What Russia Must Do With Ukraine

[Renauda]

@Mik

You realise of course that that lays out Putin’s distorted understanding of Russia and its role in the world as the third Rome. It projects that schizoid ideology on to the people. Chilling is an understatement.

[Renauda]

@Mik

The author of that op-Ed is a bonafide nutter:

http://eu.eot.su/tag/timofey-sergeytsev/

[Mik]

Good. Hopefully it is nonsense.

[Renauda]

@Mik

Nonsense of course, but insidious state approved propaganda all the same.

[Renauda]

Although I question Snyder’s free use of the term genocide at this stage of the war, the following is an excellent analysis of the Russian op-Ed/manifest0 including a link to a full translation into English:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook?r=17wfy3&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

[Horace]

Snyder enjoys his status as a world's leading historian, and I suspect he recognizes the value of a certain level of hyperbole to that end. He gets invited on Bill Maher. He was called upon to share his opinions when Trump was elected President, and his opinions were uniformly histrionic and his predictions were uniformly wrong, in retrospect. Though if one believes Jan 6 was an insurrection orchestrated by Trump, as I'm sure Snyder does, then maybe he felt vindicated. Let's hope the facts of this "genocide" resemble a real genocide as much as Jan 6 resembled an insurrection.

[Renauda]

@Horace

Thank you for your input.

[Horace]

@Renauda said in What Russia Must Do With Ukraine:

@Horace

Thank you for your input.

You're welcome, @Renauda

[Mik]

Is there another word that works better? Eradication of the Ukrainian people/state?

Genocide, while technically improperly used, gets the message across.

[Renauda]

@Mik

I agree. The term genocide gets bandied about too often without regard to its true legal definition. I have a close friend who worked on the War Crimes Tribunal investigations in Bosnia Herzegovina and Rwanda. He too agrees all too often the word is improperly used. I spoke with him at length on a Zoom call this am about the article and Snyder’s essay. The Russian article is explicit about eradicating not only Ukraine as a sovereign state but the very notion of Ukrainian as as a national and cultural identity. If it can be determined that both are intended outcomes of Russian policy and actions against Ukraine and Ukrainians, the charge of genocide may very well be warranted against the Russian state and its officials.