening and giving guidance. ‘Every evening when I go to sleep, I ask myself, ‘What good thing have I done today?’ she said. ‘I want people to understand that they come into this world not only to eat, drink, and have fun every day, but to do something good. No day should be wasted.’ Donations to the Ukrainian military, charities and civil society funds rocketed. On the first day alone, something in the region of $10 million (UAH300 million) was raised. Ukrainian volunteers were a catalyst for national mobilisation while close ties between civilians and the military showed to what extent Ukraine’s fight against Russian imperialism was a people’s war. Roman Kovalenko, a commander in Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade, said volunteers were ‘people standing up for one another and saying “No, we won’t surrender.’ Kovalenko described this as ‘the power of the

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 169 spirit’ driven by a high 90 percent of the population who are confidant Ukraine would win the war against Russia. Russia and Ukraine began their independence as different societies and developed as very different states. Russia is a vertically based society where subjects have no independent agency, they unquestionably obey their leaders and do not believe they have influence over or are able to hold their leaders accountable. Russia’s army is a similar vertical pyramid where soldiers have no autonomy or training to improvise during battle. Ukraine is a horizontally based society where its citizens hold independent agency and expect accountability from their rulers. Mykhaylo Podolyak, senior adviser to President Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said: ‘What is the strength of Ukraine? In our people as volunteers and activists. The war with Russia is a test of the strength of two concepts: vertical and horizontal communication systems.’ Former UBER computer engineer Lisovych believes the war is between Ukrainian horizontal and Russian vertical hierarchies. Ukraine’s decentralised teams, autonomously making decisions and innovating, are more successful on the battlefield. Lviv volunteer Alexander Riabchyn said, ‘We are a huge army of ants that have strong horizontal ties to one another. ‘We have a series of strong horizontal links. We are good at self-organisation,’ a volunteer explained. She continued: ‘Russia has vertical links and strong institutions. Putin says something; Russians obey. In Ukraine, institutions are weak. We are not used to obeying. The state killed people in the Holocaust and the gulags. People here rely on their family and friends.’ Ukraine’s NATO-trained army is not hierarchical with NCO’s given flexibility and autonomy in combat. Russia shelved the introduction of NCO’s and other military reforms when Putin returned as president in 2012. Applebaum believes there is nothing in Russia like Ukraine’s volunteer movement, ‘no mass civic mobilisation’ and ‘no teams of volunteers.’ Putin’s KGB background is paranoid about actors independent of the state and Putinism has destroyed the civic spirit in Russia that re-emerged in the Gorbachev era. The Russian state has for two decades ‘promoted fear, apathy, and cynicism’ Applebaum wrote.

170 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukraine’s volunteerism is deeply rooted in Ukrainian national identity and a long history of opposition to Soviet rule and postSoviet corruption and undemocratic policies. The roots of volunteerism in 2014-2019 lie in the late 1980s drive to independence, Granite, Orange, and Euromaidan Revolutions which together have contributed to strengthening Ukraine’s resilience against Russia’s invasion. Russia has not undergone any popular uprising for over a hundred years since the 1917 revolution. The Russian democratic movement in the late 1980s was far weaker than in Ukraine and the three Baltic states and never engulfed the entire Russian Soviet republic. Russia never declared independence in 1991, nationalised Soviet institutions in Moscow, and undertook top-down post-Soviet state building. It is not surprising the former KGB took power and Putin has ruled Russia since 2000 as a militocracy. Ukraine has experienced three popular uprisings in 1990 (Granite Revolution), 2004 (Orange Revolution), and 2013-2014 (Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity). The nearly 100-day long Euromaidan was supported by nation-wide volunteers and protected by self-defence units. They in turn joined volunteer battalions and a nation-wide volunteer movement to support the battalions and army fighting the Russian-led proxy war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine also completely differ in how they have dealt with the past. Putin re-Sovietised Russia and promoted nostalgia for the Soviet past and a cult of the tyrant Joseph Stalin. Ukraine has been undergoing over three decades of de-Stalinisation since the late 1980s, with a small blip under pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. After the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine underwent a decommunisation process like that which had earlier taken place in the three Baltic states and central-eastern Europe. Since the invasion, Ukraine is undergoing de-Russification which is removing all aspects of Russian influence in the country. Decentralisation in Ukraine empowered Ukrainians citizens and gave them autonomy from an over-centralised state. Democratisation was also assisted by the successful decentralisation and

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 171 empowerment of local government after the Euromaidan. Tymofii Brik and Jennifer B. Murtazashvili write: ‘Political legitimacy in Ukraine has been built by citizens from the bottom up, and Ukraine must keep its focus on the local level as it begins to consider rebuilding the country when the war is over. The seeds of local collective action, which have proved pivotal in this current war, were planted in 2014.’

Brik and Murtazashvili continue: ‘Communities and civil society developed new practices and organizations to help internally displaced Ukrainians, to combat Russian disinformation, and to organize logistical aid to the Ukrainian army. In the aftermath of the Maidan movement, Ukrainians sought to reform their government, making it more responsive to the people. A new generation of politicians emerged, calling for an end to entrenched corruption. Reforms focused on the need for more transparent, decentralised, and accountable procurement processes.’

Although a federation, Russia under Putin has become a highly centralised state. Decentralisation has empowered local mayors and council leaders to lead resistance to Russian occupation in the southern Ukrainian cities of Mykolayiv and Mariupol and assist humanitarian voluntary work in Ukrainian-controlled areas suffering from Russian military aggression, such as Kharkiv and Dnipro. Russian leaders and people are unable to comprehend these processes which Ukrainians have undergone as they wish to see a world where Ukrainians are their spitting image. Falsely claiming Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’, as Putin and Kremlin leaders have repeatedly asserted, creates a cognitive dissonance between what they expect of ‘Little Russians’ and the reality of the Ukrainians they meet. The only way to explain this is by blaming Western conspiracies for ‘dividing the Russian [east Slavic] people,’ a mythical trope that has existed since the late 19th century. The outcome of these divergent developments is evident in Russia’s invasion. Peter Pomerantsev wrote about Russians who, ‘in order to deal with the humiliation, might learn to enjoy that too and become a masochist, before becoming sadistic to others.’ Pomerantsev added that, ‘Putin’s manipulation of the cycle of humiliation and aggression is integral to his psychological grip over

172 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Russia.’ Ten percent of Russians have experienced torture at the hands of Russia’s bloated security forces and yet a third of them believe torture should be permissible. Russia decriminalised domestic abuse in 2017 opening opportunities for Russian men to expand their record of abuse against women. During the first month of the invasion, young Russian women protestors were humiliated and sexually abused by the police. Pomerantsev’s observation has been witnessed in Ukraine in two ways. Firstly, the abuse suffered by Russians outside and inside the army is taken out on others. Dedovshchina is widespread in the Russian army and in 2019 there were 51,000 human rights abuses and 1, 521 sexual assaults and rapes. In that year Ramil Shamsutdinov killed ten of his colleagues in the Gorny military base after being subjected to beatings and threats of rape. The brutality of life in Russia has been turned on Ukrainians through war crimes, ranging from deliberate bombardment of civilian residences, deportation of millions of Ukrainians to Russia, torture of POW’s and civilians, and extra-judicial executions. Putin encouraged such behaviour by honouring the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade which committed war crimes in Bucha, near Kyiv. He bestowed the title of ‘Guards’ ‘for defending the Motherland and state interests’ by showing ‘mass heroism and valour, tenacity and courage.’ Russia was described as a mafia state as long ago as in February 2010. It is therefore not surprising Russian troops have acted and been encouraged by their officers to loot from Ukrainians. It should also not be surprising to read half of the loot they sent from Belarusian post offices was stolen on its way to Russia. Russians also looted because of their anger at Ukrainians having a higher standard of living. Russian occupation forces from Russia’s Siberia and Far East were stunned to find Ukrainian village houses had gas heating, boilers, showers, baths, and toilets. One Russian soldier was amazed when he found a village shop selling Nutella! Millions of Ukrainians have travelled to work in the EU and used the capital they accumulated to launch private businesses in Ukraine. On the eve of the invasion, 1.5 million Ukrainians were holding a valid residence permit in the EU, a figure which understates the number as it does not include the UK which had left the

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 173 EU and many Ukrainians working in the unofficial economy. Added to this are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians studying in Poland and other EU countries. Russia has never had a visa free regime with the EU and the numbers of Russians working and studying in the EU is far smaller. Ukraine’s democratic development, popular uprisings, and desovietisation and decommunisation has produced a country of citizens and individuals who believe they have independent agency, a large civil society and nation-wide volunteer movement. Return Alive, one of the biggest of Ukrainian NGO’s and founded in 2014, raised UAH40 million on the day of the Russian invasion, twice what it had raised the year before. In July 2022, Return Alive NGO donated a $16 million crowdfunded Bayraktar drone to the Ukrainian army. Return Alive has excelled in providing communications and aerial defence equipment to the military. In March 2022, Return Alive donated $33 million-worth of high-tech equipment and protective gear to the military. With civil society crushed in Russia, the country has no independent volunteer movement. In August 2022, the Russian newspaper Komersant published an official poll that found only 12 percent would, but a high 67 percent of Russians would not, support the Russian military as volunteers. 67 percent of Russians are unwilling to provide donations to the special military operation and only 12 percent are willing to donate not more than 1,000 roubles per month (approximately $16). Europeanisation and democratisation have led to respect for human rights in Ukraine. Ukraine has held six free and fair presidential and eight free and fair parliamentary elections, with only one disqualified in 2004. Russia’s authoritarian system has grown throughout Putin’s presidency. Since 2020, when constitutional changes extended Putin’s presidency until 2036 but in effect indefinitely, Putin’s Russia has become a totalitarian dictatorship. Respect for human rights in Ukraine is coupled with respect for human dignity. Ukrainians respect their fallen patriots, whether the Heavenly Hundred in the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity or in the war with Russia, by ensuring they receive funerals, their names are recorded for posterity, and their orphans are respected.

174 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Russian dead in the war in Ukraine are left by their comrades to rot in fields, and the Kremlin is afraid of their remains being repatriated to Russia because of their large number. President Zelenskyy said: ‘For four months, the Russian state has not provided to its citizens any information—even censored—about the losses of the occupation contingent. Total silence. Nothing was published or said in numerous interviews and speeches at the political and military levels. However, this number is already almost 40,000—that is how many people have been killed in the Russian army since the 24th of February invasion. And tens of thousands more were wounded and maimed.’ A leaked Russian Ministry of Finance document on payment of compensation to the families of killed soldiers pointed to 48,000 casualties in the first six months of the war. The Russian army is following in the traditions of the Soviet army of treating its soldiers as cannon fodder without any human dignity.

Volunteer Movement in Ukraine During the late 1980s, Ukraine was like the three Baltic states in producing large protests and opposition activities. In the post-Soviet era, Ukraine’s civil society mobilised on a large scale following the scandal in 2000 over the murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze. Mass protests since 2001 against Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma’s semi-authoritarian regime culminated in the Orange Revolution. The volunteer movement expanded into a large movement during the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and 2014 crisis and in response to the 2022 invasion. Natalka Poznyak-Khomenko has brought together a large and unique collection of short memoirs of volunteers from different regions of Ukraine who became active in the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and war with Russia in eastern Ukraine. The peak of the volunteer movement took places in 2014-2015 when the Ukrainian state was weak; from 2016, the Ukrainian government began to supply the needs of Ukraine’s army. Tamara Horikha-Zernya from Kyiv recalled that their goals at the beginning of the Donbas war were ‘effectively undertaken. We had to give the state time to stand on its feet.’ This intense period of volunteerism made it difficult to

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 175 ‘demobilise’ but not for long; Ukraine’s volunteer movement revived in response to Russia’s invasion. Ukraine’s volunteer movement was institutionalised in seven ways. Firstly, volunteer chaplains for frontline troops became fulltime clergy in the armed forces. Secondly, the large number of medical volunteers, who numbered 500 in 2014-2015 based in 176 locations throughout Ukraine, transformed into a medical branch of the armed forces. Thirdly, unpaid advisers were hired as full-time paid advisers to the Ukrainian military. Fourthly, quality control volunteers became an arm of the armed forces, ensuring accountability and fighting corruption. Fifthly, veterans’ groups became active participants in civil society and organisers of protest actions. Sixthly, veterans and volunteers were elected to local councils and the Ukrainian parliament. Finally, IT specialists who created Aerorozvidka (Air Intelligence) developed different types of drones, quadcopters, night vision technology, and thermal imagery for Ukraine’s artillery, air force and special forces. This technology, coupled with the purchase of Turkish Bayraktar drones, has given Ukraine an edge over Russia in the war. Most volunteers never expected to become involved in activities during a war; at the same time, many of them believed they could not remain passive when Ukraine’s independence was being threatened by Russia. Andriy Salyuk from Lviv said ‘If I can’t fight, then I can do something that helps those who are at war, their lives and more effectively hit back at the enemy.’ Some became volunteers after the shock of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Hryhoriy Yanchenko, a veteran of the Pskov regiment of Soviet airborne forces who came under Russian occupation in Kherson, said: ‘The occupation of Crimea completely and forever changed my life.’ Unable to fight in the Donbas, because he had lost his two legs in combat, meant he devoted his entire free time to volunteerism. ‘If I had just one leg or fingers on my hands to be able to shoot, I would be with them. But such as it is, I do what I can and when I can’, Yanchenko said. Zoya Boychenko from Cherkasy became a volunteer because ‘I do not know if I could fight with weapons in my hands.’ Like many of the older volunteers, Yanchenko viewed the younger soldiers as ‘kids to us.’ Volunteers would bring

176 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE children’s paintings and home cooked food to soldiers because, Yanchenko said, ‘The boys should know there are people here who remember them and care for them.’ Many of the memoirs reflected on how participating in the volunteer movement forever changed their lives. Anzhelika Rudnytska recalled, ‘We ourselves did not comprehend how the war became part of our lives.’ ‘And when you return home, you are already different because something in you has changed’, Boychenko said. Volunteers were assisted on the ground by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch who allowed their religious buildings to be used as collection and distribution points; schools were also used for this. Natalya Hranchak from Poltava, a youth activist of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch and volunteer in the Aydar Volunteer Battalion, assisted in creating a Poltava Territorial Defence battalion. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, under the aegis of the Moscow Patriarchate, refused to support the Ukrainian army or hold services for Ukrainian soldiers who had lost their lives fighting Russian imperialism. The St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in Kyiv donated all the UAH5.6 million it had collected to repair its fire damage to the Ukrainian military. A high proportion of the volunteers were women. Natalya Bohachenko from Odesa’s well-known ‘Seven kilometre’ bazaar, organised a wide range of support for Ukraine’s armed forces. The work was dangerous as volunteers could drive unwittingly into an active war zone. Larysa Polulyakh from Vynnytsya helped to organise the Zhinoche Kolo (Women’s Circle) volunteer group of soldier’s mothers and friends, assisting post-combat trauma and the children of killed soldiers, maintaining the memory of killed patriots, repairing military equipment, and collecting donations for medical equipment. Volunteers had learnt how to source and transport a variety of items during the 92-day long Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in winter. This experience was put to good use sourcing and transporting foodstuffs, fresh water, warm clothing, heaters, bullet proof vests, helmets, medicines, and night vision to Ukrainian troops on

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 177 the frontline. Volunteers used their own transport, bought transit vans or were given free transportation by bus companies, lorry drivers and the private company Nova Poshta (New Post). Volunteers also helped with medical work in frontline hospitals and repaired military vehicles. Other volunteers, who had careers in the cultural domain, travelled to the Donbas war zone to hold concerts for soldiers to boost their morale. Volunteers could only function by raising large amounts of money and using their own financial resources, including selling their businesses and restaurants. The funds that were raised, as testified in this book, were colossal. Vitaliy Deyneha from Kyiv, a leader of the Povernis zhyvym (Return alive) volunteer group, donated all his savings to buy night vision technology, collecting UAH170 million over six years in Ukraine and from foreign donations. Three pensioners brought donations of five to 50 hryvnya (from pensions of just over UAH1,000) to volunteer groups. A 90year-old pensioner sold her dacha and donated $10, 000 to a volunteer group. Other wealthier businesspersons brought cash amounts of $20,000, 40, 000 and 50,000 and 1 million hryvnya to Povernis zhyvym. Volunteerism’s contribution to civil society came through the creation of networks that crossed a range of age groups, both genders, walks of life and socio-economic groups. Farmers, businesspeople, journalists, construction workers, IT programmers and others came together to, in the words of Brigadier General Yuriy Galushkin, ‘put aside their work and courageously defend Ukraine.’ Environmental activist Roman Ratushnyy fought against illegal construction in Kyiv and volunteered for the army on the same day of the invasion; he died in battle in June 2022 near the Donbas city of Izyum. Bringing together volunteers from different regions of Ukraine contributed to the forging of a unified Ukrainian national identity by breaking down barriers between eastern and western Ukraine. Yuliya Smahina from Kharkiv said ‘For many, volunteerism gave an opportunity to feel part of something bigger and more important.’ Borys Redin from Kharkiv recalled how volunteerism ‘became a part of my life’ by expanding his circle of friends throughout Ukraine. ‘Volunteerism is my front in this war, it’s a

178 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE lifestyle,’ he said. Horikha-Zernya said ‘A feeling appeared in me that my home is not only in Kyiv but all over Ukraine, from east to west.’ Smahina was thankful to volunteerism for ‘connecting me to a lot of fantastic people who will always remain in my heart.’ Hennadiy Druzenko from Kyiv described volunteerism as an ‘absolute unique experience, like a love’ which had forever transformed him as ‘For me it was a real brotherhood, a real romanticism, which defined my life.’ Volunteers believed they were fighters for Ukraine’s democratic freedoms and national sovereignty. Druzenko said ‘this is a war for liberty and dignity against the Russian World with its severe vertical where the state is far more important than people.’ Volunteerism empowered Ukrainians as citizens to demand accountability from their ruling elites. Volunteerism also promoted individualism, a sense that one had to act on one’s volition without requesting permission from the state. Smahina said ‘You get used to the fact you are needed. You understand that you can no longer remain indifferent when something is happening.’ Denys Bloshchynskyy, who had become disillusioned with Ukrainian politics after the Orange Revolution was sprung back into volunteerism by President Viktor Yanukovych’s Berkut riot police who brutally attacked students on Kyiv’s Maidan on 30 November 2013. The severe beatings proved to be a turning point for many Ukrainians and mobilised massive protests in the following days. Bloshchynskyy recalls that on that night ‘began my personal Maidan.’ From then he was volunteering every day at the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity. After the Donbas war began Bloshchynskyy organised concerts and festivals for front line troops and schools in the Donbas and published Russian-language brochures and books on Donbas and Ukrainian history. For Bloshchynskyy ‘volunteerism is already a form of lifestyle.’ Since the invasion, Ukrainians have re-applied their skills and businesses to the war. Oleksii Erinchak, a Kyiv café and bookshop owner raised $3,500 to purchase a sniper rifle for a friend who joined the Territorial Defence Force (TDF). Maksym Zaychenko, a businessman from Kyiv, called round to his friends to donate food and medicines. Olha Fayzyeva, a lawyer working for an

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 179 international company, rang her Ukrainian and foreign clients for financial donations. Yuriy Zakharchuk, a Lviv-based costume maker for theatres, switched to producing body armour and helmets which is light and comfortable. A Kyiv hipster boot company switched to making combat boots. Companies that have moved to Lviv instal protective armour on vehicles used by the military, and produce military uniforms and ammunition. Oksana Cherepanych’s Hryhoriy Textiles switched to producing military products and together with academic specialists in physics and hard metals invented a lighter and more mobile ceramic replacement for metal plates that fit inside body armour. Ceramic plates need a special oven, and she located one in occupied southern Ukraine from where she extracted it by bribing Russian military officers. Roman Khristin switched his business to an NGO, purchased a large volume of cloth to produce body armour and camouflage netting. In Odesa a local fashion brand company switched to producing cloth vests to fit body armour plates. These companies believe that after the war they could transform from their current charitable status to profit making companies by focusing on exports to the EU. Other artists, theatre directors and those working in the wide field of culture have focused on painting resistance art, making sculptures, and when living under Russian occupation designing resistance posters and leaflets.

