"There is no room for goodness. Just kill! Don't pity them, don't! (...) Only total executions. (...) No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to live. Execute, execute, and execute."
Deputy Chairman of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Medvedev on what to do with Ukrainians.
Calling for mass executions of "Ukrainian monsters," Medvedev ends his appeal with the final lines of the famous 1942 verse by Konstantin Simonov "Kill him!":
So kill at least one of them
And as soon as you can. Still
Each one you chance to see!
Kill him! Kill him! Kill!
Thanks to Simonov and the prominent Soviet journalist Ilya Ehrenburg (who argued that "If you haven't killed at least one German in a day, your day is wasted"), the words "Kill a German!" became one of the most popular slogans of Soviet WWII propaganda.
Now Medvedev adopts the slogan for the needs of Russia's own invading troops, urging everyone to kill at least one Ukrainian. The reason is simple: "They have no right to live."
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Russian KA-52 pilot and milblogger Aleksei Voevoda admits that a woman – a gas station operator – was kidnapped and tortured by Russian troops in a basement in Zaporizhzhia Oblast because of him simply for saying, "Good evening. Tap your card" in Ukrainian. A few thoughts: 🧵
We may safely assume that this was not a one-off episode and that punishment for speaking Ukrainian is a systematic practice in the occupied parts of Ukraine's south. Voevoda himself claims that it helped to "cleanse [Mariupol and Berdiansk] from khokhol shit." 2/
Voevoda acknowledged this in a conversation with prominent pro-war blogger Kirill Fedorov, who recently called Ukrainians "biological trash." Such language in a war context is a call for action. This kind of eliminationist rhetoric is ideologically driven. 3/
Several Africans were injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Tatarstan. Russia is now exploiting the attack to spark anti-Ukrainian feelings. If anything, however, this incident can elucidate a gendered and racialized reality behind Russia's charm offensive in Africa. 🧵
"I'm from Kenya. I'm a person of color (...) Those who attacked our hostel today are real barbarians," the person on the video says. They are one of the participants of the "Alabuga Start" program, launched in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. 2/
The program targets young people from countries that Russia officially recognizes "friendly," mostly from Africa. Through ads in Russian international media and on the program's social media accounts, they are recruited to move to Russia. 3/
This quote perfectly encapsulates Putin's arguments for war on Ukraine. Show it to any Russia sympathizer, in academia or beyond, and they will say it's a great explanation of why Russia is right – or not entirely wrong – invading Ukraine.
There's a small problem, however: 👇
This quote has nothing to do with either Ukraine or Russia. We've been there, haven't we?
The quote is from Hitler's famous Wilhelmshaven speech, where he reassured that Germany "does not dream of attacking other nations," but will never "tolerate intimidation, or even a policy of encirclement."
A 1886 city map of Bukhara, the capital of a Tsarist protectorate in Central Asia. The map was part of a secret Russian report to the General Staff that recommended capturing the city, razing its center to the ground, and abolishing the semblance of the colony's independence.🧵
The importance of Bukhara was immense, the author argued. It was the last remnant of Central Asia's bygone greatness. Worse still, it was a "hearth of Islam." The "flame," he argued, "can only be extinguished and covered in blood; the hearth itself, (...) must be scattered ... 2/
... piece by piece and destroyed so that it cannot be restored, and its priests must be eliminated in front of the Russian soldier, before the eyes of the entire people, so that they lose in their eyes their charm and greatness as much as possible." 3/
I'm writing a book on Ukraine under Russian rule, and here's what I have to say. This situation is radically different from Ukraine's Soviet or tsarist experience. This is Russia's fascist moment of the interwar type, although postponed for a century. 🧵
It originates in the discourses about national rejuvenation and degeneration, frustration over the post-imperial arrangement and the liberal order, dissatisfaction with the national borders ... 2/
… drawn in 1919. Its major challenge is an "enemy" group whose very existence is believed to be a result of a global conspiracy intended to destroy the national body – the Ukrainians. Recasting them into the inferior kind of Russians and eliminating ... 3/
In anticipation of a quick victory, Russia’s flagship news show “Vesti nedeli” gives the domestic audience two reasons of why Russia invaded Ukraine: to reshape the world and to eliminate the artificial Ukrainian nation. 1/
The Kremlin's chief propagandist Dmitry Kiselev says that Russia's primary goal is the imposition of a new world order (“novaia konstruktsiia mira”). The message “Bor'ba za mir” is intentionally ambivalent. It means both “a struggle for peace” and “a struggle for the world.” 2/
The second goal is, naturally, to abolish Ukraine as such. The existence of Ukraine creates an artificial division *within* the Russian nation based on political grounds, like in East and West Germany or in North and South Korea. 3/