Why Genocide?
Russia has waged many wars since 1991. Only this one is genocidal. Here's why.
“First you think it’s just an elite that’s Ukrainian. Then you realize more people are Ukrainian. Then you realize there’s an entire Ukrainian nation. So, the logic is, ‘I have to kill more and more people in order to get to those Ukrainians who want to be Russians.’ And you do that long enough that you realize there aren’t very many Ukrainians like that. Suddenly, you find yourself in this completely genocidal position, which is where they are.”
—Yale historian Timothy Snyder explains the rationale behind Russia’s genocide in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, September 11th, 2023. Full transcript available here.
In some respects, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is hardly remarkable. Moscow has involved itself in numerous other wars since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Some it launched on its own, as it did in Moldova (1992), Chechnya (1994-96; 1999-2000), and Georgia (2008). It has also intervened in wars between other parties, as in Tajikistan (1992-97) and the Georgian regions of South Ossetia (1991-92) and Abkhazia (1992-93).
In every one of these conflicts, Russia bore responsibility for widespread atrocities, whether by its own forces or the clients it backed. In this way, too, its war on Ukraine is no different.
In one key regard, however, the attack on Ukraine is exceptional, and that is its genocidal character. There is some debate over whether Russia’s conduct meets the formal definition of genocide. But the fact remains that its current campaign is the only one in the post-Soviet era that has even elicited such accusations from mainstream experts. In no other instance—even Chechnya, featuring as it did the routine carpet bombing of civilian areas in addition to executions, torture, kidnappings, and sexual violence—was this true.
The implications, both for understanding the roots of the war and informing an appropriate policy stance on the part of the West, can hardly be overstated. Among other things, it requires that we dispense with two of the most cherished presumptions held by many Western observers: That NATO provoked the invasion by encroaching on Russia’s “legitimate security interests” and that a peace deal between the warring parties is advisable or even possible.
If this were a conventional war, one could conceivably point to NATO as a cause. But this is not a conventional war; it is a genocidal war. How, exactly, would the prospect of Ukraine in NATO account for the deportation to Russia of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children for “reeducation?” In what way would it rationalize the psychopathic fantasies which saturate Russia’s official rhetoric and state media coverage? On what possible grounds would it warrant Russia’s frenzied “de-Ukrainization” policies to erase Ukrainian identity?
The obvious answer is that it wouldn’t. If we seek an answer for Russia’s genocide, we must look elsewhere.
What genocide is…and is not
The word “genocide” is commonly used to describe all manner of things that do not call for its use. It is no mystery why. A term that is meant to denote a singular evil will necessarily serve as a catch-all slur. (Pro-tip: If you ever see Elon Musk call anything a “genocide,” it is probably not a genocide.)
Genocide is a specific legal concept. It has only ever had one definition—the one enshrined in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. The treaty defines genocide as any of five acts committed with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The five acts include (1) killing members of the group; (2) inflicting serious harm, whether mental or physical, on members of the group; (3) imposing conditions of life intended to destroy the group in whole or in part; (4) attempting to prevent births within the group; and (5) forcibly transferring children to another group.
The key part of the definition is the clause on intent. Acts such as killing and inflicting harm do not by themselves imply a genocide is happening. Only if they are undertaken with the intent to destroy one of the designated types of groups can they actually qualify.
Nor is that all. The intention must be to destroy the group as such. In other words, the victims have to be targeted because of their membership in the group—not, say, because they oppose the government’s policies. The Nazis killed Jews because they were Jews, not for any other reason.
The U.N. definition does have its critics. Some see it as overly restrictive and others not restrictive enough. Still, even those who find fault with it use it as their point of reference.
Lest anyone question how far Russia will go to expunge Ukraine from the map, the hysterical rhetoric from official sources should put such uncertainty to rest.
Nor is it a straightforward matter to determine whether a given party is committing genocide. It requires input from trained specialists with expertise in the relevant case law. When it comes to its war on Ukraine, however, Russia is seemingly hellbent on removing any doubt.