Volunteer Groups Of Ukraine’s volunteer groups the most famous is Return Alive which has cooperated with the military and assisted civilians. With three offices in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Vynnytsya the Return Alive NGO cooperates with every branch of Ukraine’s security forces, including Territorial Defence Forces. Return Alive assisted in preparing legislation, communications and command and control centres for the Territorial Defence Forces. Return Alive explained their purpose is to make the army more ‘effective in its fight, more effective in destroying the enemy and saving lives.’ Return Alive has provided countless quadcopters, radio stations,

180 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE accumulators, routers, generators, plasma, computers, and monitors to the army. Return Alive work with an international network of foreign suppliers in Poland, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Slovakia, Bulgaria, US, and Israel. Aerorozvidka, launched by Return Alive for the army, provides locations of Russian forces that is used by artillery and drones for targeting. Return Alive donated 100 military quadcopters worth five million Euros to Aerorozvidka on top of the 1,000 already donated to the military and 500 to other Ukrainian security forces. Aerorozvidka converted civilian quadcopters to military use with a range of four kms and able to drop five kilos of explosives. Often used at night, they do not have legs, are lighter than drones, launched from a special platform and caught when they land. Crowdfunding in Ukraine and abroad aimed to raise sufficient funds to buy 200 military reconnaissance drones and 1,000 former civilian drones. The ‘Drone Army’ is also accepting renovated drones donated by Ukrainians and foreign citizens. $20 million had been raised by July 2022. Oleksandr Cherdekov produces a UJ22 Airborne drone which has a gas engine, can fly for ten hours, carry up to ten kilogrammes of weapons and be used for both reconnaissance and precision attacks. Poland is a major supplier to Ukraine of NATO-standard military reconnaissance drones. Other volunteer groups have collected donations to purchase racing drones that can carry grenades which can be dropped on Russian military dug outs. Two US businessmen who used racing drones visited a workshop in Lviv and donated twelve of them. The Russian-Ukrainian war is the first occasion a 500 pound 3-D printer became a weapon of war. The ingenuity of Ukrainian volunteers and their close ties to the Ukrainian military reflect the people’s war that is being fought. Yahoo News reported Yuriy Vlasyuk, a Ukrainian officer in the 92nd Mechanised Brigade, saying: ‘We have thousands of volunteers in Ukraine hoping to say ‘hi’ to Russian occupiers in this way,’ Small metal projectiles with white fins, giving them sufficient aerodynamic stability and the size of cans of pop are dropped on Russian troops. The fins are 3-D printed by Ukrainian civilians at home and dropped by a military operator. In return, ‘The volunteers that print these for the drones receive a

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 181 video showing them being put to good use’ Vlasyuk said. Videos posted to Facebook and Twitter ‘showed grenades and mortars with 3D-printed fins hitting columns of unsuspecting Russian troops.’ 3-D printers are also used to produce rubber suspension bushes critical for shock absorption for Humvee vehicles donated by the US. Western governments have been impressed at the ingenuity, flexibility and quick learning time of Ukrainians who are used to improvising in what is not a throwaway society, unlike the West. Soviet deficits meant Ukrainians have an ability to work around problems and find solutions. They are technically savvy and have a large and growing IT sector. In the USSR, the military-industrial sector accounted for 40 percent of the economy and much of this expertise has remained in institutions, research departments, IT sector and engineers. Ukrainians have installed missiles on trucks which are faster to deploy, rocket systems on speed boats, modified munitions for use by inexpensive plastic aircraft and fitted HARM anti-radiation missiles on to Soviet era MIG-29 fighter jets. 15-yearold Andriy Pokrasa adapted his own toy, civilian drone to provide the army with the coordinates of the Russian military, helping them to destroy tens of tanks. Ukrainian ingenuity is evident in the ‘network of tinkerers— engineers, electricians, programmers and 3D printers—who’ve been helping their military wage a grassroots campaign against Russian invaders.’ Volunteer Yuriy Vlasyuk said his colleague ‘can print in a few minutes parts that would take weeks to arrive from Europe or America.’ Vlasyuk’s network is now producing homemade kamikaze drones, one of about one hundred on-going projects. Volunteers such as Vlasyuk cooperate with Aerorozvidka and the Ukrainian army. Non-military drones of the type used by Aerorozvidka, which can be purchased on Amazon, are reconfigured to drop a grenade on tank worth millions and damage or destroy it. Vse Bude Dobre (All Will be Well) brings together NGO’s delivering humanitarian parcels of foodstuffs, medicines, and other essentials to civilians in the devastated Donbas region. Vse Bude Dobre’s works with the US World Central Kitchen and its Ukrainian sponsors the Fishing Club of Ukraine, Access Point, Edward

182 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Mktrchan Charitable Fund, Our Kramatorsk, Smarta, and Donbas IT Cluster. 94 percent of the 800 members of the Union of Entrepreneurs of Ukraine are supporting Ukraine’s armed forces and humanitarian support to civilians. Vladyslav Chechotkin, owner of Rozetka, supplies armoured personnel carriers, thermal imaging technology and military uniforms to the army and baby food, hygiene, and equipment to construct bomb shelters to civilians. Valery Yakovenko, head of the company drone.ua, donated all his equipment to the army in the first two days of the war. His company additionally spent UAH40 mn to purchase military equipment, train how to operate drones for aerial reconnaissance and to record war crimes. Andriy Mitchenko, head of Ekosoft, supplied water purification filters to regions damaged by Russian military attacks and to supply fresh water for the military The Khartya Volunteer Battalion, financially supported and commanded by the Kharkiv-based agricultural foodstuffs oligarch Vsevolod Kozhemyako, delivers humanitarian aid to civilians in eastern Ukraine and fights as an independent territorial defence unit. Ukrainian businesspersons, ‘are now fighting for the existence of our nation’ Kozhemyako said. Some volunteer groups provide the Territorial Defence Force and others with basic combat skills and medical training. Territorial Defence Forces and soldiers were provided with basic first aid to care for injured soldiers in the crucial hours after they are wounded and evacuated to hospitals in the rear of combat areas. The minimum skills to stay alive are imparted to the Territorial Defence Force based on NATO’s Tactical Combat Casualty Care and US Army Combat Lifesaver Course. Every Ukrainian soldier carries a small medical pack with tourniquets to patch up wounds in the crucial hours before they can be operated on. Russian soldiers’ medical packs are decades out of date or do not exist. Ukrainian soldiers have found dead Russian soldiers with Soviet medical packs from 1978 that were obviously useless. Vohnyk NGO provides such training; for example, how to apply tourniquets to wounds, how to extract wounded soldiers from war zones, and how to treat gun-shot wounds. Ivan Zdrovets, the head of Vohnyk, said ‘We teach them in ways the information is easy to

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 183 remember, and we aim our training at people who want to learn.’ Another NGO, Dark Angels, raises funds to transport military equipment and torches, heaters, and solar-powered electrical outlets to front line forces. Both NGO’s encourage existing businesses to switch to producing items such as body armour. In Odesa, Anna Bondarenko heads the Ukrainian volunteer service that matches people with volunteers who can help them. Lisa coordinates volunteers in occupied territories. Serhiy Lukachko, also with the Ukrainian volunteer service, changed the goal of his website MyCity from publicising cultural events to crowdfunding for the armed forces, buying body armour, uniforms, and four-wheel SUV’s. Dmytro Milyutin transformed, with the help of a local dressmaker, his perfumery shop into producing military uniforms with a specialisation in military vests and rucksacks. Natalya Topolova’s florists now weaves camouflage blankets and coverings for snipers. Mykhaylo Reva’s foundation moved from supporting art education to producing first aid kits for the army and training how to use them and tourniquets. Maryna Potikha from Bila Tserkva turned over her art studios for use by soldiers and delivered foodstuffs to the armed forces. She recalled, ‘Suddenly, everyone is willing to help one another.’ Sasha Dyachenko, a Kyiv film student, volunteered to work in a kitchen feeding soldiers. ‘I just knew what I had to do’ he said, being part of a volunteer group made him less depressed. In Lviv, Halyna Butenko, an IDP grandmother from eastern Ukraine, works with Oleksandr Horondi who switched from producing fashionable rucksacks to body armour. Butenko said, ‘The most important thing I’ve learned is that being Ukrainian means fighting to the end. The work gives her a reason to survive the torment and suffering she has gone through, saying ‘I’ve learned how to make these vests!’ The Poltava-based Horishni Plavni NGO collects donations of foodstuffs, clothing and medicines. Olena Dudko said, ‘Even teenagers, who just a week ago only cared about drinking beer and having fun, have volunteered to help.’ As early as 26 February, only three days after Russia invaded, an NGO in Horishni Plavni (formerly Komsomolsk) had collected a large volume of donated goods in a library in Kharkiv that was delivered to civilians and soldiers.

184 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Existing bakeries, such as Good Bread, and other food producers donate free bread to the Ukrainian army and IDP’s. Existing staff and volunteers in restaurants in Kyiv and elsewhere provide food and bake bread for the Territorial Defence Force and civilians. Restaurant staff teach volunteers how to cook food which is delivered by other volunteers with vehicles. One owner of a Kyiv restaurant used his porches to deliver medicines. Iryna Zelenskaya explained how they could become active so quickly: ‘People want to do something. They don’t want to just sit at home and feel helpless’, adding, ‘’Everyone wants to find a way to be useful, and not to be alone.’ The invasion mobilised Poltava’s ‘climate of volunteerism and patriotism.’ Mykola Mokh, an IDP in Kharkiv, also said ‘We are full of energy and motivation and hope’, adding, ‘I have no depression, and no fear of death. I’ll do whatever it takes to live in a free country.’ They had collected hundreds of volunteers ‘from children to the elderly.’ The energy and strength of Ukrainian volunteers was forged by community action and the deeply felt commitment of knowing: ‘We are helping our guys protect themselves. We are at war. This is our duty.’ Sitting alone at home brings about fear and depression while joining volunteer groups generates common energy; a sense of doing something positive and increasing feelings of empowerment. Ukraine’s mass volunteer movement has no age limits and volunteers range from young children to pensioners. In Lviv’s volunteer centre supporting the Territorial Defence Force there are grandmothers cooking the Ukrainian beetroot soup borscht and different generations of women and girls are making Molotov cocktails, now nicknamed Bandera Smoothies. Wealthier businesspersons are raising funds for body armour and drones. Znayte Svoyikh (Search for the Missing) NGO focuses on reconnecting relatives and family members who have been separated by the war. With the help of 15 volunteers Katya Osadcha, a wellknown presenter on 1+1 television channel’s popular show Svitske Zhyttya (Social Life), her NGO Search for the Missing has re-united 300 relatives and families. A similar app is DeTy (Where are you) website that brings together Ukrainians separated by the war. The app and website were developed by ‘Valeria’, a software developer

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 185 who had moved to Portugal, in cooperation with London-based ‘Dylan.’ ‘Valeria’ relocated to Kyiv after the invasion and joined Ukraine’s IT Army. 37-year-old Andriy Lisovych moved from San Francisco to Ukraine and attempted to join the army in Zaporizhzhya. He was told he should instead use his UBER technical skills for miliary logistics. Lisovych crowdfunded and assembled a group of volunteer computer engineers with whom he exchanged ideas on social media. Kropyva is a mapping and artillery software developed for the Ukrainian armed forces used by the special drone reconnaissance platoon Terra who relay coordinates of Russian positions to artillery units in the rear. Terra uses Ukrainian drones Leleka and Furia, Turkish Bayraktars, and Chinese commercial DJI Mavic 3 and DJI Matrice drones and quadcopters. Ukrainian NGO’s have ties to North American volunteer organisations Delta Level Solutions, Ripley’s Heroes, Protect Sirin and Ukraine February Fund staffed by US and Canadian military veterans. Using crowdfunded donations they source military equipment, such as advanced night optical devices, thermal vision devices and drones. Their Ukrainian partners advise them what they need, their US partners source and deliver them and Ukrainians distribute them to the battlefield. US and Canadian veterans have sent military equipment with a value of half a million dollars. Estonian President Alar Karis and his office have assisted the volunteer NGO Aitan Kaitsta (I Help Defend) to weave camouflage nets for the Ukrainian Army. He said, ‘Volunteers throughout Estonia have made over 9,000 square meters [of camouflage netting] to help Ukraine. We can all do something to help Ukraine win the war.’ While weaving Karis was wearing the shirt he had received as a gift from President Zelenskyy which had a lapel badge ‘Russian warship go fuck yourself!’ In other instances, foreign citizens have travelled to Ukraine to join existing humanitarian projects or to set up their own. The UK-based charity Medical Aid sets up field hospitals near the front lines which are key to saving the lives of soldiers in the crucial hours after they are wounded. Professor Angus Watson left his Scottish medical career to volunteer to serve in one of these front-

186 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE line hospitals. Canadian comedian Anthony Walker travelled to Ukraine to become a medical volunteer. Western rock bands and musicians Pink Floyd, U2 and Sting have connected with their Ukrainian counterparts Antytilla, Andriy Khlyvnyn’s Boombox and Okean Yelzy’s Svyatoslav Vakarchuk to support Ukraine’s fight against Russian imperialism. Kalush Orchestra, who won the 2022 Eurovision contest, raised $900,000 from the auctioning of their trophy. Ukrainian football players in foreign teams, such as Arsenal’s Oleh Luzhnyyy have given their energy and support.

Software and Technology Ukraine formed what it called an IT Army at the beginning of the invasion that is composed of hundreds of thousands of computer specialists from Ukraine and abroad. One estimate claimed there were 300,000 informal members of a ‘volunteer hacker army’ working against Russian economic, military and government on-line websites. The IT Army includes the well-known Anonymous Collective who have hacked Russian government portals and television channels where they have installed banners and photographs providing objective information about Russia’s invasion. The Economist reported an Anonymous Collective hacker saying, ‘Ukraine has many engineers, computer programmers and other technical specialists who are used to getting things done with limited resources.’ Mykhaylo Fedoriv of the Ministry of Digital Transformation reported it had a ‘vast array of tools at our disposal’ to attack Russia on-line using volunteers working ‘in a very coordinated manner.’ Nikita Knysh moved his Kharkiv cyber security company Hack Control to Vynnytsya and reconstituted as the Hackyourmom group and with the assistance of an Elon Musk Starlink satellite providing internet, waged cyber war against Russia. His group of thirty volunteers spread hoax bomb threats at Russian airports, hacked Russian surveillance cameras and played the Ukrainian national anthem, used BOT networks to bring down Russian websites,

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 187 and hacked Russian television news to provide military casualties from the invasion. In the Soviet Union, Ukraine was home to a large military industrial complex which needed a technical base of support and research. In the 1960s, the first Soviet encyclopaedia of cybernetics was published in the Ukrainian SSR. This has produced many computer specialists and IT business sector. I remember taking an external computer drive that was not working to three computer stores in Toronto none of who could retrieve the files; in Kyiv the files were saved by the first computer expert I asked. As a Ukrainian computer expert told the Economist: ‘War is a dirty business. But necessity is the mother of invention.’ Ukrainian computer programmers are better than their Western counterparts; for example, developing software that allows gunners to fire in fifty seconds from the Pzh2000 howitzer. German and Dutch troops use software that only allows them to fire every twenty minutes on the Pzh2000 howitzer. NATO nicknamed the Ukrainian software app ‘Artillery Uber.’ Ukraine’s IT Army has taken the war to Russia by attacking 1,800 Russian online resources in the first six months of 2022. Volunteer hackers in the IT Army have targeted Russian hackers and criminals working on behalf of the Russian state. ‘Danylo’, a Ukrainian computer researcher, hacked Conti, a major Russian cybercriminal group wanted by the FBI. The large volume of leaked data files proved Conti was run by the FSB. CNN asked ‘Danylo’ why he had done this, and he replied because Conti supported Russia’s invasion and ‘To prove they are motherfuckers.’ As ‘Danylo’ explained, he is a soldier fighting Russian imperialism not with a gun but ‘with a keyboard.’ A thirty-year old product manager at the Ukrainian website Jooble launched his personal war hacking into Russian government websites of the Central Bank of Russia, National Bank of Belarus, Russian presidential administration, and Interfax. He claimed that Ukraine’s IT Army hacked hundreds of Russian websites each day. A mobile phone company sent messages to its clients advising them what to do if they were captured by Russian occupation forces. An IT company developed an app that provided air raid

188 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE sirens on mobile phones. Diya (Action) mobile app, which is used by twenty million Ukrainians, was developed to act as a digital depository for Ukrainian government documents, access emergency funds, provide information for IDP’s, and providing the ability to report on Russian military movements. Software apps like Diya are difficult to destroy by cyber-warfare. Another government app is Chatbot eVorokh (eEnemy) where Ukrainians can report Russian troop movements and Russian military attacks. A similar app is www.findokupant.com developed jointly by the SBU and Return Alive Foundation allowing Ukrainians to report the time, place, and identification markings of the Russian occupation army in Ukraine. The eyewitness to Atrocities app, developed with the support of the International Bar Association and Lexis Nexis, asks Ukrainians to take photographs and videos with the time and location to prove their authenticity. Wendy Betts, the director of the UK-based charity eyewitness, ‘said the footage from Ukraine was equivalent to about three years’ worth of content globally that they have seen in the past.’ 40 lawyers in London work pro bono to write descriptions of the footage to make it word searchable. A volunteer said: ‘I think what we’re seeing in Ukraine is the original ideas behind eyewitness kind of coming to fruition.’ Lutsevych, head of Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum wrote: ‘A new crowdsourcing intelligence tool allows Ukrainians to report Russian collaborators and saboteurs instantly and anonymously. Over 300,000 Ukrainians have used it. Various other IT solutions developed by civilians allow territorial defence units to protect information about checkpoints and sniper locations. It is a beehive of innovation. The picture for Russia is quite the opposite: a rigid, hierarchical system, full of fear…. War relies on accurate information about the enemy, and Putin is not getting it, because his subordinates are afraid to tell the truth.’

The war has expanded the number of experts who after their day jobs are completed then search through open data. Twitter spies, or intelligence hobbyists, track Russian military movements and post information on-line. Project Owl is a private community for opensource intelligence gatherers on the war. Initially only having fifteen volunteers their number ballooned to 30,000 who collect data on Russian war crimes, challenge Russian disinformation, and

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 189 provide balanced counter-information. Both Bellingcat and Western intelligence draw on their data. Bellingcat and the Conflict Intelligence Team are the most well-known sleuths undertaking analysis of open-source data to track Russian military activity and war crimes. In Ukraine this is also undertaken by the SBU who daily post recorded mobile phone conversations by Russian soldiers to their families in Russia. Opensource data collection is relatively cheap, requiring only a computer, radio receiver and antenna. Boyan Malashev and Ukraine Radio Watchers listen in to unencrypted Russian military communications. ShadowBreak, a private company created in 2019 by former Israeli intelligence officers, does the same on a bigger scale on a non-profit basis listening to Russian telephone and military communications. ShadowBreak, like other outfits, draws on volunteers giving their time and effort. The intelligence that is collected by Ukraine Radio Watchers, ShadowBreak and similar outfits is passed to the Ukrainian military to act upon. The ability to use open sources for intelligence gathering was detailed by Vitaliy Semenets whose Bluetooth headphones were looted by Russian occupation forces from Hostomel. Using Apple Mac’s Find My Ay App to track them, he found his headphones had been taken to Belarus and from there sent to Gomel, and Belgorod in Russia. Western governments are indirectly involved in assisting Ukraine in the realm of providing intelligence and countering Russian cyber-warfare. US Cyber Command travelled to Ukraine months before the invasion to prepare Ukrainians to counter Russian cyber-attacks, ensuring Russia has been largely unsuccessful in its cyber-warfare since launching its invasion. The EU’s Rapid Cyber Response Team, NATO’s cyber-warfare teams, and Romanian national cyber security agency have assisted Ukraine with technology, training, and support. US and NATO provide intelligence to the Ukrainian military on Russian troop movements and the locations of Russian senior commanders. The private sector is also active. Elon Musk has provided Starlink, a satellite internet communications system operated by SpaceX which provides internet access throughout Ukraine.

