I watched Russia invade Chechnya and massacre 100,000 people, levelling Grozny. They invaded Georgia and took 20% of the country, bombed Syrians for years on end. Now they’ve unleashed unspeakable horrors on Ukraine. And there has never been any justice for these crimes. This is who the Americans now consider a strategic partner. Russia is supported by the far right and the far left.

There has to be an end to Russian violence. But it will only come when they are called to account for it. No more sacrificed people.

🧵 The US State Dept. has a substack. Their article the “Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” echoes Kremlin propaganda talking points and undermines democratic values.👇

statedept.substack.com/p/the-need-for… 1/ The document claims Western civilization is “under attack” from global elites and liberal institutions. This siege mentality and nostalgia for a lost heroic past is a classic feature of Kremlin rhetoric.

1/ The official count of civilians Russia has killed in Ukraine is a vast underestimation—and this gap in accounting is a major injustice against Ukrainians. 2/ The UN & official sources themselves admit their numbers are significant undercounts. As of July 2025, the UN reports 13,883 Ukrainian civilians killed, but says the actual figure is “considerably higher,” as many areas are inaccessible and countless deaths are unverified.

1/ In his 1993 Foreign Affairs essay, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” Mearsheimer argued that a nuclear-armed Ukraine was necessary to deter Russian aggression—an idea that wasn’t widely accepted at the time. And that the US should support this. 2/ Mearsheimer justified this by pointing to centuries of Russian domination and atrocities. He noted that newly independent Ukraine faced a powerful neighbor, and neither the US nor NATO would offer real security guarantees.

I don’t think people realize the extent to which Russians have dehumanized Ukrainians. Last week a Russian drone operator targeted a one year old baby in Kherson region. There is an entire curriculum for this hate. It’s taught. I don’t know how a society comes back from this. This program of dehumanizion and hate has completely transformed the Russian education system—this is now their development concept. I don’t think people understand how far gone this is and what it means for Russia’s future. It’s bleak. It’s generationally bleak.

Russian imperialism represents one of history's most systematic and enduring patterns of mass violence, spanning over 160 years from Tsarist expansion to Putin's current war in Ukraine. Here's what you need to know: CIRCASSIAN GENOCIDE (1860s)
Tsarist Russia systematically exterminated 95-97% of the Circassian people in North Caucasus.
1-1.5 MILLION killed or displaced
Entire villages burned alive
Russian generals called Circassians "subhuman filth"
Survivors force-marched to Ottoman Empire

The Trump administration is pro Russian. More evidence of this piles up every day.
A few examples: 1. The Trump administration has consistently placed more pressure on Ukraine than on Russia, often urging Ukraine to make concessions or accept ceasefires, while avoiding direct or forceful condemnation of Russian aggression.

In all occupied areas, Russia has banned Ukrainian language, culture and identity. A policy of elimination.
This is always what Russia's invasion was about. Since this has had some uptake—some reporting on conditions under Russian occupation: torture, forced passportization.

nytimes.com/2024/10/30/wor…

I'm a Ukrainian-Canadian Associate Prof of Public Admin. I bear witness to Russian committing genocide in Ukraine alongside a massive propaganda campaign by the Kremlin to whitewash these crimes in real time while undermining democracy and human rights globally. I've watched in horror as the the Kremlin has interfered in democratic elections including in the US in favor of Trump and have seen the Republican party fall to the far right, with a huge contingent supporting Russian fascism.

Russia prepared “execution lists" targeting teachers, journalists etc. to bring the population to heel. In all Russian occupied territories there are torture & detention facilities where people disappear. Kremlin orders to kill off civil society are being fulfilled. OHCHR report on widespread Russian torture of civilians in all areas they occupy.
ohchr.org/en/press-relea…

Now is a good time to look at Project 2025 which aims to "go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State." I'll focus on what it says about Ukraine.
documentcloud.org/documents/2408… Russia is clearly identified as a threat. But throughout the document, China is identified as a greater threat. In my reading, China's growing overt support for Russia makes the defeat of Russia more important for this conservative mandate.