Intent to Destroy1
On the critical issue of intent, some experts argue that the pattern of atrocities committed by Russian forces might be proof enough to satisfy the requirement.
But we need not rely on Russia’s actions alone. That is because official Kremlin mouthpieces have a helpful tendency to broadcast its genocidal aims on a daily basis. Russian officials and state media organs regularly deny the existence of the Ukrainian nation and promise harsh reprisals against anyone who dares suggest otherwise.
Examples of such rhetoric are legion. In an infamous article from April 2022, state media agency RIA Novosti referred to Ukraine an “an artificial anti-Russian construct.” It also called for the murder of the entire Ukrainian elite along with anyone else who refuses to be Russified (English translation available here). Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and current deputy head of the Security Council, declared that Ukraine is a fake country which must “disappear for good.” Oleg Matveychev, an M.P., insisted that “Ukraine and Ukrainians should not exist in the future.”
Putin speaks in similar terms. In July 2021, he penned an entire essay to make the point that Ukraine is not real. In it, he pours scorn on the notion that there are “three separate Slavic peoples: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian, instead of the large Russian nation.” If Ukrainians continue to insist on their separateness, he warns, they will “destroy their own country,” adding that “we will never allow our historical territories and people…living there to be used against Russia.”
These are not empty words; by the time Putin wrote them, preparations were well underway for the 2022 invasion.
Lest anyone question how far Russia will go to expunge Ukraine from the map, the hysterical rhetoric from official sources should put such uncertainty to rest. “Eradicate everything that prevents [the] reunification” of the two countries, demands the Russian embassy in South Africa, quoting Putin himself. “No mercy to the Ukrainian population,” promises Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov. “Two million people” are “incurable” and “must be denazified, which means to be destroyed,” estimates Aleksei Zhuravlyov, an M.P.. “We’ll kill as many [Ukrainians] as we have to—one million, five million, or exterminate all of you,” affirms Pavel Gubarev, the onetime head of Russia’s proxy administration in Donetsk. “The total destruction of what is now anti-Russia Ukraine,” pledges former Putin adviser Sergei Karaganov. “Cruel and merciless” reprisals against any Ukrainian parents who refuse to enroll their children in Russian-administered schools, vows Alexander Dudka, the collaborationist mayor of Lazurne.
Russian lawmaker Andrei Gurulyov calls on the military to freeze and starve Ukrainians to compel them to flee abroad. Anton Krasovsky, the director of state media outlet RT, suggests drowning Ukrainian children. Kremlin propagandist Olga Skabeeva, going full-Nazi, proclaims “the Ukrainian question must be solved once and for all.” Russian forces, she adds, should “destroy every living thing in the Kharkiv region.”
As befits any genocide, prominent officials utilize dehumanizing language to numb soldiers and society at large to the reality of the atrocities. Take Medvedev, a living, breathing repository of putrid genocidal lingo. “Cockroaches,” “cancerous growth,” and “blood-sucking parasites” are merely some of the references the deputy head of the Security Council has used to describe Ukrainians. He has also adapted the Nazi term untermensch (subhuman) to concoct his own notion of an “unterukraine,” as if openly baiting an international tribunal to bring him up on the dock.
Underlying Russia’s genocide is the belief that Ukraine is not a real country and its people not a real nation. Ukrainians, according to this narrative, are just momentarily deluded Russians. The only solution is to continue murdering them. In the words of Yale historian Timothy Snyder:
Putin's notion that there is no Ukrainian language is like his idea that there is no Ukrainian country or Ukrainian people: It is genocidal, because only mass killing can make it true. … Putin takes it for granted that killing any number of people is preferable to admitting a mistake. Ideas matter. It is because he is wrong about everything that he must kill.”
But the question remains: Why do so many Russians believe this noxious rubbish? Where, exactly, does the idea of Ukrainians as an artificial nation come from? To answer, we must dive into Russia’s founding national myth—in particular, the idea of a thousand-year-old Russian nation-state with its origins in Kyiv.