190 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Delivered in thousands of rucksacks, 11,000 Starlink systems keep the internet going when Russian military attacks have destroyed internet access. Ukrainian military forces use Starlink’s internet when they are in the battlefield. Microsoft have become active in countering Russian malware and virus attacks, publishing a major report in June 2022 entitled Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War. Microsoft, like NATO, the EU, and Western governments, view Russian military aggression against Ukraine as part of a broader attack against the West. Russian hackers, undoubtedly linked to Russian intelligence, attempted to hack into 100 US organisations and dozens of others in Europe and elsewhere. Their targets were NATO, ministries of foreign affairs and defence, humanitarian organisations, think tanks, IT companies, and energy. Microsoft monitored phishing attacks by Russian intelligence services against Ukraine’s miliary from early 2021 and cooperated with the Ukrainian government to identify and take down threats. Russia prepared a massive attack on the day of the invasion to destroy all Ukrainian government data which was prevented by amongst others by Microsoft assisting to safeguard the data. 200 Ukrainian news, human rights, and election web sites use Google’s Project Shield to protect themselves against DOS attacks sending massive numbers of junk messages. Ukraine is reputedly very professional in being able to rebuild networks that have suffered from Russian cyber-attacks within only a few hours.

Ukraine’s People’s War Ukrainians are fighting a people’s war where its security forces are backed by a nation-wide and large volunteer movement and civil society organisations. The latter two are vital for the success of the former. The ties between volunteers, civil society activists and the military reflects the people’s war being waged by Ukraine against Russia’s illegal and criminal invasion. Kostyantyn Horbel, of the Kholodnyy Yar 93rd Mechanised Brigade, said his fellow soldiers had civilian occupations before the war; he had been a media communications officer. ‘At the moment

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 191 you can describe the Ukrainian army as a people's army without any doubt. This is an army born by the people. This is an army where people who were not professional soldiers yesterday are joining today. Absolutely different people are defending Ukraine now; they might be taxi drivers or, as is the case with our unit, a person who played the double bass at a Donetsk orchestra,’ he said. The Territorial Defence Force is a more structured version of the volunteer battalions created in 2014 and which were integrated into the military and national guard in 2015. Some volunteer battalions emerged from Euromaidan self-defence units that were linked to nationalist political forces. The Territorial Defence Force integrates political, national, linguistic, and regional loyalties. The Territorial Defence Force provides paramilitary, medical, and partisan training to Ukrainians too old to join the army and unwilling or unable to make a full-time commitment. Many who joined, such as students 18-year-old Maksym Lutsyk and 19-yearold Dmytro Kisilenko and 67-year-old professor of applied mathematics Ihor Nesteruk, had no military experience. The large numbers of Ukrainians who rushed to join the Territorial Defence Force is a product of Ukraine’s national identity, societal resilience, and widespread civil society organisations and volunteer movement. Members of the Territorial Defence Force describe it as more of a ‘self-defence’ formation than a military force, fulfilling a similar role to self-defence formations on the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity that protect areas of cities and towns. Ukrainians have joined for different reasons and a 19-year-old summed his reason up as follows: ‘I just feel this is the right thing to do, and I feel strongly that we need to protect Ukraine and do what we can so as not to live in Russia.’ Ukrainians have shown themselves to be brave patriots in the face of Putin’s cruel military aggression against their country. In Chernihiv one Ukrainian attempted to halt a tank with his bare hands by kneeling in front of it. Another Ukrainian jumped in front of a military convoy forcing it to swerve. In Konotop, a woman asked Russian soldiers if they knew where they were? She explained: ‘Every woman here is a witch. You’ll never get an erection, starting tomorrow.’ A lady in Kherson told Russian soldiers they

192 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE were ‘fascist occupiers’ and they should put sunflower seeds in their pockets so that when they are buried in Ukrainian soil there would be sunflowers sprouting from their remains. She continued to Russian occupation soldiers: ‘You are occupants, you are fascists! What the fuck are you doing on our land with all these guns.’ The Russian soldiers told her to leave them alone and not escalate the situation further to which she responded by telling them they are ‘cursed’ and retorting: ‘How can it be further escalated? You fucking came here uninvited. You piece of shit!’ Women in the Ukrainian security forces posted on Tinder fake bios seeking ‘real men’ in uniforms. They met Russian soldiers, successfully found out the locations of Russian bases in occupied Ukraine and passed the intelligence to the military command who in turn sent drones and artillery to destroy the Russian forces. The Vynnytsya-based cyber group hackyourmom, which had moved from Kharkiv, brought the traditional honey trap into the twenty first century by creating fake profiles of women on Facebook and Russian social media to trick Russian soldiers into bragging about their macho prowess by uploading photographs. The geolocation of the photographs sent by Russian soldiers to fake Ukrainian women on Facebook was shared with the Ukrainian military who used artillery to destroy the Russian military bases. The Ukrainian military sent out instructions how to make Molotov cocktails on posters, television advertisements and social media. They recommended making them composed of six parts of machine oil, three parts petrol, and four parts polystyrene dissolved in paint thinner with a sprinkling of powdered aluminium. A former industrial building in Lviv became an improvised Molotov cocktail factory which made 1,500 each day. The Ukrainian military also provided tips on social media how to throw Molotov cocktails and which areas of Russian military vehicles were the most vulnerable to Molotov cocktails. Volunteer classes were provided by veterans of the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity who had thrown Molotov cocktails at the Berkut riot police. These classes also provided instructions on knife fighting, grenade throwing, and medical training. Lviv’s well-known Pravda (Truth) craft brewery provided financial support and premises. Many teenagers were

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 193 involved in this voluntary work because: ‘The youth are moved by patriotic spirit. Everyone now realises what he or she can do.’ Improvised military equipment was not limited to Molotov Cocktails. Volunteers built caltrops with spikes at each vortex meaning no matter how a Russian soldier fell he would fall on a spike. These primarily targeted Russian vehicle tyres and the boots of Russian soldiers. In a large nightclub in Kyiv the volunteer group Hacklab welded tyre spikes to the dance floor to test them. The spikes are hollow and when puncturing a tyre, they instantly deflate. Volunteers built ‘Czech hedgehogs’ consisting of six vertex metal girders welded together in crosshatch fashion that are used to block roads. Soviet anti-tank RKG-3 were modified with drones and quadcopters. Shotguns were adapted with the attachment of a steel cup that enabled them to fire grenades. Crossbows made from scrap metal and bed springs were adapted to launch Molotov cocktails. RPG-7’s was reconfigured to fire 82 mm mortar rounds with fragmentation warheads. When Russia invaded the Ukrainian military requested civilians to be pro-active and cut down trees, burn tyres and trees, block roads in the path of the Russian military and paint over or remove road signs to confuse the Russian military. A woman pensioner seeing a small Russian drone flying near her balcony threw one of her prized jars of pickled tomatoes at it, damaging it so badly that it fell to the ground and broke. In Kharkiv a famous case emerged of pensioners in a village who put 28 Russian soldiers in hospital and killed two. The Third Russian Motor Rifle Division entered their village and some of the soldiers scrounged for food. The pensioners provided them with poisoned pies. In another village, two Russian tanks parked in the centre while a third went to find petrol as they were running low. While they were gone, the villagers put Ukrainian flags on the two tanks while their occupants were knapping. When the third tank returned it opened fire on the two tanks believing them to be Ukrainian but destroying their own Russian tanks. The tank then sped away over a deliberately damaged bridge and fell into the river.

194 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Many Ukrainians have, and continue to, act as informants on the movements of Russian military equipment. A 70-year-old pensioner in Motyzhyn passed the coordinates of Russian troops during the brief occupation of the Kyiv region. She was typical of older and poorer Ukrainians who couldn’t or didn’t have the financial resources, to leave. Her intelligence led to numerous Russian casualties and destroyed Russian military equipment. Remaining in the combat zone and supporting volunteers and the Ukrainian economy in war time will lead to you being targeted by Russian military attacks or being kidnapped, tortured, and executed. Oleksiy Vadaturskyy, chairman of the large Nibulon grain producer and exporter from Mykolayiv, was targeted by three Russian missiles fired at on his house that murdered his wife and him. Margarita Simonyan, the head of the Kremlin’s propaganda RT who always espouses genocidal discourse on Russian television, justified the murders by saying Vadaturskyy had financed ‘punitive battalions’ and his death was ‘denazification in action.’ Natalya fled from Mykolayiv to Odesa with her children while her husband stayed behind. Her husband regularly rings her with intelligence on Russian troop movements: ‘he tells me where they are positioned. And I pass it on to our guys, the armed forces.’ These civilians risked, and those who live under Russian occupation continue to risk, their lives; if they were caught, they would have been tortured and murdered. Colonel Leonid Khoda said these informants were crucial in helping the army defeat the Russian drive on Kyiv. A Ukrainian officer said 95 percent of the intelligence on Russian troop movements provided by volunteers and civilians to the armed forces was accurate. Khoda said, ‘We had to work through informants. I’m not going to put all the cards on the table, but we knew with 95 percent accuracy even their smallest movements through other means. This was all the work of locals.’ There are countless examples of brave Ukrainian patriots voluntarily doing this valuable work. The Russian military police tortured and executed Ukrainian volunteers and partisans who halted a Russian military advance into the Kyiv region. Anatoly Trohymets, Serhiy (from Crimea), and Fedir Petrynyak provided intelligence on Russian troop movements. After the Russians withdrew

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 195 from the Kyiv region, they were found tortured and executed with their hands tied behind their backs. On the eve of Russia’s invasion an opinion poll found that half of Ukrainians would be ready to resist with a third willing to join an armed resistance. Tens of thousands joined the Territorial Defence Force which far surpassed its initial goal of becoming 100,000strong. Ukrainians joined even though they sometimes had to purchase their own military equipment. One volunteer who joined paid $4,000 for a rifle, ammunition, bulletproof vest, boots, and uniform. Another volunteer spent $10,000 on an AR 15 assault rifle and Zbroyar sniper rifle. One volunteer explained why they were willing to join and spend their own money on equipping themselves: ‘If the dudes come and try to tell me how to live my land; fuck them.’ Popular support for the Territorial Defence Force was ‘hugely motivating’, one volunteer said and, ‘They’re feeding us, even providing equipment and materials to dig new trenches.’ Russia’s military forces had logistical problems, no local knowledge, were issued with outdated maps, had no respect for their casualties and exhibited low morale. The Territorial Defence Force was often joined by younger men and women with no military experience and older men in their 50s and 60s who did not have the health or experience to join the army. An 82-year-old too old to join the Territorial Defence Force instead donated his savings. A large number of the inhabitants of Lyubomyl and 14 surrounding villages near the Polish-Belarusian borders, joined the Territorial Defence Force. They came from every walk of life, including long distance lorry drivers, an owner of a dental clinic, even a ‘few bandits,’ and a 66-year-old pensioner. Before they were issued with weapons, they collected hunting rifles and binoculars, made Molotov cocktails, and built bunkers and road obstacles. In the village of Khomutyntsi, Vynnytsya oblast, thirty signed up for the Territorial Defence Force. A call went out to collect foodstuffs and in only two hours the volunteer vans were loaded to the brim and ready to be driven to south-eastern Ukraine. The villagers-built fortifications, took down road signs, cut down logs for bunkers, and wove camouflage netting.

196 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Volunteers have collected blankets, nappies, medical aid, surgical gloves, and foodstuffs for IDP’s from eastern Ukraine. Volunteers cooked food for the Territorial Defence Force and IDP’s because, as a women volunteer explained, ‘It is our fighting spirit to what we can do to protect our country.’

Partisans There is a history of smaller forces defeating larger ones; it is therefore surprising why a majority of Western experts were dismissive of Ukraine’s ability to withstand a Russian invasion. In the first stage of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s military used hit and run, partisan-style units firing javelins and NLAW’s that produced high rates of Russian casualties and a high volume of destroyed military equipment. As a large Russian military column advanced on Borodyanka, near Kyiv, Serhiy Piven, a former Ukrainian lieutenant-colonel, organised a 45-strong group of partisan fighters who were given Kalashnikov rifles. Half of the group had never been in the army and had to quickly learn how to use the weapon. Piven’s partisans sprung deadly ambushes using grenade launchers and other weapons they had seized from Russians they had killed. The partisans destroyed about fifty tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Seven of the partisans were killed. Intercepted Russian communications attributed the attacks to Ukrainian special forces. They were successful because they knew the area and where best to launch surprise attacks, were defending their homes and had high morale. 64-year-old pensioner Valentyn Didkovskyy moved from Lviv to Bucha in 1979 after finishing his Soviet military service. In 2014 he participated in the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and from June of that year acted as a volunteer driving supplies to the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation). When Russia invaded, he attempted to enlist but was told that as he was 64, he was too old. Nevertheless, he refused to do nothing and when a Russian military column moved into Bucha he used a Russian RPG-18 and four grenades, captured from a destroyed Russian APC, to attack the fuel truck and fleeing Russian troops. After which he called in their

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 197 position to the Ukrainian military who fired precision artillery rounds to destroy the Russian column. Sebastian Junger believed Ukraine has the three requirements that are needed to win the war. The first is a clear moral purpose with deep roots in the population. Autonomous, self-defining, and free are important factors leading to success with the struggle framed as for freedom and those who have died as having sacrificed their lives in a heroic manner. The second is fearless leadership that is willing to take risks and accept hardships. Zelenskyy never fled from Kyiv and refused a US offer of being extracted, famously saying he needs ammunition not a ride. The third is women who join volunteer groups and military and partisan formations. Social sanctions of killing women are stronger than for killing men. Women combatants, such as the Kurdish units fighting ISIS, undermine male masculine machismo. Junger writes: ‘Putin is facing a moral enemy with brave leaders and heavy female involvement. History shows that if he does not win quickly, he may never win at all.’ Partisans have traditionally had high proportions of women; irregular warfare does not differentiate between sexes. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought from the early 1940s to early 1950s against Nazi and Soviet Russian occupations of Ukraine, included many women. Partisans are composed of former Territorial Defence Forces and soldiers led by special forces. They sabotage transportation, railway lines and other strategically important areas of infra-structure, put up posters, distribute leaflets, mobilise social media, and organise protest rallies. Partisans also act as the eyes and ears of the Ukrainian military to whom intelligence can be passed on Russian forces and their bases, particularly command control centres. Partisans played a key role in assisting the Ukrainian army in liberating territories occupied by Russia. Partisans assassinate Russian military officers, Russian politicians sent as colonial administrators and their Ukrainian collaborators. The Washington Post estimated, ‘Since Russian forces invaded in late February and began seizing Ukrainian cities and towns, close to 20 Kremlin- backed officials or their local Ukrainian collaborators have been killed or injured in a wave of assassinations and

198 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE attempted killings.’ They have been gunned down, hanged, blown up, and poisoned. Kherson and Enerhodar collaborators Yevhen Soboliev and Andrei Shevchuk were assassinated by Ukrainian partisans. A $17,000 reward was offered by Ukrainian partisans for the assassination of Kirill Stremousov, head of Russia’s occupation in Kherson. Artem Bardin, the military commandant in Berdyansk, was assassinated by a car bomb in early September 2022. These assassinations and a Ukrainian offensive launched in September 2022 led to the postponing from that month of Russian plans to hold referendums on the annexation of Kherson and southern Zaporizhzhya oblasts.

Supporting the Ukrainian Military In march, only a month into the war, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military sent a note of gratitude to Ukraine’s volunteers: ‘Thank you, our VOLUNTEERS. Yes, today the Army is much better equipped than in 2014. But first aid kits, bulletproof vests, helmets, medicines, and hygiene products are always needed. But most important for us is to know that you exist. At any time, you call, write, offer help, bring something, create, support us, and joke with us. You make us feel united and invincible. You make us feel there is a nation, that you are among your own for whom you hold this country [of Ukraine] on your shoulders. … Together we go on to victory!’

The Economist reported on how humour plays an important role in crowdfunding. The website signmyrocket.com permits different initiatives that appeals to Ukrainians and foreign supporters of Ukraine. Customers can have their name inscribed on 155- and 220mm artillery shells, anti-tank mines, bomb laden drones, VOG-17 hand grenades, and other projectiles fired at Russian soldiers. For $2,000, your name will be inscribed on a grenade dropped from a drone while the most generous donors can have their names printed on the turrets of T-72 tanks. 95 percent of the orders are from English-speaking countries, especially the US. The message is written on the projectile, a photograph taken, and sent to the subscriber.

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 199 Multifaceted and multimillion dollar crowdfunding campaigns have brought in large donations used to purchase drones and other types of military equipment. Ukrainian appeals raised $20 million (UAH600 million) in just three days, more than intended, and four Bayraktar drones were ordered, not three. Ukrainian celebrities, rock stars, the (Serhiy) Pritula Foundation and cafés and fast-food outlets selling hot dogs and kebab’s crowdfunded the drones. In July 2022, Pritula launched a campaign to crowdfund the purchase of three Bayraktar drones at the cost of $15 mn. In just three days, UAH600 mn was raised, four times the target, and when the campaign was completed, they had raised a total of two billion dollars. Pritula posted a video address to those who joined the campaign saying: ‘This was not only about raising money for Bayraktars. It was a project about boosting the nation’s morale, battling the inferiority complex of the Ukrainians. It was a proof of our capability to do the impossible. Let’s believe in ourselves and our Armed Forces of Ukraine even more than ever before. We Ukrainians can turn the world upside down; we can change history. Our unity is our unbeatable power.’

With the Bayraktar company turning down the money and giving the Pritula Foundation four drones free of charge, the funds was used for a contract with the Finish-based ICEYE satellite company to provide Synthetic Aperture Radar capability to Ukraine. This provided Ukraine with imagery of locations where Russian armed forces were located. Ukraine’s success was followed by Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Norway launching successful crowdfunding campaigns for drones. The biggest disappointment was Canada whose government and the Ukrainian-Canadian community have provided little military aid. The UhelpUkrane foundation launched a campaign on 19 July 2022 to raise $Can7mn ($5mn) by Ukraine’s Independence Day (24 August) but had only raised a pitiful $Can134,000 ($US100,000) in two months. The Ukrainian General Staff and Ministry of Digital Information ‘Army of Drones’ initiative on the platform United 24 crowdfunded UAH755 million by July 2022 to purchase drones for

200 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE the military. The most popular countries from where the funds were crowdfunded were the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Australia, and Israel; but not Canada where there is supposedly a powerful Ukrainian diaspora. In addition to fund raising, 400 military servicemen were being trained at two military schools to operate the drones, with the number of such centres planned to rise to twelve. Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, and Norwegians have raised funds to buy Bayraktar drones. Lithuanians raised $5 million over three days. 200,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs donated to their appeals. The Bayraktar company refused to take the funds and donated the drones free of charge. Different types of vehicles have been crowdfunded for the military. The proceeds of half a million dollars from the sale of art by Mariya Prymachenko was used to purchase 125 Volkswagen cars and pick-up trucks. Businesspersons in Chernivtsi switched production to producing four-wheel drives for the military that can drive over rough terrain and in water for 90 kms and are useful for special forces. The Ukrainian military appealed to volunteers and Vitaliy Bryzhalov took up the challenge in Kryvyy Rih where his team of volunteer engineers work 16-hour days, seven days a week producing light keep-style buggies for the military. A drone jammer was invented by a Kharkiv volunteer group which resembled a pistol with an antenna at the end ‘that looked like something out of Ghostbusters.’ The drone jammer sends a high frequency radio wave that severs the signal between the flying drone and its operator, a budget version like the ones used by Western militaries. Kharkiv volunteer Svitlana Rezvan is assisted by Kyiv-based drone expert Bohdan Deruzhkd with 3-D printing for the drone jammer. This was just one idea that was dreamt up by an informal network of scientists, inventors, and engineers in Ukraine who can create quick and inexpensive solutions to military threats. In Odesa, volunteers built fuel-efficient mobile heaters that can also be used as cooking stoves to keep Ukrainian soldiers warm and fed. Power banks from electronic cigarettes are used to charge night-vision goggles and batteries for drones and NLAW’s. Volunteer Yuriy Vlasyuk said: ‘we couldn’t afford to not be able to use the NLAWs, so we made our own batteries for them.’

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 201 Ukrainians living abroad mobilised their networks to support Ukraine. Expat Ukrainian businesspersons in Germany donated Vector drones to the military worth $200,000. A Ukrainian volunteer in the UK cooperated with the Army SOS NGO to mobilise his network to crowdfund Valkyrie drones that are light (3.5 kgs), can fly 150 kms and are used to spot targets and fire weapons. They purchased seventy Valkyrie drones since the 2014 crisis and since the invasion have a target of purchasing 100 every six months by crowdfunding in Ukraine and the UK. ARMY SOS MAP and Kropiva apps are used by 95 percent of the military. A simple Lenovo tablet with both apps installed provides secure communications, maps enemy and friendly positions, and inputs data collected by Valkyrie drones. They in turn have been using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet which is impervious to Russian electronic jamming. 100,000 of these tablets have been distributed to the military.