U.N. Human Rights Council: Russian forces are raping and torturing children as young as four in Ukraine.
nbcnews.com/news/world/rus… Rape and sexual assault attributed to Moscow's forces in Ukraine are part of a Russian "military strategy" and a "deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims."
--UN envoy Pramila Patten.
france24.com/en/live-news/2…

My whole life I’ve encountered Russians who on first meeting were happy to tell me that Ukraine doesn’t exist & that Ukrainian is a stupid bad form of Russian….
On a ferry, at the airport, in a office elevator.
This is what we mean by Russian imperialism & it’s not just Putin.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1650133874913992707

Admittedly, the fellow in the elevator was not Russian, but a Polish Minister from PIS. I imagine he’s changed his tune.

But Russian imperialism… how does one change that ingrained culture?

This lady wants to dominate & subjugate peoples. She feels it her natural right.

Put the term "Russification" in any academic database and you'll get well-documented histories of the same tactics that Russia uses today: Invade, kill, Russify/forcefully assimilate, occupy the territory and hope people forget their own history. Rinse & repeat. Incredible that they think they can keep doing this. But here we are in 2023.
Take Crimea as an example. In the 1785 Census, Crimea was 84% Tartar (Qırımtatarlar), 2.2% Russian & others. Today its around 13% Tartar, 68% Russian & < 16% Ukrainian.

Together with @john_tomaney, we have guest edited a volume on the governance of land use in the journal @Land_MDPI . We've just published our introduction to the Special Issue that articulates the Governance of Land Use Conceptual Framework.
mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/3… At the OECD I had the absolute pleasure of co-leading a programme of research on the Governance of Land Use with my colleague @AbelSchumann under the leadership of @RudigerAhrend & @Garcilazo_Enri.

Somehow, the notion of Russia 'civilizing' its colonies persists in many quarters. I took classes in Uni where profs argued this. The reality is however colonization and persistent social stratification.
Take for example what happened in Kyrgyzstan... Kyrgyzstan became an ‘internal colony’ as a result of Imperial Russia’s conquest of Central Asia--Kyrgyz were given the status of ‘aliens.’ By 1912, 87,000 armed colonists held 4.5 million ha of arable & pasture lands, leaving 780,000 Kyrgyz with 3.7 million ha.

I'm sorry to report that my University has really let Ukrainian students down. Sharing here a note from @uvic's Ukrainian Students' Society on the escalating harassment and hate that they 've faced from the Young Communist League - a ratified club.
instagram.com/p/Cn3ECXCpJZr/… Young Communist League members have been spreading hate against Ukrainian students--@UVSS didn't take this seriously. Now Ukrainian students have been verbally assaulted and had their spaces vandalized -- YCL calling them "Nazi" etc.

Colonialism is many things--brutal, grotesque, hatful--but it's also a blindness. Discounting the knowledge and worldview of peoples who have/are facing colonization leads to blindness in understanding and decision making of colonial powers. The ongoing ignorance and discounting of the knowledge & worldviews of diverse Indigenous peoples worldwide is a very obvious example. Societies as a whole are far worse off for it.

I wonder what most Westerners understand of Russia’s war. As Yale Historian Timothy Snyder noted, it’s rare that a country pre-announce that its intention is to commit genocide—but Russia did just that. And it’s carrying this out now. Russian soldiers were instructed areas like Bucha & Irpin to kill everyone. Russian tv pundits casually discuss how many Ukrainians should be killed—4 or 6 million—to bring the population to submission. Putin recently made any crimes committed by soldiers in Ukraine legal.

My brother in law is from Donetsk. He fled when Russia invaded in 2014 but his parents remained. They’re there now. Won’t say more about them. Don’t want to identify them.
But among this very tiny sample, what do they think about the situation? All they really want is for this all to be over. Life in occupied Donetsk has been dreary and regime prevented them from ever seeing their grandchildren. They are simple people. They just want peace and are quite apolitical when it comes down to it.

This has been a really hard year. I remember when Russia first invaded in 2014 and Ukraine’s army had been gutted by Yanukovych. We were fundraising for everything. A real Peoples’ Army. The way Ukraine defended was incredible—truly David vs Goliath. But the response from the west was so weak. Russia got away with yet another land grab. Ukraine kept out of NATO.
And then the dehumanization of Ukrainians started to ramp up on Russian airwaves. They were preparing their population to commit genocide.