Unpacking Russian mythology
The first thing to know about this narrative is that it is nonsense. Now, this is true for all nationalist lores which locate the roots of contemporary national communities in ancient kingdoms. Even by the standards of most, however, Russia’s is especially asinine.
In February, this dubious tale featured prominently in a widely panned interview between Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin. In it, the erstwhile FOX News host made the mistake of asking the Russian president to explain Moscow’s rationale for invading Ukraine. He was clearly hoping for a response that would pin the blame on the West, which Carlson views as effeminate and degraded.
What he got instead was a profoundly distorted “history” lesson in which Putin revealed the actual reasons Russia went to war—reasons Carlson did not like and, along with almost everyone else tuning in, found baffling.
I am not the first to point out the absurdities in Putin’s rant. Others have too, including historians such as David Marples, Jade McGlynn, Tom Holland, and Snyder, who emphasizes, as I do, its genocidal implications. But it is worth expanding on here, for reasons that will become clear in due course.
Long ago, Putin explains, the people of ancient Russia and Ukraine were united in one big happy family. Importantly, this big happy family was a Russian family:
In 988, Prince Vladimir, the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted Orthodoxy, or Eastern Christianity. From this time the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? Because of a single territory, integrated economic ties, one and the same language and, after the baptism of Russia, the same faith and rule of the prince. A centralized Russian state began to take shape.
Buried within the numerous falsehoods above are a few grains of truth. There was indeed a principality named Rus’ and centered in Kyiv. In time, it came to encompass broad swathes of modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, a piece of northwest Russia, and slivers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. This is why Putin finds Rus’ so fascinating: He too would like to control all that territory.
The problem, as far as many Russians are concerned, is that, beginning in the thirteenth century, a succession of foreign powers split up Rus’ into rival kingdoms. In the ensuing centuries, the regions that would one day form modern Ukraine and Belarus developed separately from their counterparts in current-day Russia.
First came the Mongols, who established suzerainty over much of the territory and divided the part that would later become Russia from the rest. Most of Ukraine and Belarus were incorporated into the Duchy of Lithuania with the remainder going to the Kingdom of Poland. Eventually, the whole area became part of the unified Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was the dastardly Poles, according to the Russian story, who deluded the people living there into thinking they were Ukrainian and Belarusian.
Today, Russia considers these nations and their languages to be artificial, or “fake,” in contrast to Russian, their “true” nationality and tongue. By invading Ukraine, it is merely correcting this great injustice and restoring unity to its former lands.
Most of the inhabitants of Rus’ did share a common religion and language. That language, notably, was not Russian, which did not yet exist. Rather, they spoke various dialects of another language now known as Old East Slavic, a precursor of modern Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian. They also lived under a single ruling family.
Aside from that, and despite what Putin would like you to think, there was not much that united them. In particular, there was nothing remotely akin to the centralized state he describes to Carlson. Instead, what state that existed was “an archipelago of largely self-regulating communities,” as one historian puts it.2
Nor was there anything like a modern-style nation. For most people, the word “nation” brings to mind a naturally occurring community predicated upon shared characteristics, whether language, religion, or ethnicity. The world is divided into nations and everybody in it can be comfortably allotted to a given national box.
There is a problem with this view, however. Anyone trying to divvy up humanity into nations on the basis of objective commonalities will inevitably encounter people who disagree with the national unit assigned to them. “We are not Russian,” they will say, “we are Ukrainian!”
What do you do then? Well, if you are Russia, you murder them. If, on the other hand, you are a reasonable person, you have no choice but to revise your definition of what a nation is—not a fixed community marked by immutable criteria but a fungible one based on how people define themselves.
Of all the timeless maxims guiding ethical conduct, “Don’t be like Hitler” has got to be near the top. It is one by which Russia is failing miserably to abide at the moment.