Invisible Battalion: Women In Western democracies, wars have traditionally empowered women. As men went to war women became crucial in keeping factories open, transportation running, and agriculture feeding the population. It is therefore not coincidental that women received the right to vote in 1918 and 1945. Empowerment in war builds on the tradition of independent women that exists in Ukrainian, but not in Russian culture. 23 percent of Ukraine’s armed forces are women. 50,000 women are members of Ukraine’s armed forces of whom 5,000 are on the front line. Ukraine’s figure is higher than the 17 percent in the US, 16 percent in the French, double that in the German and British armed forces, three times higher than the Polish and six times higher than in Russia. Ukraine’s high percentage reflects its long history of a ‘distinctly Ukrainian feminism’, Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko write. Many women began their involvement in Ukraine’s fight against Russian imperialism in 2014. Then they dominated volunteers driving foodstuffs, warm clothes, medicines, and protective gear to Ukrainian troops in the ATO in the Donbas Some joined the

202 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE army where they were given positions as medics, desk officers and cooks. A women’s veterans’ group was established in 2016. It was not until the law ‘On Ensuring Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men During Military Service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other Military Formations’ was adopted in 2018 when women received equality with men in the armed forces. The only services still out of bounds for women are airborne forces, military colleges, and some security work. In 2019, women were allowed to enter military colleges opening the possibilities of becoming NCOs and officers. Women represent a high proportion of the Ukrainian military’s medical profession. Natalya Voronkova was a volunteer for eight years after 2014 providing tactical medical training and driving donated medical supplies to the ATO. Training enabled Ukrainians wounded on the front line to be patched up and evacuated to rear field hospitals. Prior to the adoption of the law in 2018, women dominated the army’s medical corps. Since then, and especially after Russia’s invasion, women have become snipers, machine gunners, running social media information campaigns, front line war correspondents, and commanders. Being an older medic can be difficult when most of the wounded are younger men. Women medics are forced to be both mothers and soldiers, to calm and heal wounded soldiers. Male soldiers accept women among them but at the same time see in these women soldiers their own wives, sisters, and daughters for whom they pine. In 2022, many women saw an opportunity to expand their participation in the war by joining Territorial Defence Forces. One of these volunteers said: ‘Look, I don’t have a gun. I can’t fire a gun. I can’t fight—but this is what I can do, so this is how I’m going to volunteer.’ Joining the Territorial Defence Forces allows women to remain close to home and their children.

Children Ukrainian children have been taught what in Western democracies is called ‘Civics’ for three decades that has inculcated them with a

VOLUNTEERS AND GEEKS 203 sense of rights and duties as citizens. This is reflected in numerous examples of children becoming volunteers. Ukrainian children have independently, without prodding from their parents, played musical instruments, produced military equipment, sold fruit and vegetables from home plots, and played chess and other sports to raise money for the Ukrainian army. Ten-year old Valeria played chequers and won 7,000 Euros which she donated to the military. Seven-year-old Ilya Shmigel donated UAH1,000 that he had made from playing computer games. A nine-year old from Mukachevo collected UAH6,000 and 40 Euros which he donated to the military through the Rukh (Movement) in Support of the Transcarpathian Military NGO. Ten-year old Andriy Dyachenko, a champion of chess, won UAH5,500 by the third day and donated it to the military. Valeriya Yezhova, another ten-year old champion of chess won UAH21,000 over nine days and donated it to the military. A six-year-old in Sumy donated his birthday present, a quadcopter, to the military. 13-year-old Kateryna Hrynova was assisted by the Bilopillya Volunteer Centre and learnt to use her father’s vice to produce 500 metal staples which were used to build six dugouts. A ten-year-old saved $300 and bought a portable solar charger for the Ukrainian military. Her original idea had been to collect money to buy bullet proof vests, but she didn’t have enough. Every day five-year-old girl Eva from Pustomyty helps her mother and grandmother to bake and sell baked goods with the income earned donated to Ukraine's Armed Forces. Eva bakes and sells cupcakes with her own hands and donates the money she earns to the Ukrainian military. The largest amount she managed to raise in a day was UAH450 but wants to increase this by also baking gingerbread biscuits. An eight-year-old boy from Chernihiv, Serhiy Moroz, sang Ukrainian songs and collected UAH64,000 (approximately $2,000) for the Pritula Foundation, which assists the Ukrainian army, the largest children’s offline donation to the charity organisation. Eight-year-old Yuriy Napora, from near Lviv, collected UAH70,000 singing patriotic songs at different venues which he donated to the volunteer group Apostolska Chota that provides support to

204 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukrainian troops in Mykolayiv. Zakhar Shchurko, a 10th-grader from Lviv, single- headedly developed a portable charging station for the Ukrainian military with the money he was saving for a bicycle and a laptop. Ten-year old autistic Maksym Brovchenko from Berdyansk sells his paintings to raise money for the Ukrainian army amid his dreams of one day returning home. Five-year-old Maria Makeyeva from Kryvyy Rih was the youngest volunteer who collected UAH35,492 for the needs of the Ukrainian military by singing Ukrainian songs accompanied on the saxophone by her older brother Oleksandr. Children from the town of Vradiivka, Mykolayiv oblast, worked all summer vacation weaving camouflage nets, and every Thursday held charity fairs. The camouflage nets and proceeds went to the Ukrainian armed forces. Six-year-old Solomiya Reyt collected UAH130,000 by playing the flute on the streets of the city of Dnipro. The funds were used to purchase bullet proof vests for the military. Her mother explained her daughter’s volunteerism as follows: ‘In reality; this is one more element of education so that children understand that the war is not somewhere far away, that the war is here and that she can have influence over it, she can be a part of our victory.’ Key Points 

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Since the late nineteenth century nation building, historical traumas and wars have forged strong ties between Ukrainians and their territory, culture, language, and history. Ukrainian nation building took place to a certain degree in the USSR when Ukrainians came to identify with the territory of Soviet Ukraine. Anti-Kuchma protests and the Orange Revolution spurred civil society mobilisation. But it was the Euromaidan Revolution and war with Russia in eastern Ukraine that brought about the emergence of a large civilian volunteer movement and volunteer battalions. Many volunteers who reduced their activities from 2016 revived them in response to the invasion. Ukraine’s contemporary volunteer movement is far larger than at any earlier

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period. Volunteers transport refugees fleeing from war and destruction, supply food to civilians trapped in war zones, organise medical care, and provide psychological help to traumatised civilians and soldiers and the children of soldiers who have been killed. The long-term experience of volunteerism is impacting Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. Ukraine’s 150,000-strong Territorial Defence Force is trained and led by veterans of the 2014-2015 volunteer battalions and military units. Women are involved in even greater numbers in the army than in most NATO member armies.

Suggested Reading Bloom, Mia. (2022). ‘Ukraine’s women fighters reflect a cultural tradition of feminist independence,’ The Conversation, 21 March. https://the conversation.com/ukraines-women-fighters-reflect-a-cultural-tradit ion-of-feminist-independence-179529 Brik, Tymofii and Murtazashvili, Jennifer, B. (2022). ‘The Source of Ukraine’s Resilience,’ Foreign Affairs, 28 June. https://www.foreign affairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-06-28/source-ukraines-resilience Junger, Sebastian. (2022). ‘Can Ukrainian Freedom Fighters Stand Up to the Russian Military? History Suggests They Can,’ Vanity Fair, 7 March. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/can-ukrainian-freed om-fighters-stand-up-to-the-russian-military Kucherenko, Maria. (2022). ‘Ukrainian Public Organisations Help the Army Fight Russia,’ Eurasia Daily Monitor, 12 (49). https://jame stown.org/program/ukrainian-public-organizations-help-the-army -fight-russia/ Natalka Poznyak-Khomenko (ed.,). (2020). Voluntery: Syla nebayduzhykh, Kyiv: Ukrainian institute for National Remembrance and Ternopil: Dzhura. https://uinp.gov.ua/elektronni-vydannya/volontery-sylanebayduzhyh

6 Divorce ‘Have you not understood anything yet? Read my lips. Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not so scary and deadly as your 'friendship and brotherhood.’ But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water, and food. And WITHOUT you!’ President Zelenskky after the Liberation of Kharkiv oblast

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military aggression against eastern Ukraine in 2014 and full-scale invasion in 2022 have led to a complete divorce of Ukraine from Russia. Their divorce and Ukrainian hatred of Russians will last for decades. Oleksandr Petrakov, manager of Ukraine’s football team, when talking about Russians said: ‘It’s just hatred. It is not anger, but people hate those who invaded their land.’ Writing in The Washington Post, Ishaan Tharoor wrote: ‘The war has catalysed a long-delayed process of ‘decolonisation’ for Ukraine and some of its neighbours, who now seem eager to cut away the claims imposed on their countries by a legacy of subjugation to Moscow’ Decolonisation, or de-Russification, is the second stage of a process that had begun with decommunisation. Putin’s military aggression in 2014 and 2022 to ‘gather’ Ukraine into the Russian World have brought about the opposite; that is, Ukrainians permanent divorce with Russia. In Ukraine, the Russian language and culture are viewed as the language and culture of the aggressor, signalling they will become unpopular. Meanwhile, with only four percent of Ukrainians reporting themselves to be believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin’s religious soft power in Ukraine has evaporated.

The Impact of the 2014 Crisis The annexation of Crimea and military aggression against eastern Ukraine had four impacts upon Ukrainian national identity: 1.

Ukrainians held negative views of Russian leaders. Ukrainian opinion polls showed steady averages of 80 percent of 207

208 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukrainians with negative views of Putin. Since 2022, Ukrainians also hold negative views of the Russian people. Veronika Melkozerova wrote that ‘Before the invasion, I had never hated anyone, but now my anger eats at me from inside.’ She didn’t know how to live with the hatred of Russians and ‘I’m not even sure how I would behave around Russians were I to meet any.’ Veronika Melkozerova, a Kyiv journalist, wrote: ‘Putin may have ordered this invasion, but it is not he who is killing Ukrainians with his own hands—that is being done by ordinary Russians. They came here to kill our relatives, burn our books, and destroy our heritage. (And don’t tell me these Russians didn’t have a choice. We’re the ones who didn’t have a choice. All they had to do was disobey orders and refuse to take part in Putin’s “special military operation.”).’

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Ukraine’s former south-east, composed of eight Russianspeaking regions, split into three regions, and no longer voted in the same way. Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Mykolayiv, and Zaporizhhya constituted one group in Ukraine’s south-east which aligned with central Ukraine. Kharkiv and Odesa changed but not to the same extent. Only the two Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukrainian-controlled Donbas remained a reservoir for pro-Russian forces, such as the Opposition Bloc and Opposition Platform-For Life. Pro-Russian political forces could no longer win Ukrainian parliamentary or presidential elections. 16 percent of Ukraine’s voters, most of who had backed the Party of Regions and Communist Party prior to 2014, were living under Russian occupation and couldn’t vote in Ukraine. Maintaining pro-Russian voter electoral support proved difficult in the face of Russian military aggression after 2014 and especially since the invasion. This was coupled with identity changing in south-east Ukraine. In December 2021, half of Russian-speaking and two thirds of bilingual Ukrainians believed Russia was an ‘aggressor state.’ The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine was in crisis from 2014-2022 because it could not condemn Crimea’s annexation and used Kremlin propaganda to describe Russian military aggression against the Donbas as a ‘fratricidal’

DIVORCE 209 (i.e., civil) war. In 2018-2019, Ukraine was recognised as not constituting Russian canonical territory and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was granted autocephaly. After the invasion, Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill supported the Kremlin’s genocidal military aggression against Ukraine. An important change took place in Ukrainian attitudes to the Russian people. Following the 2014 crisis. Ukrainians differentiated between Russian leaders, who they blamed for Crimea and the Donbas, and the Russian people who they did not. After the invasion this is no longer the case and Ukrainians blame both Russian leaders and people. An August 2022 survey by the Rating organisation showed a dramatic decline in positive Ukrainian feelings to the Russian people. In 2018, (already four years into the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas) 47 percent of Ukrainians held warm feelings towards the Russian people. Since the invasion this collapsed to only 3 percent with the number of Ukrainians holding cold feelings of the Russian people growing from 23 to 81 percent. Between 80-90 percent of Ukrainians hold negative feelings towards the Russian people, doubling from since April 2021. Nearly 100 percent of Ukrainians hold a negative view of Russia, meaning this is a feeling no longer confined to western Ukraine. An August 2022 poll by Democratic Initiatives and the Razumkov Centre found 86 percent of Ukrainians blamed Russian leaders and 42.5 percent blamed the Russian people for the war. Blaming Russian leaders and citizens ranged from a high of 90.5 and 52.9 percent respectively in the west, 82.7 and 43.1 percent in the centre, 89.7 and 33.8 percent in the south, and 83.6 and 32 percent in the east. President Zelenskyy, a Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian, said, ‘After everything that the invaders have done in Ukraine, there can be only one attitude to Russia as a terrorist state. And, by the way, it is from this point of view that one should determine one’s attitude towards Russian citizens.’ Following the invasion, the line dividing Russian leaders from the Russian people had become blurred or entirely disappeared. Ukrainians no longer find

210 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE liberal Russians, only imperialists, military aggressors, torturers, killers, rapists, and looters. Ukraine-based American writer and Chief Editor of Apofenie magazine Kate Tsurkan raised the important question of how Russian culture has historically played a role in nurturing Russian imperialism and chauvinism. She asked if Russian liberal intellectuals are ‘really tone-deaf to the centuries of imperial politics underpinning the formerly dominant position of Russian culture in Ukraine?’ and ‘Do they not see how Putin has weaponised Russian culture in his quest to rebuild the Russian Empire?’ Tsurkan writes that, ‘Many Russian liberals appear to find it incomprehensible that poetry and other forms of high art could be spoken of in the same vein as mass torture, kidnapping, rape, and murder. Such posturing is either conveniently short-sighted or intellectually dishonest.’ This was because: ‘For centuries, Russian literature has played an important role in the shaping of negative imperialistic stereotypes about Ukraine. The country has routinely been depicted as a backward and inferior region of Russia that is incapable of self-rule and undeserving of statehood. One particularly notorious example is the infamous poem by celebrated Soviet dissident Joseph Brodsky entitled On the Independence of Ukraine which was written during the breakup of the Soviet Union. In this vicious and vulgar poem, he uses a Russian ethnic slur to refer to Ukrainians and contemptuously declares that on their deathbeds, Ukrainians will forsake nineteenth-century Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko in favour of Pushkin.’

Russian liberal intellectuals bemoan de-russification in Ukraine but continue to ignore Russification and genocide committed by the Russian army against Ukrainians and their culture and national identity. Tsurkan wrote: ‘Throughout occupied Ukraine, the campaign to erase Ukrainian identity frequently employs Russian cultural icons. For example, billboards featuring giant portraits of Pushkin have been erected in the occupied city of Kherson in southern Ukraine as part of efforts to promote Russia’s imperial claims. In such circumstances, it is only natural that Ukrainians would begin to view Russian culture as an extension of Russian military aggression and cling more fiercely to their national identity instead.’

Russians professing liberal attitudes towards Ukraine have become as endangered a species as dinosaurs. The Levada Centre recorded

DIVORCE 211 a steady 84-86 percent Russian support for Crimea’s annexation. Russian majorities also supported the secession of the Donbas from Ukraine, nationalist mercenaries going to fight there and the issuing of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens. In other words, majorities of Russians supported Crimea’s annexation and Putin’s military aggression against Ukraine. In Spring 2022, the Levada Centre found over 80 percent supported Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. After seven months of war and genocide committed by the Russian army against Ukrainians, the Levada Centre found that 74 percent of Russians continued to support the special military operation. The number of Russians who opposed the war barely increased during this period from 14 to 21 percent. The Russian public at home and abroad also openly showed their support by for example, inscribing ‘Z’ on their sports attire, clothes, and cars. Russian tourists in countless countries taunted Ukrainian tourists, got into fights with Ukrainian and Polish tourists, and heckled criticism of Putin. Russian chauvinism is deep seated. Russian GRU defector Sergei Skripal was the target of a Kremlin assassination attempt using a chemical weapon. Yet, Skripal holds Russian imperial nationalist views of Ukraine and supported the annexation of Crimea. Anti-Putin Skripal spends his free time watching pro-Putin Russian television channels. The Russian Orthodox Church is supporting the invasion and war. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions against Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and seven senior clergy. In August 2022, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the Russian Orthodox Church at the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches: ‘The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church has aligned itself with the crimes of the war against Ukraine. This totalitarian ideology, disguised as theology, has led to the complete or partial destruction of so many religious sites on Ukrainian territory—churches, mosques, synagogues, educational and administrative buildings belonging to religious communities.’

212 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Steinmeier continued: ‘The heads of the Russian Orthodox Church are currently leading their members and their entire church down a dangerous and indeed blasphemous path that goes against all that they believe. They are justifying a war of aggression against Ukraine—against their own and our own brothers and sisters in the faith. We must speak out, also here in this room, in this Assembly, against this propaganda targeting the freedom and rights of the citizens of another country, this nationalism, which arbitrarily claims that a dictatorship’s imperial dreams of hegemony are God’s will. How many women and men and children, too, in Ukraine have become victims of this hatemongering, this hatred and this criminal violence!’

Steinmeier denounced the Russian Orthodox Church for backing Russia’s war crimes against Ukrainians: ‘Carpet bombings and targeted attacks on civilian buildings, on apartment blocks, on hospitals, on shopping centres, on stations and public spaces, war crimes taking place in full view of the world: here, today, we cannot remain silent on this issue. We must call it by its name; indeed, we must denounce it, and finally as a Christian community we must express our commitment to the dignity and the freedom and the security of the people of Ukraine.’

Steinmeier’s call fell on deaf ears. Patriarch Kirill supported ‘partial mobilisation’ and thereby war, genocide, and destruction of Ukraine and against Ukrainians, saying: ‘We know that many today are dying in the fields of internecine battle. The Church is praying that this battle will end as soon as possible, that as few brothers as possible will kill each other in this fratricidal war.’

Kirill continued: ‘And at the same time, the Church realises that if someone, driven by a sense of duty and the need to honour his oath, stays loyal to his vocation and dies while carrying out his military duty, then he is, without any doubt, doing a deed that is equal to sacrifice. He is sacrificing himself for others. And, therefore, we believe that this sacrifice cleanses away all that person’s sins.’

The western Ukrainian negative view of Russians and Russia spread from the west to the south-east of Ukraine since 2014 and especially following the invasion. Over three decades, eastern and southern Ukrainians have come to hold similar negative views of

DIVORCE 213 Russians and Russia as their counterparts in the Western region of the country. In 2014, some Ukrainians, particularly Russian speakers, changed their attitudes towards the Russian people but not all. 26year-old volunteer ‘Vladyslav’ explained: ‘What changed is that in 2014 we saw them as brothers—we were not ready for the fight. Now it’s no mercy: We’re ready to destroy them.’ Nevertheless, a naïve and romantic strain remained in place that allowed some Ukrainians to differentiate between Russian leaders and the Russian people. Ukrainian naivety and romanticism evaporated in the explosions of Mariupol and war crimes of Bucha. A Ukrainian lady in Fursa, near Kyiv, said she could never have believed a Russian would shoot an older woman. After seeing this she said: ‘I can never forgive Russia. How can you forgive something like this? You can’t fit the idea in your head, even now. How can a human act in this way.’ Widespread negative views of Russia are translated into tough Ukrainian positions on the outcome of the war. A poll by Democratic Initiatives and the Razumkov Centre found a high 55 percent supporting the war ending only when all Ukrainian territories were liberated, including the Donbas and Crimea (53.7 percent in the west, 55.4 percent in the centre, 56.9 percent in the south, and 45.4 percent in the east). Only 9 percent supported a victory whereby all of Ukraine was liberated except Crimea (10.7 in the west, 8.8 percent in the centre, 6.7 percent in the south, and 6.1 percent in the east). An even smaller number of 7.5 percent supported a victory whereby there would be a return to the territorial status quo just prior to the invasion with Crimea and nearly half of the Donbas occupied (five percent in the west, 8.7 per cent in the centre, 4.1 percent in the south, and 10.7 percent in the east). Meanwhile, a fifth of Ukrainians supported a continuation of the war until the Russian army is defeated by using military means and providing support for separatist movements in the Russian Federation. 24.8 percent in the west, 18.9 percent in the centre, 9.2 percent in the south, and 20.4 percent in the east backed this position.

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The Myth of a Pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine The largest volume of writing about Ukraine since 1991 has been about the allegedly severe regional divisions in Ukraine. In the mid1990s the US government claimed Ukraine was on the verge of splitting into two. This view of a regionally divided Ukraine stubbornly persisted in academic and journalistic writing about Ukraine throughout the three decades prior to Russia’s invasion. The Western portrayal of a regionally divided Ukraine was in fact a lighter version of the Kremlin’s depiction of Ukraine as an artificial state. Some Western scholars accepted the Russian imperial nationalist and Kremlin’s view of Ukraine. US historian of Russia Stephen Cohen was a socialist at home with The Nation magazine while promoting Russian imperial nationalist and Kremlin propaganda about Ukraine. Cohen wrote: ‘When the current crisis began in late 2013, Ukraine was one state, but it was not a single people or united nation. There is not one Ukraine or one “Ukrainian people” but at least two, generally situated in its Western and Eastern regions.’

The myth of a badly divided Ukraine composed of two different ‘civilisations’ was always a myth; after all, regional differences exist in every country. But this stubbornly persistent view of Ukraine fed into accepting the Kremlin’s disinformation depicting the Donbas conflict as a ‘civil war’ brought about, Cohen wrote, by ‘Ukraine’s diverse history, political, social realities, and culture.’ After the 2014 crisis, Western apologists blamed Ukraine for the conflict in the Donbas, not Russia. British apologist Richard Sakwa promoted the Kremlin myth of ‘fascists’ and ‘Nazis’ coming to power in 2014 in the Euromaidan Revolution which was also a replay of Kremlin disinformation about Ukraine. Western apologists like Sakwa and Cohen used the Soviet—but not political science—definition of ‘fascist’ to label all those who upheld a Ukrainian national identity and supported a future for Ukraine outside the Russian World. It is a short distance between upholding the Kremlin’s view of ‘fascists’ ruling Ukraine to Putin’s denazification of Ukraine which he proclaimed as one of

DIVORCE 215 the goals of the so-called special military operation. Western apologists must deal with the uncomfortable fact Putin’s regime is totalitarian dictatorship and fascist and Russian invaders are committing war crimes Viktor Merinkov, a director of a school in Kherson, said ‘As far as locals are concerned, Russia has become a by word for fascist invaders.’ The problem with Russian and Western depictions of a regionally divided Ukraine is they have little in common with reality. If this had been true, Putin’s New Russia project would have successfully detached the south-east from Ukraine in 2014 and Russian troops would have been welcomed in 2022. Putin’s New Russia project was a flop because Ukraine’s Russian-speakers are Ukrainian patriots and Russian invaders were not welcome in Ukraine. In the Donbas, an aggressive minority militarily supported by Russia took control of the region. Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriotism did not emerge from nowhere in 2022 but has been growing since 1991, and especially since 2014. Prior to the invasion 10 percent of Kharkiv’s population were aggressively pro-Russian, a third were Ukrainian patriots and half neutral. Many in the neutral camp have since moved to the patriotic which, The Guardian’s Sean Walker writes, ‘has created a ‘broader and more passionate pro-Ukrainian base than ever existed previously, particularly in the east of the country.’ The growth of the patriotic camp in Kharkiv accounts for the higher number of Ukrainians becoming volunteers and joining the territorial defence and army. In an invasion, one cannot sit on the fence and must choose which side to support—Ukraine or Russia. Since the invasion, Kharkiv has annulled its sister city relationship with five Russian cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. Kharkiv agricultural oligarch Vsevolod Kozhemyako, three of whose four grandparents were from Russia that gave him a Russian identity in his Soviet passport, is an example of Ukraine’s civic nationalism and patriotism. On vacation in Europe when the invasion took place, he left his family there and returned to Kharkiv where he formed a volunteer battalion. One important factor why the invasion has united Ukraine is because of the unprecedented migration of people. Many of the six

216 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE million IDP’s in Ukraine, with personal stories of suffering and anger at Putin’s Russia, moved from eastern to western Ukraine. The population of Trans-Carpathia tripled after the invasion. In addition, western Ukrainian mistrust of pro-Russian eastern Ukrainians faded as they witnessed them putting up stiff resistance to Russia’s invading forces. Changes in Ukrainian identity are also facilitated by integration in the security forces and their camaraderie during battle. With up to one million under arms, 40 percent of Ukrainians have relatives and friends who have, or continue, participating in war with Russia since 2014. 54 percent of Ukrainians have fought or are fighting against Russia since 2014. In turn, two thirds of Ukrainians feel gratitude towards veterans, three quarters associate them with patriotism and 90 percent trust them.

Transformation of Ukrainian National Identity The proportion of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine has been in decline since 1991. In the 1989 Soviet census, 22 percent of Ukraine’s population declared themselves to be ethnic Russian, a figure that declined to 17 percent in the 2001 census and which has since collapsed to only five percent in opinion polls. The greatest changes to Ukrainian identity have taken place in Ukraine’s south-east among Russian speakers whose illusions about ‘brotherhood’ with Russia and Russians was shattered in 2014 and destroyed in 2022. There are countless examples of this. Artist Potikha became very angry at Russia inflicting horrendous suffering on Ukrainian children which changed her forever. Now, she is ‘ready to kill for my country, and I’m ready to kill violently.’ She added, ‘That’s something new for me.’ Ukrayinska Pravda investigative journalist Serhiy Leshchenko is a Russian-speaker and was a staunch critic of Poroshenko’s alleged fanning of nationalism. Interviewed by the independent Russian Dozhd (Rain) TV channel in August 2022, Leshchenko, who described himself as ‘a voice of liberalism and humanism’ said: ‘Thanks to Putin, Ukrainian citizens will, for decades, receive pleasure from seeing dead Russians’ and ‘Even I, a peaceful person, have

DIVORCE 217 this feeling. I spent years speaking Russian, having a social life in Russian. Now I enjoy watching videos of dead Russian soldiers.’ Leshchenko blamed ‘that idiot [Putin] who began this war for the fact that people openly say they receive pleasure from looking at corpses, whoever they are.’ Leshchenko hoped ‘to live to see the day when people won’t want to say this’ but added, ‘I’m afraid that will take a long time.’ Leshchenko pointed out that he was relatively restrained because, ‘If you ask the person on the street, you’ll hear what I have said alongside unprintable profanity.’ The Pushkin Institute reported that the study of the Russian language has been in decline since 1991 when 9.2 million were educated in that language in the USSR; by 2020 this had declined to 4.1 million. The two biggest declines were in Georgia (minus 90.9 percent) and Armenia (minus 89.6 percent) but Ukraine was not far behind with an 86.8 percent decline in Russian-language instruction. Putin and the Kremlin have never raised objections to these declines in the South Caucasus but have invaded Ukraine allegedly in defence of Russian-speakers. Transition in language use is slower than that of ethnic allegiance. 92 percent of the population define their identity as Ukrainian. Meanwhile, the number of Ukrainians who say they are ethnic Russians has collapsed from seventeen to five percent by 2022. Russian-speakers transition into becoming Ukrainian speakers by first becoming bilingual. Ukrainians who claimed Russian as their native language declined from 40 to 26 percent since 2012 at the same time as the number of bilingual Ukrainians grew from 15 to 32 percent. During this same period there was only a small increase in Ukrainian speakers from 44 to 48 percent. The Ratings organisation survey found 51 percent who speak Ukrainian at home, with another 33 percent using both Russian and Ukrainian and only 19 percent Russian. Those who only use Ukrainian has grown since the invasion from 50 to 64 percent. Transition to bilingualism comes with a greater positive attachment to the Ukrainian language and a decline in traditional stereotypes it is a peasant and ‘uncultured’ language. 86 percent of Ukrainians therefore support Ukrainian as the only state language, with a majority in every region, while support for Russian to be a

218 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE second state language has collapsed to only seven percent. Among young Ukrainians it has become cool to speak Ukrainian. Volodymyr Rafeyenko, a writer who fled from Donetsk in 2014 decided to become bilingual, writing his novels in both Russian and Ukrainian. After the invasion he decided to only write in Ukrainian because, ‘I no longer want anything to do with a culture of murderers and rapists.’ Rafeenko wrote: ‘The language of Z is a forbidden language for anyone who has been even slightly affected by the hell that those Russian scum have inflicted on our land. They are shooting at us “in Russian”: Russian speakers from across the territory of Russia are killing us. For me, the image of a murderer is now first and foremost associated with Russians.’

Rafeenko added: ‘Genocide, the murders of children and adults, rapes, torture, the destruction of churches and museums, kindergartens and schools—beastly, ungodly cruelty—all of this will be closely connected with the Russian language. And nothing can be done about it. The Russian language in its entirety has become obscene, speech outside the bounds of decent human discourse. And these days, if I must use it in some private communication, I always feel something like disgust mixed with shame, guilt and physical pain.’

The fact the invasion has turned Ukrainians against the Russian language will have important future ramifications. President Zelenskyy, himself a Russian speaker, said the Russian language is associated with crimes, deportations, explosions, and murders of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Former Opposition Bloc deputy Oleksandr Vilkul, also a Russian speaker, said we need to understand that ‘language is a weapon.’ Lidiya Kalashnykova from Kharkiv will only speak Ukrainian since the invasion, refusing to speak in Russian. She had kept putting off switching to Ukrainian but would now do so because speaking Ukrainian will separate her from Russia. Dora, from Luhansk, did not blame the Russian language for the war crimes the Russian invading army is undertaking. At the same time, she believes it would take decades, ‘even centuries,’ for Russians and Ukrainians to repair their relationship. Dora said: ‘The world must

DIVORCE 219 understand that Russians have never hurt a country as badly as they have hurt ours. But we will win.’ Gamlet Zinkivskyy, a Kharkiv-based artist, switched completely to Ukrainian after the invasion. He regretted having been brought up speaking only Russian which is now unpleasant because he did not want to ‘speak the same language as the army that is destroying whole areas of our country.’ Oleksandra Panchenko, also from Kharkiv, vowed that her children ‘will grow up in a Ukrainian-language family.’ The Russian World cannot exist in a country—Ukraine— where the Russian language is viewed in a negative manner and barely anybody is a believer in the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin’s Russian World has no support, is viewed with contempt, and associated with violence and criminal destruction. Musician Dmytro Kolesnichenko was about to release an album when the invasion happened but had to postpone this step because some of the songs were in Russian and, as he said, ‘I don’t want to a part of the Russian World.’

Ukraine Was Never the Russian World Ukraine was already a dissident in the Russian World prior to the 2014 crisis and since the invasion has shown it will never be a part of it. The Russian World was out of touch with most Ukrainians prior to and since the 2014 crisis and this is even more the case since the invasion. Putin and Kirill are negatively viewed by most Ukrainians because of their Russian chauvinistic denial of a Ukrainian nation, myth of Russians and Ukrainians as ‘one people’ and support for military aggression and bloodshed against Ukraine. The Russian World is based on common traditions, religion, culture, views of history and the Russian language. Russian military aggression in 2014 and especially in 2022 has destroyed any closeness between Russians and Ukrainians. The Russian language is viewed as the language of a genocidal army, the Russian Orthodox Church is an arm of the Russian state and Russia is viewed as a continuation of the Soviet state. Post-invasion de-russification of Ukrainian public opinion has led to a collapse in the number of

220 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukrainians who hold nostalgia for the USSR to only 11 percent. 87 percent of Ukrainians do not miss the USSR and perceive the Soviet Union and Russia as one and the same. In Russia, nostalgia for the USSR has grown from 55 to 63 percent since 2010 while in Ukraine it declined from 46 to 11 percent. The Rating Sociological Group reported: ‘At the end of February 2022, because of Russian aggression, a dramatic change took place in the ideological views of Ukrainian society towards any Russian markers. Decommunisation and de-russification of public opinion took place. Everything “Soviet” is now often perceived as Russian, and, consequently, in a hostile manner. The main reason for this is the use of Soviet symbols and speculations by Russian propaganda in the war against Ukraine regarding a ‘common’ historical past.’

Putin’s extensive refashioning of the Great Patriotic War as a religious cult has also led to a movement away from viewing 9 May as a Ukrainian national holiday. Only 15 percent of Ukrainians view 9 May as ‘Victory Day’ while 80 percent see it as a ‘Day of Memory.’ Ukrainians have also rethought how they view the Soviet army in the Great Patriotic War. In 2008, three quarters viewed Ukrainians in the Soviet armed forces as fighting for the Soviet fatherland, only 13 percent for Ukraine and three percent for a free Europe. After the invasion, 44 percent believed they had fought for Ukraine, 39 percent for the Soviet Fatherland and seven percent for a free Europe. Two thirds of Ukrainians believe it was their countrymen and women among Soviet peoples who contributed the most to the defeat of Nazism. With the collapse of Soviet nostalgia and ties to Russia, there has been a commiserate growth in positive views of Ukrainian national leaders. While Mykhaylo Hrushevsky was always viewed positively, others were the subject of bitter debates until recently. Attitudes have dramatically improved towards Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa (from 44 in 2012 to 76 percent in 2022), 1917-1921 Ukrainian nationalist leader and military commander Simon Petlyura (from 26 in 2012 to 49 percent in 2022) and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leader Stepan Bandera (from 22 in 2012 to 74 percent in 2022). 81 percent of Ukrainians support the state recognition of OUN and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) as

DIVORCE 221 fighters for Ukrainian independence, up from only twenty percent in 2010. Positive attitudes towards Bandera prevails in Ukraine’s south-east and among Russian speakers, representing a complete revolution in Ukrainian attitudes. There are six reasons why Ukraine has no allegiance to Putin’s Russian World: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Lack of Resonance: The Russian World did not strike a chord among Ukrainians even prior to the 2014 crisis and this is the case even more so since the invasion. In 2013, only 19 percent of Ukrainians had heard of the Russian World. Ukrainians increasingly came to believe the Russian World was an attempt to rebuild a new Russian empire. Soft and Hard Power: Russian hybrid warfare merges soft and hard power but the latter undermined the former in 2014 and especially in 2022. Ukrainians reject the soft power of the Russian World because of Russia’s hard power in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 and throughout Ukraine in 2022. Attitudes to Russian Leaders: In 2014-2022, between 71-80 percent of Ukrainians held a negative view of Putin. Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill was trusted by only 15 percent and distrusted by 45 percent of Ukrainians. Fewer trusted than distrusted Kirill even in eastern (20.3 and 34.2 percent) and southern (14.1 and 29.9 percent) Ukraine. The main factor in the decline of Ukrainian trust in and the support for the Russian Orthodox Church is its support for Russian military aggression against Ukraine. Views of Russia: Negative views of Russia prior to 2014 were confined to western Ukraine but have grown and spread to all parts of the country since the invasion. In response to the 2014 crisis, Ukrainians holding positive views of Russia collapsed by two thirds from 90 to 30 percent, with 32-41 percent of Ukrainians holding favourable views of Russia while 42 percent held negative views. Positive views of Russia no longer exist in any region of Ukraine. Russian Orthodox Church: The influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine was already in decline prior to

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6.

the Orthodox Church of Ukraine receiving autocephaly in 2018-2019.This has collapsed since the invasion with only four percent of Ukrainians claiming to be Russian Orthodox Church believers. Prior to the granting of autocephaly, 38 percent trusted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch and only 12 percent the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. In the decade prior to Ukraine receiving autocephaly, support for the Ukrainian Orthodox ChurchKyiv Patriarch had grown in all Ukrainian regions while that of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine had declined up to the invasion and since then has collapsed. Even prior to the invasion, the number of Ukrainians who supported maintaining ties to the Russian Orthodox Church had collapsed from 22 to nine percent. 54 percent of Ukrainians are believers in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, an increase from 34 percent in 2020. Orthodox Church of Ukraine believers are majorities in every region of Ukraine, ranging from 42 percent in the east to 57 and 59 percent respectively in the south and centre. In the west, where the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church dominates the three oblasts of Galicia, half of believers belong to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church had lost its position in the west and centre by the Orange Revolution and in the east and south since 2014. The Russian Orthodox Church has lost support even among Russian-speaking Russians in Ukraine of whom only thirteen percent are its believers while the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has nearly three times as many (36 percent). 46 and 58 percent respectively of Ukrainian and Russian speakers are believers in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Between 43 and 64 percent of all age groups from eighteen to over seventy years of age are believers in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Divergent Attitudes towards History: Ukrainians and Russians view history in a diametrically different way. Russians subsume their history within an eastern Slavic, panRussian imperial nationalist identity that ties them to Ukrainians and Belarusians since ‘Kievan Russia.’

DIVORCE 223 Ukrainians claim Kyiv Rus as the first Ukrainian state and view their history as independent from Russians and Belarusians. Ukrainian scholars therefore condemn Russian historians for stealing and misinterpreting Ukrainian history. History matters as if Russia forged an independent, not an eastern Slavic history, the Kremlin would not be denying the existence of Ukrainians and invading Ukraine. Putin and Kirill claim Kyiv Rus to be the ‘first Russian state’ which adopted ‘Russian Orthodoxy’ that forever bound Ukrainians and Russians in unity. Ukrainians disagreed even prior to the invasion. Between 2006-2018, the number of Ukrainians who claimed exclusive title to Kyiv Rus history had nearly tripled from 24.5 to 70 percent, with only nine percent disagreeing. Only the dwindling number of pro-Russian voters for Opposition Platform-For Life in Ukrainian-controlled Donbas continued to believe Ukraine was part of eastern Slavic history. In the decade before Ukraine received autocephaly, the number of Ukrainians who believed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch had descended from Kyiv Rus grew from 33 to 52 percent while those who believed it was the Russian Orthodox Church declined from 26 to only 14 percent. The Tsarist regime banned the Ukrainian language and stymied the national development of Ukrainians making it impossible for them to accept that life in the Tsarist Russian empire had been beneficial. A high majority of Ukrainians believe Stalin is a tyrant while an equally high number of Russians see him in a positive way. Only seven percent of Ukrainians view Stalin positively while 84 percent see him in a negative way. Decommunisation The criminality and treachery of the Yanukovych presidency, Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and the murder of the Heavenly Hundred, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military aggression in 2014 provided public support for decommunisation. Ukraine adopted four laws on decommunisation which were successfully implemented in 2015-2018. These laws dealt with four

224 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE important areas which embraced important aspects of Ukrainian national identity: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Law no. 2539 ‘On Remembering the Victory over Nazism in the Second World War’: Europeanising celebration of military victory in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War to commemoration of World War II from 1939-1945. A new holiday was introduced on 8 May, the date Europeans commemorate the end of World War II, which became the main annual holiday on World War II. Law no. 2538-1 ‘On the Legal Status and Honouring of the Memory of the Fighters for the Independence of Ukraine in the 20th Century’: Ukrainian national liberation groups, such as OUN-UPA, would be publicly acknowledged and recognised as having fought for the independence of Ukraine. Law no. 2558 ‘On Condemning the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes and Prohibiting the Propagation of their Symbols’: Nazi and Communist symbols were banned. Because they refused to remove communist symbols, the Communist Party of Ukraine, Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed) and Communist Party of Workers and Peasants were no longer allowed to participate in elections. Soviet monuments to Lenin and other communist leaders and events were removed. The names of cities, towns, and streets were changed. Law no. 2540 ‘On Access to the Archives of Repressive Bodies of the Communist Totalitarian Regime from 1917–1991’: Archives of the Soviet security services were opened to the public. Ukraine has one of the freest accesses to Soviet security service archives in the former USSR.

De-Russification National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov declared that Ukraine would be completely de-Russified after the war ended. ‘Nothing Russian will remain with us,’ he promised. Russia’s invasion has created popular support for de-Russification. 73 percent support changing street names named after Russian personalities or Russian-Ukrainian relations, ranging from 63

DIVORCE 225 percent in the east to 86 percent in the west. 66 percent support changing street names named after Soviet personalities ranging from 56 percent in the east to 80 percent in the west. With six million Ukrainians and Jews having died in World War II, only 19 percent support the removal of monuments to the Great Patriotic War which were left standing with their communist symbols removed. Even in western Ukraine only 32 percent were in favour of removing Great Patriotic War monuments with the lowest support of ten percent found in the east. De-Russification of Ukraine is being undertaken in nine areas: 1.

2. 3.