Did the subjects of Rus’ identify as a single people, much less one they considered “Russian?” The answer is no—not even close, in fact. As historian Jarosław Pelenski explains, Kyivan Rus’
was never really a unified polity. It was a loosely bound, ill-defined, and heterogeneous conglomeration of lands and cities inhabited by tribes and population groups whose loyalties were primarily territorial, landespatriotisch [regional-patriotic], and urban but not national in the modem sense of the term.3
Kyivan Rus’ was not unique in this regard. Premodern communities lacked the basic prerequisites—namely universal literacy, print capitalism, and systems of mass-communication—which enable large numbers of people over expansive territories to identify with each other.
Nor was there any concept of “Russia,” an idea which would not emerge until hundreds of years after Rus’ had ceased to exist.
By the fifteenth century, a rising power by the name of Muscovy was busy waging continuous wars of conquest in all directions. Commensurate with their growing sense of imperial aggrandizement, its ruling princes had taken to anointing themselves “tsar,” or “emperor.” But it is hard to dominate others by brute force alone. They needed some way to validate their expansionist aims. It was for this reason that they began to call their state “Russia.”
Rus’, Russia—get it? Naming their kingdom “Russia” was a neat little trick they employed to pretend as if they had some sort of natural claim to the old lands of Rus’, including Ukraine. This was despite the fact that, aside from a very, very distant familial relation to the onetime ruling dynasty, there was nothing that justified their hold over these regions.
Dynastic affinity may have once been enough to legitimize one’s territorial designs. That does not mean we need to take it seriously today.
Any attempt to claim territory on the basis of ancient heritage collapses the minute we introduce some logic into it. For example, Russia is hardly the only modern-day country which encompasses parts of medieval Rus’. A host of others can say the same. What, then, gives Russia the right to all this land instead of, say, Poland or Belarus? Or, for that matter, Ukraine?
Why should it not belong to Lithuania? The Duchy of Lithuania controlled much of Ukraine for two-hundred years. Is it because Rus’—and, hence, Russia—was there first? Well, Rus’ was not exactly the first civilization to inhabit the region either. The Greeks were there as early as the eleventh century B.C.E. Does this mean the Hellenic Republic also has a legitimate claim to Kyiv?
How about Germany? The Goths were in Ukraine centuries before Rus’ even existed. Naturally, this led Hitler to assert German control of Ukraine just as Russia does now.4
Of all the timeless maxims guiding ethical conduct, “Don’t be like Hitler” has got to be near the top. It is one by which Russia is failing miserably to abide at the moment.
As far as they are concerned, Ukraine is the birthplace of the Russian nation. If that is true, then the very presence of a separate Ukrainian identity, not to mention a Ukrainian nation-state, is nothing less than an attack on Russia’s conception of itself. If Ukraine exists, then Russia does not.
This gets us to an even better reason to dismiss Moscow’s imperial pretensions. Even if Russia could mount some sort of coherent defense of its ancient right to Ukraine, international law has long dispensed with such pretexts, and for good reason: The genocidal bloodletting Nazi Germany once unleashed on that very basis.
The existential threat of an independent Ukraine
To review, the rulers of Muscovy decided give their empire a name which sounds similar to “Rus’.” For that reason, and that reason alone, we all have to sit here today and listen as Putin explains to Tucker Carlson why Ukraine has no right to exist. It is also why Ukrainians have to deal with a war of extermination against them.
To understand why Russians can be so touchy about this, we must suspend for the moment our well-justified incredulity and look at it from their perspective. As far as they are concerned, Ukraine is the birthplace of the Russian nation. If that is true, then the very presence of a separate Ukrainian identity, not to mention a Ukrainian nation-state, is nothing less than an attack on Russia’s conception of itself. If Ukraine exists, then Russia does not.
To Russia, this is intolerable. It means that Ukraine, and anyone who considers it their national home, must be destroyed.
This is what accounts for the utterly insane idea, so ubiquitous in Russian discourse, of Ukraine as an “anti-Russia.” It also explains why so many prominent Russians speak about the war in dire, us-or-them terms.
Take longtime Putin aide (and avowed Nazi) Dmitry Rogozin. In June 2022, he wrote:
What has emerged in Ukraine is an existential threat to the Russian people, to Russian history, to the Russian language, and to Russian civilization. If we do not put an end to them, as, unfortunately, our grandfathers did not do away with them, we will have to die…So let’s get this over with. Once and forever.
Putin’s own rhetoric is similarly deranged. Ukrainians, he warned in 2021, are attempting to “rewrite history” and “edit out everything that united us.” In his mind, to allow an independent Ukraine is to erase Russianness itself, something “comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.”
Ukraine, and only Ukraine, endangers the very idea of Russia. As a consequence, it is Ukraine, and only Ukraine, which faces a genocide.
This is not meaningless bluster. Reporting from multiple outlets has revealed just how deeply Putin had immersed himself in nationalist mythology in the years before the full-scale invasion. During the pandemic, he spent his days cloistered in his library reading and discussing history with his close adviser, Yuri Kovalchuk. It was Kovalchuk, according to a Financial Times investigation, who “inspired Putin to think of his historic mission to assert Russia’s greatness, much as Peter the Great had.” In particular, the Russian president “became fixated on Ukraine.”
Putin, an official close to him told the British daily, “really believes all the stuff he says about sacrality and Peter the Great. He thinks he will be remembered like Peter.” Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov explains that Putin “has three advisers: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.” The latter two, it is worth noting, were responsible for consolidating Russian domination over Ukraine in the eighteenth century.
When it comes to Russia’s official fairy tale about Ukraine, Putin has clearly drunk the Kool-Aid. Look no further than the comically optimistic nature of his war-planning. According to associates who spoke with Verstka, an independent Russian outlet, Putin convinced himself that only the Ukrainian elite stood in the way of reunification; ordinary Ukrainians, he figured, would greet Russian forces with open arms or, at the very least, acquiescence. They are Russians at heart, after all.
Hence the threadbare preparations; an army of just 190,000 was meant to overrun a country of 44 million in ten days. “If you start an operation with such forces, you’re relying on the mass collaboration of loyal Ukrainians,” one insider observes. “And the operation was planned, thought out, and developed precisely on this premise.”
In short, Putin is not employing such propaganda instrumentally; he has fully bought into the narrative.
So have most Russians. The myth of a glorious empire which began in Kyiv is drilled into the minds of every schoolchild from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
It is also what makes Ukraine distinct from every other place Moscow has attacked over the past thirty years. Ukraine, and only Ukraine, endangers the very idea of Russia. As a consequence, it is Ukraine, and only Ukraine, which faces a genocide.
The myth of Kyivan Rus’ alone cannot account for the invasion. But it does explain its genocidal character. This is not a matter of international security. Rather, it is that Ukraine imperils the foundation of Russian identity.
With stakes that high, international law becomes an afterthought. Conventional morality? It is cast aside. To survive, one might just countenance anything—even the mass-murder of millions.
Next time, we consider the implications of Russia’s genocide for Western policy along with what it entails for a resolution to the war.
The phrase "intent to destroy” comes from the U.N. definition. It is also the title of a forthcoming book by political scientist and historian Eugene Finkel, Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024).
Jonathan Shepard, “The Origins of Rus’ (c.900–1015),” in The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689, ed. Maureen Perrie (New York: Cambridge, 2006): 70.
“The Contest for the ‘Kievan Inheritance’,” in Ukraine and Russia In Their Historical Encounter, eds. Peter J. Potichnyj, Marc Raeff, Jaroslaw Pelenski & Gleb N. Zekulin (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1992), 5.
Wendy Lower, “A New Ordering of Space and Race: Nazi Colonial Dreams in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, 1941-1944,” German Studies Review 25, no. 2 (May 2002), 227, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1432991?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Fantastic piece. Thank you.
Putin words are just "misrepresented", don't you get it? I don't know why nobody sees this! Stop "misrepresenting" his words 😢