4.

Russian agents in the intelligence services and state institutions are being rooted out. Collaborators with Russian occupation authorities are being assassinated or if they are captured are put on trial and sentenced to imprisonment. Four pro-Russian television channels owned by Medvecdhuk were banned prior to the invasion. Twelve pro-Russian political parties were banned after the invasion. Six pro-Russian television channels are banned, four prior and two since the invasion, a step which is now backed by two thirds of Ukrainians. Twelve of the 25 members of the Platform for Life and Peace, successor to Opposition Platform-For Life parliamentary faction, voted for banning pro-Russian parties. Vilkul, an aggressive member of the pro-Russian Party of Regions prior to 2014 joined its first successor the Opposition Bloc. Vilkul, who heads the Kryvyy Rih military district described Russia as a ‘totalitarian sect’ led by a mad dictator obsessed with his place in history. ‘People are patriotic. Everybody is working for victory. Ukraine will free all its territory,’ Vilkul said. Vilkul said the Russians are ‘worse than German fascists.’ The Ukrainian parliament voted on 21 April 2022 to de-sovietise Ukrainian legislation by removing references to, for example, ‘victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution,’ the implementation of Lenin’s ideas to build a communist society, and propagations of communist ideology and the priorities and the rights of the Komsomol and Communist Party. Twelve out of twenty-three members of the

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5.

6.

Platform for Life and Peace, successor to Opposition Platform-For Life parliamentary faction, voted in favour. Toponyms, such as streets named after Russian cultural and historical figures are being renamed. An expert council of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy recommended street names named after Russians involved in imperial and Soviet propaganda, political repression and those mythologising the benefits of the Tsarist Empire and Soviet Union should be changed. De-Russifying Ukrainian towns would bring them into line with the 2019 law on languages. Russian Prince Alexander Nevsky and Tsarina Catherine as well as writers Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov are viewed by Ukrainians as promoters of Russian imperialism and chauvinism towards Ukraine. Five hundred street names linked to Russia and the USSR have been changed in Kyiv. Sixty monuments with links to Russia and the USSR will be pulled down. Four metro stations were renamed in Kyiv: Minsk to Warsaw, Beresteyska to Bucha (scene of horrific Russian war crimes), Friendship of Peoples to Botanical Gardens, and Lev Tolstoy Square to murdered Ukrainian dissident poet Vasyl Stus. In Odesa, New Moscow, Borodynskyy, Voronezh, Chapaev and Kursk streets were renamed. In Kharkiv Moscow Avenue was renamed Kharkiv Heroes Avenue and Moscow rayon was renamed Saltovskyy rayon. Toponymic names with Belgorod, a city from which Russia invaded and shelled the city of Kharkiv, were completely removed as were streets named after Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Nevsky. Twenty-one streets and avenues were changed in Dnipro. The Jewish community in the city of Dnipro had opposed having a street named after Bandera but changed their minds after the invasion. Decommunisation is being followed by de-Russification. Monuments to Russian-Ukrainian friendship and Russian cultural figures are being taken down. Kyiv plans to remove sixty monuments linked to the Tsarist Empire and Soviet Union. The shield on the huge monument to the

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7.

8.

9.

Great Patriotic War in Kyiv will be changed from a communist hammer and sickle to a tryzyb. The monument to Russian-Ukrainian friendship unveiled in 1982 has been removed. The Arch to Russian-Friendship was renamed Ukrainian Peoples Freedom Arch. The monument to the 1654 Muscovite-Ukrainian Cossack treaty, unveiled in 1954 in Pereyaslav, was removed. The plaque on the monument to Tsarina Catherine in Odesa was replaced to provide information about her suppression of the Zaporozhzhyan Cossacks. ‘Glory to Russian Arms’ was removed from a captured British canon in Odesa. Pushkin monuments have been pulled down throughout Ukraine. Soviet monuments to Sergei Vatutin have been pulled down. The monument to Russia-Ukraine and Belarus on their common border was removed. Russian literature and culture are to be removed from school curriculums. Foreign literature courses will no longer include Russian culture and literature. There are an estimated one hundred million ‘propaganda books’ of Russian literature, culture, and history that will be removed from libraries. The Khmelnytskyy authorities banned the use of Russian language books on literature and culture until the end of the war. In Rivne, a collection was begun of Russian books on literature and culture that would be recycled, and the proceeds donated to the army. A ban on Russian music on television and radio, and films is supported by 62 percent of Ukrainians. The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine is under pressure to unite with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine will lose control over the Pecharska Lavra Monastery in Kyiv. The Russian Orthodox Church is on life support with only four percent of Ukrainians saying they belong to it. This is compared to 54 percent who are believers in the (autocephalous) Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Museums are being opened throughout Ukraine exhibiting artefacts and trophies from the Russian-Ukrainian war. The Ukrainian Military Museum and Museum of World War II

228 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE in Kyiv have large exhibitions on the Russian-Ukrainian war. Since 2017, Dnipro has a Museum of the ATO (AntiTerrorist Operation). In addition to these museums, large plots of cemeteries will become places for pilgrimages to honour soldiers killed since 2014 fighting Russian military aggression.

Russian-Ukrainian Relations Ukraine during Poroshenko’s presidency withdrew from CIS organisations and cooperation agreements with Russia. Since the invasion, the last remaining diplomatic, trade, economic and transportation links with Russia have been cut. A poll by Democratic Initiatives and the Razumkov Centre found three quarters of Ukrainians (82 percent Ukrainian and 63 percent Russian speakers) supported cutting diplomatic relations with Russia until after the war ended. This included 86.3 percent in the west, 78.2 percent in the centre, 55.9 percent in the south, and 65.9 percent in the east. Ukrainians refuse to agree to Russian demands for capitulation and half understand victory as the taking back of all occupied territories, including Crimea, and the defeat of the Russian army. Half of Ukrainians believe there can never be reconciliation with Russia and another third think it can only take place in two to three decades. 78 percent of Ukrainians therefore rule out any normalisation of relations with Russia for at least two decades. Ukraine’s intelligence services are conducting a widespread clean out of spies and traitors from civilians, pro-Russian parties and the security forces who have acted as informants, providers of logistical support for Russian artillery attacks, defectors to the Russian military and acting as collaborators in Russian-occupied areas. Martial law provides Ukraine’s security forces with the legal means to clean out and criminally charge them and Ukraine’s courts the political will to imprison them. The Ukrainian parliament has adopted sanctions against Russian companies and banned the entry of hundreds of Russian journalists, cultural leaders, and businesspersons. In August 2022, the Ukrainian parliament approved the directive of the National

DIVORCE 229 Security and Defence Council regarding sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities that will be initially maintained for ten years. Sanctions have been imposed against 600 Russian ruling elites, Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and seven senior clergy. The most important ten sanctions against Russia include: 1.

A ban on capital withdrawal from Ukraine in favour of natural and legal entities of Russia. 2. A suspension of subsoil use permits. 3. A prohibition on privatising or leasing state property to Russian citizens. 4. A ban on public procurement of production and services related to Russia. 5. A ban on the entry of Russian ships and aircraft. 6. A ban on issuing cash and payment cards to persons associated with the Russian aggressor. 7. A ban on purchasing securities from Russian issuers. 8. A ban (permits and licenses of the National Bank of Ukraine) on investments in Russia. 9. A ban on the transfer of technologies and intellectual property rights to Russia. 10. A ban on the acquisition of land ownership for persons connected with the Russian Federation.

Foreign and Security Policies There are no longer any regional differences in Ukraine over foreign and security policies. An October 2022 poll found that in referendums, 86 percent of Ukrainians would vote to join the EU (3 percent would be against) and 83 percent to join NATO (4 percent would be against). Support for EU membership ranged from 92 percent in the west, 90 percent in the centre, 84 percent in the south and 79 percent in the east. Support for NATO membership ranged from 86 percent in the west and centre to 81 percent in the south and 69 percent in the east. Until 2014, south-east Ukraine had lower levels of support for NATO and EU membership. The 2014 crisis and Crimea’s

230 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE annexation increased support for NATO and EU membership in the south-east but not to the same levels as in the west and centre. Since the invasion support for joining NATO and the EU has reached similar levels of support in the west-centre to those in the south-east. Thanks to Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s the south-east would vote for NATO membership. These changes took place at the same time as a collapse in public support for integration into Eurasia. Ukrainians never supported joining political and Eurasian security structures but between 30-40 percent supported joining the CIS Customs Union (Eurasian Economic Union). This support declined after 2014 to about ten percent and since the invasion has vanished. Again, Putin’s invasion to ‘Gather Russian Lands’ into the Russian World has led to the exact opposite, a complete rejection of all things Russian. A June 2022 poll by the International Republican Institute and Rating Sociological Group found only one percent of Ukrainians supported membership of the CIS Customs Union, with the east slightly higher at three percent. When asked if they supported EU or CIS Customs Union membership, between 76-82 percent backed the former. Backing for NATO and EU membership has rocketed since the invasion. In south-east Ukraine there was barely any support for NATO membership prior to 2014. In the 2014 crisis, support for NATO membership rose from 34 to 51 percent. In a referendum held after the invasion, 76 percent would support NATO membership and only ten percent would oppose it. Support for NATO membership ranges from 55 percent in Ukraine’s east to the highest, 84 percent in the west. Opposition to Ukraine joining NATO ranges from 20 percent in the east to six percent in the west. Ukrainians were never as negative towards EU membership as some were to NATO. In 2013, 49 percent supported EU membership and 30 percent opposed with many of the latter supporters of joining the CIS Customs Union. By June 2022, support for EU membership stood at a record 87 percent with only four percent opposed and was high among all age groups and in every region. Support for EU membership ranged between 75 in Ukraine’s east to 92 percent in the west.

DIVORCE 231 Ukrainian leaders believe Ukraine’s use of Western military technology and training qualifies it to join NATO without going through a MAP (Membership Action Plan). Meanwhile, EU membership seems psychologically closer after Ukraine was given candidate status. Key Points  Western and Russian speculation about regional divisions in Ukraine were highly exaggerated. No Ukrainian region welcomed Russia’s invading army. Ukrainian national identity has fundamentally changed under the impact of the Orange and Euromaidan Revolutions, 2014 crisis, annexation of Crimea, and 2022 invasion. Ukrainians will never accept derogatory Russian imperial nationalist myths that deny they exist.  Ukrainian national identity has fundamentally changed under the impact of the Orange and Euromaidan Revolutions, 2014 crisis, annexation of Crimea, and 2022 invasion. Ukrainians will never accept derogatory Russian imperial nationalist myths that deny they exist.  There will be no going back to pre-2014 Russian-Ukrainian relations which will remain negative for decades to come.  Russian speakers in Ukraine’s south-east have suffered the greatest from Russia’s invasion. The greatest changes in Ukrainian national identity have therefore taken place in these two regions.  The Russian language is in decline and viewed negatively as the language of invasion, military aggression, and cruelty. Russian speakers are increasingly becoming bilingual, the intermediate step to becoming Ukrainian speakers.  Only two percent of Ukrainians believe Russian the propaganda goal that the so-called special military operation was undertaken to protect Ukraine’s Russian speakers.  The Russian World was unpopular and viewed suspiciously prior to 2014; since then, the Russian World has no support in Ukraine. Support for the Russian World cannot exist in a country where the Russian language and Russian

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Orthodox Church are viewed as arms of the Russian aggressor state. De-russification of Ukraine is the successor to decommunisation. De-russification will remove all vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from Ukrainian culture, school curriculums, toponyms, monuments, and plaques.

Suggested Reading Kuzio, Taras. (2017). Chapter 11: ‘Ukraine’s National Identity and Putin’s War’ In: Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime. Toronto: Chair of Ukrainian Studies, 314-357. Kuzio, T. (2019). ‘Three Revolutions, One War and Ukraine’s West Moves East’ In: Pawel Kowal, Georges Mink, Iwona Reichardt (eds.), Three Revolutions: Mobilization and Change in Contemporary Ukraine I. Theoretical Aspects and Analyses on Religion, Memory, and Identity, Stuttgart and Warsaw: Ibidem and College of Europe, 91-120. Kuzio, T. (2022a). Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War. Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality, London: Routledge. Kuzio, T. (2022b). ‘‘Eastern Ukraine’ is no More: War and Identity in PostEuromaidan Dnipropetrovsk’ In: T. Kuzio, Sergei Zhuk and Paul D’Anieri (Eds.), Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the RussianUkrainian War, Bristol: E-International Relations, 28-64. https:// www.e-ir.info/publication/ukraines-outpost-dnipropetrovsk-andthe-russian-ukrainian-war/ Kuzyk, Petro. (2019). ‘Ukraine’s national integration before and after 2014. Shifting ‘East–West’ polarization line and strengthening political community,’ Eurasian Geography and Economics, 60 (6): 709-735. Oliynyk, Anna, and Kuzio, T. (2021). ‘The Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity, Reforms and De-Communisation in Ukraine,’ Europe-Asia Studies, 73 (5), 807-836. Rating Sociological Group. (2022a). ‘The Tenth National Survey: Ideological Markers of the War,’ 27 April. https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ ukraine/desyatyy_obschenacionalnyy_opros_ideologicheskie_mar kery_voyny_27_aprelya_2022.html Rating Sociological Group. (2022b). ‘Thirteenth National Survey: Foreign Policy Orientation,’ 18-19 June. https://ratinggroup.ua/research/ukr aine/trinadcatyy_obschenacionalnyy_opros_vneshnepoliticheskie_ orientacii_18-19_iyunya_2022.html

DIVORCE 233 Rating Sociological Group. (2022c). ‘Seventeenth National Survey: Identity, Patriotism, Values,’ 23 August. https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ukr aine/s_mnadcyate_zagalnonac_onalne_opituvannya_dentichn_st_p atr_otizm_c_nnost_17-18_serpnya_2022.html Rating Sociological Group. (2022d). ‘Dynamnika Zovnisho-Politychnykh Nastroyiv Nasellennya,’ 3 October. https://ratinggroup.ua/resear ch/ukraine/dinam_ka_zovn_shno-pol_tichnih_nastro_v_naselenny a_1-2_zhovtnya_2022.html Riabenko, Serhiy, and Kuzio, T. (2020). ‘From the Great Patriotic War to the Second World War. The decommunisation of Ukraine’s memory politics,' New Eastern Europe, XLII (4), 167-179. Tsurkan, Kate., (2022). ‘Putin has forced Ukrainians to view Russian culture as a weapon of war,’ Atlantic Council of the US, 8 August. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-has-for ced-ukrainians-to-view-russian-culture-as-a-weapon-of-war/

7 Global Crisis ‘Russia has already become the biggest source of terrorism in the world, and no other terrorist power leaves behind so many deaths. This must be recognised legally. The world must act. Russia must be recognised as a state sponsor of terrorism.’ President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘We must believe that Ukraine can win this war. The war is likely to become a successful example of a struggle for national liberation as the nation pulls together against a rotten empire and self-actualizes. We are observing it right now.’ Niall Ferguson

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched without any justification after a four-month military build-up, has had reverberations throughout the world. Niall Ferguson believed, ‘We have seen very few years in history that have been truly pivotal...This could be one— but ONLY if the West gets better leadership.’ The impact of the crisis is being felt in every corner of the planet and in many non-military areas. ‘As much as the war’s reverberations are felt around the world, though, they sound most strongly in Europe. The invasion has upended the idea of a continent ‘whole, free and at peace’. Kyiv, once ignorable distant, feels terribly close.’ The Economist reported the global economy would lose $1 trillion due to Russia’s invasion. Global economic growth expectations have deteriorated by 1.1-2.8 percent in annual terms; thus, the war reduced global GDP forecast by $1 trillion in 2022. The IMF cut its global growth forecast for the year by 1.2 percent from its initial estimate in January of 3.2 percent. Among the G20 countries, Russia will suffer the most. By the end of 2022, the impact of sanctions will cause the Russian economy to sink by ten percent compared to its initial growth estimate of 2.6 percent. The Ukrainian economy will decrease by 40 percent in 2022. It has been primarily the West (EU, NATO) together with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Australia who have imposed sanctions against Russia. The only country in Europe that has refused to impose sanctions is Serbia. India, Brazil, Egypt, UAE, Turkey, and Israel are not supporting sanctions against Russia.

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236 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Nevertheless, Israel and Turkey are balancing their relations with the West and Russia in different ways. Israel always voted to abstain while Turkey voted for UN resolutions condemning the annexation of Crimea. Despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s pleas during his speech to the Israeli Knesset, Israel refuses while Turkey sells arms to, and jointly manufactures weapons with, Ukraine. Israel and Turkey have also provided havens for Russian oligarchs fleeing from sanctions in Europe. Russia’s invasion has been compared to the 1961 Cuban missile crisis or has been described as the biggest global crisis since World War Two. Russian President Putin is at war not only with Ukraine but with the international system established after 1945 and the post-Cold War era. Prominent Russian foreign policy expert Sergei Karaganov said ‘We are at war with the West. The European security order is illegitimate.’ Francis Fukiyama described Russia’s invasion as the end of the post-Cold War era; that is, what he had described in 1992 as the ‘End of History.’ Fareed Zakaria described the invasion as the beginning of the post-American era. Yet others believe the invasion and sanctions marked the end of globalisation. Then UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss viewed the invasion as a ‘paradigm shift on the scale of 9/11’.’

Why did the West Pamper Putin for so Long? The UK imposed very mild sanctions and expelled only four Russian diplomats in response to the assassination of Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. No Western sanctions were imposed against Russia for either the 2007 cyber-attack against NATO and EU member Estonia, the 2008 invasion of Georgia or Russia’s recognition of the ‘independence’ of the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The French brokered ceasefire, negotiated by President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the EU, was heavily tilted in Russia’s favour and sold-out Georgia. Similarly, the West’s response to the 2014 crisis created by Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea was meek. Many Western countries continued to do business with Russia. The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, launched in 2011, continued to be built until

GLOBAL CRISIS 237 sanctions were imposed by the Donald Trump administration, which President Joe Biden lifted, and only closed after Russia’s invasion. Mild sanctions were imposed only after the shooting down of MH17 civilian airliner in July 2014 murdering 298 passengers and crew, including 88 children. A UK government enquiry into the 2006 murder of Litvinenko released its findings a decade later. The UK eventually adopted a tougher line in 2018 when it expelled 26 Russian diplomats after the chemical attack against former Russian GRU (military intelligence) officer Skripal who had been a British spy and had been exchanged. Conservative MP and Prime Minister Boris Johnson continued to have a close relationship with former KGB officer and Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev who was made Baron Lebedev of Hampton and became a member of the House of Lords—only two years after the Skripal scandal. There is undoubtedly a direct continuity between the West’s weak response, mild sanctions, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, one of the Kremlin’s miscalculations was that a divided West would react weakly and again, as in 2014, impose mild sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This assumption proved to be mistaken. Nevertheless, it is Ukraine and Ukrainians who are suffering the consequences of earlier Western unwillingness to be tough in their dealings with Putin. Michel Duclos, a former French diplomat, said: ‘Our leaders discussed with horror that the problem for Putin was not the security of Russia but his need to take back Ukrainian lands. When he talked about ‘denazification’ and the cleansing of Ukraine, it was not the old Putin. It was a Putin prepared to risk it all to satisfy his ethnographic-nationalist imperative.’

The West’s surprise at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came after Putin and Kremlin leaders had made revanchist territorial claims towards south-eastern Ukraine on countless occasions since 2014. Russian leaders had dehumanised Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation daily in the Russian media and in political statements. Why then had so few policymakers and scholars noticed?

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Ukrainian Destruction The invasion has brought devastation and destruction to cities, towns, and villages in south-eastern Ukraine. Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and other cities and towns have been heavily bombed and destroyed. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and injured. The cost of rebuilding Ukraine will be enormous. Discussions have begun on how to make Russia pay reparations through the nationalisation of sanctioned Russian oligarch assets and frozen Russian government assets in the West. War crimes charges and trials of Russian political and military leaders in absentia will be a major stumbling block to improved relations between Ukraine and Russia and Russia and the West. Some Western leaders have openly described Putin and other Russian leaders as ‘war criminals.’ If charges are made by the ICC or a special court set up by the UN, it will be impossible for Western leaders to meet and negotiate with Putin ever again. President Zelenskyy has become an international star because of his bravery and leadership. His ‘I need ammunition, not a ride’ reply to the US offer for an evacuation became a classic on social media. Zelenskyy has made countless virtual speeches to the UK, US, German, European, and Israeli parliaments where he has rallied support for Ukraine, demanded further sanctions, and called for more military supplies and a no-fly zone.

Russia Western sanctions are tantamount to financial and economic (hybrid) warfare against Russia, the Kremlin has claimed. They are right. ‘We will provoke the collapse of the Russian economy,’ French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said, adding: ‘We are waging total economic and financial war against Russia, Putin, and his government, and let’s be clear, the Russian people will also pay the consequences.’ High financial and economic costs are accompanied by high volumes of military assistance sent to Ukraine in what is in effect NATO’s proxy war against Russia.

GLOBAL CRISIS 239 Putin publicly admitted inflation and higher unemployment would be coming to Russia, although he failed to explain this was caused by his invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s economy is set to collapse by 35 percent in the second quarter of 2022. Russia is defaulting on its payments for the first time since the 1998 crisis. The impact of Western sanctions on Russia will be catastrophic. The sanctioning of Russian exports in raw materials (uranium, aluminium, copper, wheat, fertilisers, palladium, coal) will also impact the world economy. In fact, a shock of such depth and breadth is without precedent. Russia had barely diversified beyond its high reliance on oil and gas. Big exporters of oil such as Russia have less potential to spin off technology and innovation to fuel economic growth. There is no Russian equivalent of China’s Huawei or South Korea’s Samsung. Russia’s main exports are oil, gas, and military equipment. All are now in danger of losing markets because of undertaken or planned sanctions against Russian energy and the weak performance of Russian military equipment. Over-reliance on energy exports makes Russia vulnerable during economic crises and from the impact of tough sanctions, such as those imposed in response to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe is quickly weaning itself off its reliance on Russian gas for which Russia will find it difficult to find alternative markets. European governments are under pressure to sanction Russian oil and gas whose exports account for nearly half of the income flowing into the Russian budget. At the beginning of the war, Russia produced 7-8 million barrels of oil per day with half of this being exported to the EU. If the West sanctioned these exports, they would not find an alternative market. By the end of 2022, Russia had lost 90 percent of its oil trade with the EU and some of this had been taken by China and India, but not all, and would take longer to transport. There are insufficient gas pipelines outside Europe to take Russian gas which will no longer be exported to the EU. Coal is exported to the EU by rail and when sanctioned could not be transported to Asia in the same way. Russia lacks vessels to transport coal and gas to Asia. Although coal is to be sanctioned, countries such as Germany and Italy initially baulked at the

240 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE prospect of an immediate cut off of Russian gas, claiming they needed a transition period to find alternative sources. Russia’s use of its energy weapon is set to massively backfire. The Kremlin does not want Russians to receive authentic information about the casualty rates of Russian troops and the Kremlin’s war crimes committed against Ukraine during its so-called special military operation. Anti-war protests by brave Russian citizens have been brutally repressed. Lies, fake news, paranoia, disinformation and conspiracy theories at home have had an impact on Russian attitudes to the outside world.

Eurasia Russia is isolated within its self-declared Eurasian sphere of influence where the Kremlin has lost support among even traditionally pro-Russian states. Putin can only rely on Lukashenka, the self-proclaimed president of Belarus, during UN votes condemning the invasion. At the United Nations, Russia was only supported by one out of fifteen former Soviet republics—Belarus. Four of the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) and three of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan) do not support Russia and abstain in UN votes dealing with the invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s image as a military power in Eurasia and China has been severely damaged. The Russian army has failed to meet its objective of quickly defeating Ukraine and capturing the capital city of Kyiv within two to three days. The Russian army is typically, as in the Chechen capital of Grozny and the Syrian city of Aleppo, resorting to indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets which are war crimes. After six months of war, Russian dead are estimated at 80,000 with twice that number wounded. Russian casualties (dead, wounded, missing in action, deserted, POW’s) are therefore close to 150,000. If we add to this figure Russian proxies in occupied Donbas who are used as cannon fodder, the total number of Russian casualties would be far higher. In the typical contempt the Kremlin

GLOBAL CRISIS 241 holds for its own subjects, Russian casualty figures have not been collected by the Russian authorities and their bodies have been left where they have been killed. Russia has also lost a huge volume of military equipment. Evidence of Russia’s declining influence is evident throughout Eurasia. The country that touted itself as the ‘second biggest military power’ in the world after the US has a shortage of military manpower and is withdrawing forces from Russian bases throughout Eurasia freeing up countries to undertake military interventions against Russian proxies. It is no coincidence Russia’s growing weakness has given Azerbaijan, for example, the opportunity to militarily pressure Armenia to finally agree, two years after the ending of the Second Karabakh War, to sign a peace treaty. Russia’s critical manpower shortage is being resolved by offering amnesties to prisoners, including murderers, to join the Wagner PMC (Private Military Company) to fight in Ukraine. But these, and troops withdrawn from Eurasian military bases will not change the dynamic in the war in Ukraine. Russian military withdrawals from Central Asian have led to a return to border clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation revealed the degree to which China had replaced Russia as the economic power overseeing the regions sphere of influence. Arriving just after Russia’s military debacle in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, Putin was humiliated by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov who kept him waiting. Putin was well-known for being late for meetings, but the shoe is now on the other foot. Russia’s earlier military withdrawal from Armenia of nearly 1,000 troops for combat in Ukraine was a signal to the South Caucasus that Russia’s sphere of influence was in decline. Armenia has refused to see the writing on the wall and continues to place all its eggs in the Russian basket, unwilling to loosen its ties to Russia despite Moscow no longer being able to provide security. Azerbaijan, which has instead pursued a multi-vector foreign policy and not joined Russian-led Eurasian projects, has used Russia’s waning influence to increase pressure on Armenia to sign a post-war peace treaty recognising their Soviet republican

242 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE boundaries as international borders. The EU had valiantly tried, but so far failed, to broker the signing of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan that would have recognised their border and put to rest three decades of conflict over Karabakh. Mass Armenian protests in Yerevan oppose the signing of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan despite the country not having the economic and military power to defeat its neighbour and its security big brother having gone AWOL. Controlled by pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanshili, Georgia has democratically stagnated and was not offered EU candidate status, which was offered to Ukraine and Moldova. Georgia has not supported Ukraine and, as with Armenia, has assisted Russia in evading Western sanctions. Most Georgians do though support Ukraine and blame their pro-Russian rulers for Georgia not receiving candidate status. The largest military unit fighting Russia in Ukraine’s International Legion is Georgian. Georgia is also contemplating whether to use the collapse of Russia’s power to intervene against South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two Russian frozen conflicts Moscow recognised as ‘independent’ in 2008. Russia’s waning influence in Eurasia is best witnessed in Ukraine where its brutal invasion and war crimes have turned all Ukrainians against Russia for decades to come. Opinion polls show there is no longer any difference between eastern and western Ukrainians in their negative attitudes to Russia and commonly felt views of national identity, language, and foreign policy. As many eastern Ukrainians now hate Russia and want to join NATO as do western Ukrainians. Ukraine’s military successes are changing the dynamic in Moldova where Russia’s manufactured Transniestr frozen conflict has an isolated and small military garrison of 1,500 troops that cannot be re-supplied by air or land. Ukrainians and Moldovans, backed by Romania, could intervene to defeat the Russian garrison, and return Transniestr to Moldovan sovereign control. Russia has only two loyal proxies left in Eurasia—Belarus and Armenia. The formerly Russian-led CSTO (Collective Security

GLOBAL CRISIS 243 Treaty Organisation) and Eurasian Economic Union, which have more members, are no longer functional. Ukraine and Moldova are firmly within the EU’s sphere of influence. Azerbaijan has cemented a strategic alliance with Turkey and is a rising economic and military power whose energy resources the EU will become increasingly reliant upon after breaking from its ill-conceived dependency on Russia. Georgia’s unnatural pro-Russian stance is crumbling. Meanwhile, China has replaced Russia as the preeminent power in Central Asia. Russia’s embarrassing military performance in Ukraine and crumbling Eurasian influence has made it China’s younger brother. Thirty years on from the disintegration of the USSR, another break-up is taking place of Russia’s grip over Eurasia. The destinies of Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, and Central Asia are no longer tied up with Russia; Georgia will eventually join them. Unfortunately, to the detriment of their societies, Armenia and Belarus continue to remain on the wrong side of a history being made by Ukraine for a second time disintegrating the Russian Empire.

China China and Russia are united in their opposition to the US-led unipolar world and both countries are bitter at how the West has allegedly mistreated them. Russia and China’s anti-American alliance supports a world where the great powers are accorded spheres of influence: China in East Asia; Russia in Eurasia with a veto over European security; and the US pushed from Europe back to North America. At the same time, Russia and China approach their goals in different ways. Russia issues threats and ultimatum’s and launches military aggression against its neighbours. Russia is a disrupter, a spreader of chaos. China has a greater ‘stake in stability’ and is more cautious and patient. Russia is a declining great power while China is a rising great power. Russia therefore needs China more than China needs Russia. The poor performance of the Russian army has confirmed to Beijing that Russia is the younger brother in their relationship.

244 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Seeking military assistance after only three weeks of war confirmed Russia younger brother status even more to Beijing. China has nothing to gain and everything to lose from becoming militarily involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the UN, China has changed tactics, abstaining in votes on resolutions denouncing the invasion. In 2014-2021, China voted with Russia and against UN resolutions denouncing the annexation of Crimea. This is like the switch in voting by Russia’s Eurasian allies, except for Belarus. Armenia, like China, voted for Russia’s annexation of Crimea but they both have abstained in UN votes denouncing the invasion. China will be unable and unwilling to assist Russia to the degree Russia is seeking. China has more to gain from an isolated Russia. A weak Russia suits China because it would have little choice but to be pliant. China would be reluctant to support Russia militarily lest it be also exposed to sanctions, like those against Russia, targeting its economy, finances, and trade. China’s aviation, for example, is like Russia’s in being reliant on US parts and technology. Although China could financially replace Western companies who have withdrawn from Russia’s oil and gas sector, China does not have the technical expertise the West possess. Although they do not have a defence treaty, Russia has requested military assistance from China. The US and EU have warned China not to provide this, lest Beijing opens itself up to sanctions. China would not want to see Russia defeated and Putin to be humiliated or overthrown because of a military defeat. Such a scenario would negatively impact upon the Chinese leadership as having backed a loser. A humiliated Putin would also vindicate the US and the West and reinforce the unipolar world. China had expected, and hoped, Russia would quickly win its invasion and thereby it would not have to balance between its support for Russia’s campaign against the unipolar world with China’s backing of the principle of the inviolability of the territorial integrity of states. Russia has not been successful in quickly defeating Ukraine and is becoming increasingly drawn into a quagmire where it will not achieve its initial objectives.

GLOBAL CRISIS 245 While not supplying military equipment to Russia, China is supporting the Kremlin in spreading disinformation and fake news about the invasion and war. China is supporting the Kremlin’s absurd premise that Russia was provoked by the West, in particular the US and NATO. China is also spreading disinformation about US bio-labs in Ukraine. China’s main national interest is to continue its rise as a great power which would undermine the US-led unipolar world. Beijing believes the 21st century will be dominated by the struggle between China and the US which is unwilling to allow an Asian giant to become a peer. Russia is in many ways a side-show for China in its future show down this century with the US. Chinese leaders will intensify their creation of an alternative payments system to SWIFT. The Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), China’s alternative, could be used to assist Russia in reducing the impact of being disconnected from SWIFT. Some imports from China could be financed using Russia’s $90 billion in yuan-denominated deposits at the Chinese Central Bank. But China will be reluctant (unlike Iran and Armenia) to assist Russia in wholesale evasion of sanctions. Chinese state-owned banks around the world will therefore respect sanctions because China will want to maintain its access to global financial markets. China’s UnionPay will be unable to replace Visa and Mastercard. Although 180 countries use UnionPay it remains a fringe service. Some small Chinese banks may assist Russia to evade sanctions, but these are not big enough for Russia’s economic and financial needs; some of them are likely to back off when threatened by US sanctions. Beijing’s response to Western sanctions against Russia will be to call for the intensification of campaigns for self-sacrifice and greater reliance on national producers. National protectionism will become a central component of the Chinese Communist regime’s nationalism. The West’s united and tough response to the invasion sent a signal to China that if it undertook military aggression against Taiwan a similar Western response would be forthcoming. Putin’s obsession with Ukraine is far greater than Xi Jinping’s obsession with Taiwan. A weaker and more divided Western response, as in the

246 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE 2014 crisis, would have sent a signal to China it could have undertaken a military conquest of Taiwan without major repercussions. The West’s weak responses to Russian military aggression against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 encouraged belligerent powers such as China to ramp up their revanchism. Taiwan will be closely studying the experience of Ukraine’s military in fighting a larger Russian army. The Taiwanese Ministry of Defence stated: ‘Ukraine, under unfavourable conditions of the enemy being larger than them, has effectively delayed the Russian military’s combat activities.’ In South East Asia the invasion will have strategic consequences for Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea who have announced plans to increase their defence budgets. As with Taiwan, the Australian, Japanese, and South Korean militaries will closely study Ukraine’s combat experience in the war with a special focus on how smaller armies can inflict high casualties and destroy large amounts of military equipment when fighting against larger adversaries (in South-East Asia their focus would be China, rather than Russia). The AKUS alliance by the US, UK and Australia is now seen in a more positive fashion as a portent of how regions should create military alliances to combat revanchist powers. Other pro-Western democracies in South-East Asia may seek to join AKUS.

Trans-Atlantic and European Security The Russian invasion represents a major attack against the international liberal order. The number of NATO members who will increase their defence spending above two percent of GDP will grow. In 2006, NATO defence ministers agreed that members should spend two percent of their GDP on defence, a resolution re-confirmed in 2014 at the Wales summit of NATO. Nevertheless, only a third of 30 NATO members spend two percent of their GDP on defence. NATO is reinvigorated and more united than at any time in the last three decades. Majorities in hitherto neutral Finland and Sweden are now in favour of their countries joining NATO which took place in 2022. Until the invasion Sweden had pursued a similar

GLOBAL CRISIS 247 policy as Germany of not sending arms to conflict zones; Russia’s military aggression changed both of their stances. Sweden and Finland are sending military equipment to Ukraine. NATO unveiled a new Strategic Concept at its June 2022 summit in Madrid that outlined how it would respond to new security challenges in the next decade. NATO’s Strategic Concept defines Russia as the ‘most significant and direct threat’ to Trans-Atlantic security. The Concept addressed China for the first time and the challenges Beijing poses toward the alliance’s security, interests, and values. Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration had hoped that European and Canadian members of NATO would focus on Europe while the US ‘parked Russia’ and focused on deterring China. After Russia’s invasion this became no longer feasible. Every country bordering Russia will be now forced to revise its security calculus. With Belarus becoming a Russian satellite state, Russia will use its territory to station armed forces that would pose a direct threat to Poland and the three Baltic states. The Suwalki Gap, a difficult to defend narrow piece of land between Belarus and the Russian region of Kaliningrad connecting the three Baltic states to Poland, could be more quickly closed during a Russian-NATO war. The Belarusian constitution was changed in February 2022, not coincidentally three days after Ukraine was invaded, to allow the stationing of Russian nuclear weapons. The sham referendum removed article 18 that had declared Belarus to be a ‘nuclear-free zone.’ The three Baltic states feel particularly vulnerable as small states on the edge of Europe. Estonia and Latvia have sizeable Russian speaking populations who were moved there when they were part of the USSR. NATO is increasing its military deployments to Poland, Romania, and the three Baltic states. The US may again build up its forces to levels last seen during the Cold War. At the same time, four of the countries that feel vulnerable to a Russian threat allowed themselves to become very reliant on Russian gas: Lithuania (42 percent), Estonia (46 percent), Poland (55 percent), and especially Latvia (100 percent) until the invasion.

248 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Because of the close ties between populist nationalist leader Viktor Orban and the Kremlin, Hungary is pursuing a similar policy to Serbia of opposing sanctions, particularly on Russian energy, importing 95 percent of its gas from Russia. Orban’s Hungary has refused to allow weapons transfers from Western countries through its territory to Ukraine. Orban’s pro-Russian nationalist position has led to poor relations with Poland which, although also populist nationalist, is a strong opponent of Russian imperialism. In the view of Germany, the invasion has led to Europe entering a Zeitenwende (end of an era). In a revolutionary speech to the German parliament, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: ‘With the attack on Ukraine, Putin is not just seeking to wipe an independent country of the map. He is demolishing the European security order that had prevailed for almost half a century.’ Germany’s decades of Ostpolitik believing trade with Russia and maintaining a dialogue with the Kremlin would integrate the country into Europe is over. Putinversteher (Putin Understander), the Germans who called for this dialogue, have become a marginalised group. The EU has awoken, like Germany, to the need to forge a new policy of deterrence and containment against imperialist Russia, as during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the EU, with Germany taking the head, favoured dialogue with Russia and not cutting ties. German elites no longer believe economic inter-dependence prevents conflict. The EU and NATO both view Putin’s war against Ukraine as also a war against their international organisations. Germany cancelled the Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which had cost $10 billion to build, and dropped its opposition to removing Russia from the SWIFT payments system, which was described as a ‘financial declaration of war.’ In the Kremlin’s language, mimicking its term for invading Ukraine, removing Russia from SWIFT was tantamount to a ‘special financial operation.’ Germany is supplying Ukraine with military equipment, although less than it could. Germany has outlined plans to increase defence spending above two percent of GDP, a step supported by 78 percent of Germans.

GLOBAL CRISIS 249 The EU for the first time in its history agreed to militarily support a country at war. The 500 million Euros European Peace Facility will supply defensive and lethal weapons to Ukraine. The EU outlined a large amount of financial assistance available to its 27 members to draw upon to send military equipment to Ukraine. The invasion and ensuing crisis will make it imperative the EU develops a security dimension to its Eastern Partnership launched in 2010. Until now, the Eastern Partnership has mainly focused on economic, social, trade, and political affairs. In brokering a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia and agreeing to become a provider of military equipment to Ukraine, the EU is becoming a European security provider. The invasion is having a profound influence on the US. Unlike under President Trump, the Joe Biden administration has successfully cooperated with European countries throughout the crisis in developing NATO and EU responses to Russian ultimatums, coordinating sanctions against Russia, and providing security assistance to Ukraine. Trump’s chances of a comeback in the 2024 US elections now seem more difficult to accomplish both because of his earlier fondness for Putin and his leadership of the January 2021 coup d’état. Trump had supported the annexation of Crimea because, as he said, they all speak Russian. He initially downplayed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying Putin’s decision was driven by a desire to recreate the Soviet Union in which there was ‘a lot of love.’ Trump clearly was unable to condemn the invasion because he has always been unable to criticise Putin. The invasion ended Western acceptance of dirty Russian money. After the sanctioning of Russian oligarchs, such as Roman Abramowych, Putin’s two-decade strategic use of corruption in the West to buy influence among ruling elites has ended. The July 2022 resignation of Johnson as UK Prime minister is opening new evidence of his undeclared links to Lebedev, the former KGB officer and Russian oligarch who owns the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers. The assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs could be nationalised and used in the rebuilding of a post-war Ukraine.

250 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE

International Justice Russia’s justification for its so-called special military operation was to prevent genocide of the Russian-speaking population in the Donbas. In a ruling made on 16 March 2022, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest UN court based in The Hague, threw this claim out as bogus and demanded Russia immediately end its war. On the same day, Russia was ejected from membership of the Council of Europe. The United Nations has shown itself to be ineffective when one of its founding members—Ukraine—is being invaded. Russia has torn up the UN Charter. With the UN security council unable to act in the face of Moscow’s permanent veto power there is a dire need for fundamental reform of this international organisation. Addressing the UN General Assembly, President Zelenskyy said: ‘We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the UN Security Council into a right to kill. Which undermines the whole architecture of global security. Which allows evil to go unpunished and spread around the world. Destroying everything that can work for peace and security. If this continues, the finale will be that each state will rely only on the power of weapons to ensure its security, not on international law or on international institutions. Then, the UN should simply be dissolved.’

Both the UK and US governments have described Russian leaders, including Putin, as war criminals. US Secretary of State Blinken said the US had seen ‘very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians which would constitute a war crime.’ In mid-March 2022, the US Senate unanimously adopted a resolution, strongly condemning the ‘ongoing violence, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and systematic human rights abuses continually being carried out by the Russian Armed Forces and their proxies and President Putin's military commanders, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin.’ The resolution ‘encourages member states to petition the ICC and the ICJ to authorise any and all pending investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Armed Forces and their proxies and President Putin's military commanders, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin.’ Furthermore, the US Senate ‘supports any investigation into war crimes,

GLOBAL CRISIS 251 crimes against humanity, and systematic human rights abuses levied by President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Security Council, the Russian Armed Forces and their proxies, and President Putin's military commanders.’ In July 2022, both houses of the US Congress adopted a resolution describing Russian policies in Ukraine as ‘genocide.’ UK Prime Minister Johnson believed Putin had committed war crimes. Johnson compared Putin to Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević who conducted his own defence in a five-year trial which ended without a verdict when he died in prison from heart ailments in March 2006. UK Justice Secretary Dominic Raab stated the UK has a ‘track record’ in acting as a jailer for warlords, including Radovan Karadzic, the former president of Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serbian Republic), and Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia. Raab raised the possibility of Putin being tried and convicted for war crimes. He insisted the UK would do ‘whatever is necessary’ to help the ICC bring Putin to justice, by ‘supporting the court on everything from information co-operation, witness relocation, forensics to sentence enforcement.’

Economic and Financial Impacts Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will impact citizens in the Western world. With inflation rising, governments may be tempted to intervene to stabilise financial systems. Rising market turbulence, decline in confidence and unstable stock markets are an outcome of Russia’s invasion and war. Economies, which were beginning to grow after the covid pandemic, including Ukraine’s, will be negatively affected. Sluggish growth is very likely. Higher borrowing costs will impact upon mortgage rates. The economic and financial impact of the sanctions will be worse than the 1998 crash. Russia will be faced with annual inflation of 30-40 percent. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled since the invasion and crackdown inside Russia. Since the sanctions were imposed the Russian ruble has been in free fall, losing 40 percent of its value, although it eventually returned to its pre-sanctions level. Russia’s Central Bank cannot

252 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE access its $630 billion (accounting for 40 percent of GDP) in foreign reserves held at foreign banks and therefore these funds cannot be used to prop up the ruble. These frozen funds maybe nationalised and used to rebuild post-war Ukraine. Russia’s stock exchange halted trading after share prices collapsed by 90 percent. Russian export companies are required to sell 80 percent of their foreign currency reserves to prop up the ruble. Limits have been imposed on the transfer abroad of foreign currency. Russia needs foreign currency to pay for a third of its imports, but this is unavailable. Global shipping is cutting its ties to Russia. Maersk, Ocean Network Express, Hapag-Lloyd, and MSC have pulled out of Russia. Western ports are closed to Russian ships and Russian cargo delivered in non-Russian ships. International travel for Russians was made more difficult. Visa and Mastercard no longer operate in Russia. Meanwhile, hard currency will be difficult to find as Western sanctions has wiped out their savings and cut them from the world. One goal of Western sanctions is to hurt both the Russian state and Russian citizens to encourage them to understand the consequences of the war. In September 2022, the EU suspended its visa agreement with Russia. Russians have become unwelcome in the West. Western governments have cut ties to Russian higher educational institutions.

Russian Energy Russia’s invasion has destroyed the internationalisation of its economy over the last two to three decades. Russia is no longer part of the international economy and globalised world. Russia’s image and reputation as a reliable supplier of energy is ruined. Russian oil and gas, which accounted for 35 percent and 29 percent respectively of European supplies in 2021, is in free fall. Europe is finding alternatives to Russian gas in other countries gas, renewables, LNG, and nuclear power. Algeria has existing pipelines to Spain and Italy which could be used to a greater extent than at present. LNG supplies could be increased to EU member states from Nigeria through Morocco and Algeria. Ironically, Europe’s ending of its reliance on Russian energy could therefore

GLOBAL CRISIS 253 boost the US as the world’s biggest supplier of LNG. Azerbaijan is also another source of alternative energy to Russian for European customers which is set to grow in volume. Russia’s exports of oil and gas to Europe are the mainstay of its economy and finances, contributing 40 percent of the government budget and half of its export earnings. Because some countries need more time to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, oil and gas exports were not immediately sanctioned. The US and UK sanctioned Russian oil and gas exports but they were both small importers. Not sanctioning Russian oil and gas initially left Gazprombank and Sberbank inside SWIFT because EU countries had to pay for Russian energy through these two banks. Western sanctions and Europe’s ending of its dependency on Russian oil and gas will lead to the stagnation of this sector of its economy. Western finance and technology are no longer available because of sanctions. Russian oil and gas production will decline thereby undermining and debasing Russia’s most important source of economic power. Half of Russia’s 7.5 million barrels of oil produced each day went to Europe, which is no longer the case from the end of 2022. A large proportion of this oil is being bought by China and India. Imports of Russian oil and gas are declining because of indirect sanctions and self-sanctioning by buyers, shippers, and insurance companies. Banks are backing off from providing finance for trade in Russian energy. Public opinion is applying pressure on Western companies to no longer purchase Russian oil and gas. In Summer 2022, Russia began weaponising gas against Europe that will be a major home goal as Europe says Nyet! to Russian gas from 2023. As Europe reduces and ends its reliance on Russia energy, China will be unable to become an alternative market. In 2021, the year before the invasion, China imported a paltry 10 billion cubic metres of gas from Russia compared to 175 imported by Europe. China and Russia are connected by the Power of Siberia pipeline which does not currently have the capacity to take higher volumes of gas. Russia’s oil and gas pipelines were built by the Soviet Union to transport energy to Europe, not to East Asia.

254 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE

Economic and Financial Impact on Ukraine Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended an upward recovery of Ukraine’s economy, and its impact will be far more severe on Ukraine’s economy than the 2014 crisis. With Ukraine’s economy set to collapse by 40 percent in 2022, there are danger signs of higher inflation of upwards of 25 percent, unemployment, declining tax revenues, and high government spending on the military and other war time services. The worst hit is customs revenues because of Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports with revenues falling to a third of their pre-invasion levels. In 2021, the hryvnya was in the top ten performing currencies in its strength against the US dollar. A floating exchange rate has led to a devaluation, but not collapse, in the hryvnya. Ukraine’s foreign exchange reserves have declined from 30 to 25 billion in six months of war. In the absence of access to private capital markets, Ukraine’s monthly budget deficit of $58 billion is covered by taxes, military bonds and foreign financial assistance. The US, EU, and World Bank are providing upwards of $4 billion each month to cover the salaries of civil servants, teachers and other state and local employees to maintain government continuity and a functioning state. Russia’s invasion closed Nord Stream 2, a demand that Ukraine had long been making, ensuring it would continue to remain a major gas transit country. Despite the invasion, Ukraine’s transportation system and railways continue to operate, although airlines are no longer able to fly to Ukraine because it is a war zone. The Ukrainian government, parliament, president, and banking system continue to operate. There is no sign of Ukraine’s financial system collapsing. Ukraine’s economic growth is negatively affected by damage to infra-structure, trade disruption, and Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II. Approximately a quarter of Ukraine’s population, or 12 million, became IDP’s or refugees. One positive sign is that 60 percent (4.8 million) of the 7.6 million Ukrainians who fled Ukraine at the beginning of Russia’s invasion have returned. This has boosted the economy with the number of companies ceasing operations declining from 32 to 17 percent. Other

GLOBAL CRISIS 255 positive signs are Ukraine’s banking system continues to operate with bank revenues increasing by 11 percent in the first four months of 2022. Collection of tax revenues are at 70 percent of their pre-invasion levels and government expenditure on security, defence, social welfare, education, and medicine remains relatively stable. The impact of the invasion on Ukraine’s economy has been mixed. 41 percent of companies are fully operational with the remainder working part time. Overall 75 percent of companies continuing to operate although only 14 percent of them do so in the same manner as prior to the invasion. A third of companies have relocated from eastern to western Ukraine, a step assisted by government grants. 120 companies have moved to the Trans-Carpathian region in the far west of Ukraine. Two sectors which have been worst hit are metallurgy, which was heavily concentrated in Ukraine’s south-east, and the agricultural sector. Ukraine’s trade was severely disrupted by Russia’s invasion. 2021 had been a bumper grain harvest with 32mn tons of different grains, 11 percent higher than previous records. Of these, Ukraine planned to export 75.8 million tons of grains, including 21million of wheat and 31million of corn. Ukraine was a major trading nation in wheat (ten percent of global trade), corn (14 percent), and sunflower oil (37 percent). Ukraine will be able to sow 80 percent of its 2021 levels and to produce approximately 70-80 percent of the 2021 harvest. The main markets for Ukrainian foodstuffs were the Middle East, especially Egypt, Africa, and China. Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports until July 2022 reduced the country’s export potential by between a quarter and a half. 90 million tons of grains were blocked in Ukrainian ports with a loss of $170 million per day. Ukraine’s liberation of Snake Island changed the dynamics by allowing exports to resume through Romania. Control over Snake Island allowed ships to leave Ukrainian ports and reach the Danube-Black Sea Sulina canal, and onwards to Constanta, Romania. In July 2022, an agreement negotiated by Turkey with the participation of the UN unblocked Ukraine’s ports and exports resumed.

256 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Ukraine’s economic recovery in 2023 will be dependent upon when the war ends, what kind of political settlement will be signed, when reconstruction would begin, and how many refugees would return to Ukraine. The liberation of southern Ukraine would improve the size of the area that could be sown and provide access to ports for exports. Ukraine’s economy is unlikely to recover to its pre-invasion levels for another decade. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine halted economic recovery, successful integration into the EU since 2014, and re-orientation of Ukrainian trade away from Russia to the EU and China. Post-war reconstruction will reap benefits from the inflow of huge volumes of financial support for the rebuilding of the country. Ukraine’s rebuilding will bring modernity amid the destruction of much of its Soviet architecture and factories. The war has damaged or destroyed upwards of $700 billions of infra-structure, offices, civilian residences, and direct and indirect losses from the decline in GDP, cessation of foreign investment, labour outflows and increased military budget. At a July 2022 conference in Lugano, Switzerland the Ukrainian government presented a $750 billion rebuilding plan for Ukraine over the next decade. The EU would work with the Ukrainian authorities, international financial organisations and international donor conferences to create a reconstruction platform to support the rebuilding of Ukraine as a European democratic state. The costs for Ukraine’s rebuilding are planned to come from domestic and international financial institutions, the EU, Western countries, and confiscated Russian assets. Domestically, the Ukrainian president and parliament have nationalised Russian assets and placed them into a National Investment Fund. President Zelensky promised that ‘Russia must pay for what it has destroyed in Ukraine.’ The assets of Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned and Russian Central Bank reserves frozen in the West are two potential sources for Ukraine’s rebuilding. Half of Russia’s Central Bank foreign exchange reserves—$300 billion—are frozen in the West. The US, Canada, and EU support the confiscation of these assets and are preparing legislation towards this goal. The precedent is the US nationalising assets in the Afghan Central Bank to pay for victims of terrorism.

GLOBAL CRISIS 257 Legal battles will inevitably hold up the use of confiscated assets. Ukraine is also proposing Western financial institutions write off the country’s national debt. Key Points 

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a global crisis which is affecting a multitude of areas. Russia is seeking to use the war and crisis to end the US-led unipolar world and international liberal order created after World War II and the end of the Cold War. An unintended consequence has been the reinvigoration of NATO as a defensive alliance and enlarging it with the admission of Finland and Sweden. Spearheaded by leading NATO members, an unprecedented forty countries are supplying Ukraine with security and military assistance. The EU has understood the need to build a security dimension to its Eastern Partnership, as seen in its brokering of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia and provision of military support to Ukraine. Russia will score a major home goal when it loses its monopolistic position as the main provider of energy to Europe. Russia has lost its ability to use oligarchs to corrupt and influence Western elites. China’s rise as a great power will benefit from Russia’s faster decline as a great power. The scale of destruction of Ukraine by Russia’s invading army is colossal and could reach as high as one trillion dollars. Nationalised Russian government and oligarch assets could be used to rebuild post-war Ukraine.

Suggested Reading Chkaidz, Nicholas, Yurov, Ivan, and Kuzio, Taras. (2022). Opposition in Russia to the Invasion of Ukraine: How Much of a Threat to Putin’s Regime? Henry Jackson Society Research Brief, 23 June. https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/opposition-in-russia/ Fukiyama, Francis. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man, New York, and London: Free Press.

258 FASCISM AND GENOCIDE Fukiyama, F. (2022). ‘Putin’s war on the liberal order,’ Financial Times, 4 March. https://www.ft.com/content/d0331b51-5d0e-4132-9f97-c3f 41c7d75b3 Hall, Ben. (2022). ‘How Putin’s assault on Ukraine turned Europe’s Russia policy on its head,’ Financial Times, 1 March. https://www. ft.com/content/c60bf50e-27f2-495f-a57c-d025416f6ab3 Kuzio, T. (2021). Weaponisation of Refugees in Putin’s Long-Standing Hybrid War Against the West, Henry Jackson Society Research Brief, 2 December. https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/putins-weaponisation-of-refugees/ Kuzio, T. (2022). What Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Tells Us About Chinese Policy Towards Taiwan, Henry Jackson Society Research Brief, 16 March. https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/what-russias -invasion-of-ukraine-tells-us-about-chinese-policy-towards-taiwan/ Pose, Adam, S. (2022). ‘The End of Globalization? What Russia’s War in Ukraine Means for the World Economy,’ Foreign Affairs, 17 March. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2022-03-17/endglobalization Wigglesworth, Robin, Smith, Colby, and Jones, Claire. (2022). ‘The West’s hybrid war on Russia,’ Financial Times, 4 March. https://www. ft.com/content/ff95ee3f-a1b8-4a54-9657-6a1aaecc105f

UKRAINIAN VOICES Collected by Andreas Umland 1

Mychailo Wynnyckyj Ukraine’s Maidan, Russia’s War A Chronicle and Analysis of the Revolution of Dignity With a foreword by Serhii Plokhy ISBN 978-3-8382-1327-9

2

Olexander Hryb Understanding Contemporary Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism The Post-Soviet Cossack Revival and Ukraine’s National Security With a foreword by Vitali Vitaliev ISBN 978-3-8382-1377-4

3

Marko Bojcun Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine Selected Essays 1990–2015 With a foreword by John-Paul Himka ISBN 978-3-8382-1368-2

4

Volodymyr Yermolenko (ed.) Ukraine in Histories and Stories Essays by Ukrainian Intellectuals With a preface by Peter Pomerantsev ISBN 978-3-8382-1456-6

5

Mykola Riabchuk At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization ISBN 978-3-8382-1484-9

6

Marta Dyczok Ukraine Calling A Kaleidoscope from Hromadske Radio 2016–2019 With a foreword by Andriy Kulykov ISBN 978-3-8382-1472-6

7

Olexander Scherba Ukraine vs. Darkness Undiplomatic Thoughts With a foreword by Adrian Karatnycky ISBN 978-3-8382-1501-3

8

Olesya Yaremchuk Our Others Stories of Ukrainian Diversity With a foreword by Ostap Slyvynsky Translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins and Hanna Leliv ISBN 978-3-8382-1475-7

9

Nataliya Gumenyuk Die verlorene Insel Geschichten von der besetzten Krim Mit einem Vorwort von Alice Bota Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Johann Zajaczkowski ISBN 978-3-8382-1499-3

10

Olena Stiazhkina Zero Point Ukraine Four Essays on World War II Translated from the Ukrainian by Svitlana Kulinska ISBN 978-3-8382-1550-1

11

Oleksii Sinchenko, Dmytro Stus, Leonid Finberg (compilers) Ukrainian Dissidents An Anthology of Texts ISBN 978-3-8382-1551-8

12

John-Paul Himka Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944 ISBN 978-3-8382-1548-8

13

Andrey Demartino False Mirrors The Weaponization of Social Media in Russia’s Operation to Annex Crimea With a foreword by Oleksiy Danilov ISBN 978-3-8382-1533-4

14

Svitlana Biedarieva (ed.) Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021 ISBN 978-3-8382-1526-6

15

Olesya Khromeychuk A Loss The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister With a foreword by Andrey Kurkov ISBN 978-3-8382-1570-9

16

Marieluise Beck (Hg.) Ukraine verstehen Auf den Spuren von Terror und Gewalt Mit einem Vorwort von Dmytro Kuleba ISBN 978-3-8382-1653-9

17

Stanislav Aseyev Heller Weg Geschichte eines Konzentrationslagers im Donbass 2017–2019 Aus dem Russischen übersetzt von Martina Steis und Charis Haska ISBN 978-3-8382-1620-1

18

Mykola Davydiuk Wie funktioniert Putins Propaganda? Anmerkungen zum Informationskrieg des Kremls Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Christian Weise ISBN 978-3-8382-1628-7

19

Olesya Yaremchuk Unsere Anderen Geschichten ukrainischer Vielfalt Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Christian Weise ISBN 978-3-8382-1635-5

20

Oleksandr Mykhed „Dein Blut wird die Kohle tränken“ Über die Ostukraine Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Simon Muschick und Dario Planert ISBN 978-3-8382-1648-5

21

Vakhtang Kipiani (Hg.) Der Zweite Weltkrieg in der Ukraine Geschichte und Lebensgeschichten Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Margarita Grinko ISBN 978-3-8382-1622-5

22

Vakhtang Kipiani (ed.) World War II, Uncontrived and Unredacted Testimonies from Ukraine Translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins and Daisy Gibbons ISBN 978-3-8382-1621-8

23

Dmytro Stus Vasyl Stus Life in Creativity Translated from the Ukrainian by Ludmila Bachurina ISBN 978-3-8382-1631-7

24

Vitalii Ogiienko (ed.) The Holodomor and the Origins of the Soviet Man Reading the Testimony of Anastasia Lysyvets With forewords by Natalka Bilotserkivets and Serhy Yekelchyk Translated from the Ukrainian by Alla Parkhomenko and Alexander J. Motyl ISBN 978-3-8382-1616-4

25

Vladislav Davidzon Jewish-Ukrainian Relations and the Birth of a Political Nation

Selected Writings 2013-2021 With a foreword by Bernard-Henri Lévy ISBN 978-3-8382-1509-9

26

Serhy Yekelchyk Writing the Nation The Ukrainian Historical Profession in Independent Ukraine and the Diaspora ISBN 978-3-8382-1695-9

27

Ildi Eperjesi, Oleksandr Kachura Shreds of War Fates from the Donbas Frontline 2014-2019 With a foreword by Olexiy Haran ISBN 978-3-8382-1680-5

28

Oleksandr Melnyk World War II as an Identity Project Historicism, Legitimacy Contests, and the (Re-)Construction of Political Communities in Ukraine, 1939–1946 With a foreword by David Marples ISBN 978-3-8382-1704-8

29

Olesya Khromeychuk Ein Verlust Die Geschichte eines gefallenen ukrainischen Soldaten, erzählt von seiner Schwester Mit einem Vorwort von Andrej Kurkow Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Lily Sophie ISBN 978-3-8382-1770-3

30

Tamara Martsenyuk, Tetiana Kostiuchenko (eds.) Russia’s War in Ukraine 2022 Personal Experiences of Ukrainian Scholars ISBN 978-3-8382-1757-4

31

Ildikó Eperjesi, Oleksandr Kachura Shreds of War. Vol. 2

Fates from Crimea 2015–2022 With a foreword by Anton Shekhovtsov and an interview of Oleh Sentsov ISBN 978-3-8382-1780-2

32

Yuriy Lukanov, Tetiana Pechonchik (eds.) The Press: How Russia destroyed Media Freedom in Crimea With a foreword by Taras Kuzio ISBN 978-3-8382-1784-0

33

Megan Buskey Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet

A Family Story of Exile and Return ISBN 978-3-8382-1691-1

34

Vira Ageyeva Behind the Scenes of the Empire

Essays on Cultural Relationships between Ukraine and Russia ISBN 978-3-8382-1748-2

35

Marieluise Beck (ed.) Understanding Ukraine

Tracing the Roots of Terror and Violence With a foreword by Dmytro Kuleba ISBN 978-3-8382-1773-4

36

Olesya Khromeychuk A Loss

The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister, 2nd edn. With a foreword by Philippe Sands With a preface by Andrii Kurkov ISBN 978-3-8382-1870-0

37

Taras Kuzio, Stefan Jajecznyk-Kelman Fascism and Genocide Russia’s War Against Ukrainians ISBN 978-3-8382-1791-8

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