Timofey Sergeytsev
The previous material about the denazification of Ukraine caused quite a wide response, especially in the West. Hidden behind the loudly expressed joy that the article allegedly provides “evidence” of calls for genocide approved by the state, and its author should be tried in The Hague, is a poorly hidden frustration, fear generated by one’s own sense of guilt for indifference to the victims of Donbass and the fate of the Ukrainian people. Before answering this question on its merits, it is worthwhile to give explanations to those “inconvenient places” and “sharp corners” that cannot be bypassed when discussing the topic of denazification.
First, and most importantly, we use the term “Nazism” in relation to Ukrainian politics and aggression in the Donbass, based on the precedent wording of the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on October 1, 1946.
Under the inevitable punishment of the people who supported the Nazi regime, we mean only and exclusively quite obvious “natural” punishment (fate) – a historical pattern when the Nazi regime supported by the people will torture this people themselves, discarding any legal, ethical and generally human restrictions. And this torture will reach its maximum with the military defeat of the regime. What was true of the people of Hitler’s Germany and remains true of any other people. This is what the Armed Forces of Ukraine are doing today, including territorial defense. It was the Nazi regime after the putsch that unleashed a war against the Donbass, and many people supported this war or remained indifferent to it.
Punishment of the Nazified people by the victor is not only unacceptable, but also impossible. It is unacceptable, since collective punishment is prohibited by international law (far from everyone is guilty), and would indeed bear signs of genocide. And it is impossible, since the scale of such punishment is technically unfeasible. And thank God. Nevertheless, the US punished the Japanese people with nuclear bombing, and Britain punished the German people with the destruction of Dresden. It is not customary to talk about it.
The Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine are doing everything possible to reduce and mitigate the suffering of the population from military operations, and their opponents are doing everything to increase this suffering and hardship. This is the inevitable price to pay for supporting Nazism. This was directly demanded by Hitler: if the German people are not able to win, they must die. The Red Army saved the German people from this ending. The innocent also have to pay the price of Nazism. But it is not the deliverer from Nazism who exacts it, but the dying Nazism itself.
Denazification is the suppression of Nazi ideology in all its manifestations and the cleansing of all spheres of society from Nazi personnel, the identification and punishment of personally responsible Nazi criminals. This is a boon that saves the people from Nazism.
Another resonant and important topic is de-Ukrainization, that is, countering forced Ukrainization, the artificial and forced imposition of Ukrainian identity on those who do not want it (and their children). This includes opposition to the imposition of an external cultural or generally false, purely political “Ukrainianism” aimed solely at inciting hatred for Russia and the Russian people and having nothing to do with real ethnic or cultural affiliation.
In addition, we must remember that Ukrainization is the executive mechanism of Nazification, when the Ukrainized is recognized as a Ukrainian by the environment, only if he fully shares precisely the Nazi ideology. For this, it is not enough, and it is not at all necessary to speak Ukrainian. But to glorify Bandera as a hero is necessary and even sufficient (with all the consequences of this), just like hating the “Rusnya”. Who was born Ukrainian, he will be. But whoever considers himself (and is!) a Russian, a Jew, a Hungarian, a Romanian, a Greek, a Bulgarian, etc., and who does not want (and cannot) be a Ukrainian, must be free from any form of coercion towards cultural, political and Nazi Ukrainianism.
The dismantling of the mechanisms of all these directions of forced Ukrain-ization is the denazification and de-Ukrainization necessary for a free country – and nothing more! But, of course, it is these mechanisms that the Kyiv regime will defend to the last. They are inviolable to him.
The fate of the Ukrainian political elite, which coincides completely with the oligarchic elite, including the latter’s various numerous “servants”, is most closely and inextricably linked with the fate of the regime doomed to destruction. This elite played the same role in the Nazification of Ukraine as the business circles of Germany played in the rise of the NSDAP and Hitler personally. The Ukrainian political elite was carried away by the Nazis as a very profitable business. And she did not want to see any dangers or alternatives. This business brought crazy profits – not to be compared with neutral, independent Ukraine.
There is no such crime or betrayal that the oligarchs will not commit in order to preserve and increase their capital. They are certainly not patriots. They are indifferent to the fate of the people and the country. Therefore, a neutral, independent Ukraine in their hands had no chance of surviving, becoming a kind of post-war Austria, Switzerland or Finland, which would have been welcomed by Russia in every possible way.
Ukraine missed this chance. For its implementation, will, work and time were needed. The Ukrainian elite spent none of this. Unprofitable.
The fact that it is mortally dangerous to become a real enemy of Russia was carefully ousted by this elite not only from public consciousness, but also from their own. Such a subject, which completely devalued democratic procedures (ultimately the elites had to organize a coup d’état), should be deprived of the political role of “representative” of the people.
The personal fate of the Ukrainian elites will be determined by law in accordance with their role in organizing the Ukrainian tragedy. However, many of them fled abroad in advance, leaving only those who will not be accepted “to the West” for sure. In Russia, this was done in the early 2000s: the super-rich remained, but they lost their political influence. In Russia, the elitocracy did not take place. And Ukraine was brought to disaster by its elite, having drawn a significant part of the population into the disastrous ideology of confrontation with Russia.
It seems that the nervous Western reaction to the very topic of denazification of Ukraine is determined precisely by the fact that the Russian leadership used this term not as a metaphor, not for fashionable PR, but in accordance with its real meaning. The fact that the SVO in Ukraine is carried out precisely with the ultimate goal of denazification (demilitarization is a condition for denazification) is a decision of the Russian leadership, supported by the overwhelming majority of the country’s population. And, moreover, this is the fulfillment of the demand of the people of Russia to its leadership.
Today, the Minsk agreements are seen from a different position: what an unthinkable now happiness would be in their implementation! But the implementation of Minsk-2 would mean the rejection of Ukrainian aggression against the Donbass, which was necessary for the American curators to draw Russia into the conflict, which would involve other European countries in the future. What is worth the unprecedented statement of Josep Borrell, the head of European diplomacy (!) – that Ukraine must end the war with a victory on the battlefield.
Yes, the SVO solves the problem of protecting the Donbass and its people. Yes, the NVO is aimed at protecting Russia from NATO and the deployment of American combat systems on the territory of Ukraine. But our country will not receive the required security guarantees if the possibility of a Nazi relapse on the territory of Ukraine is not prevented. This is the ultimate goal, and everything else is the stages of achieving it.
The purpose of denazification in this capacity has just been reaffirmed by Putin, Lavrov and Medvedev, and not only does it not contradict the obligation to negotiate with the Kiev group, but directly points to the ultimate goal of these negotiations. This is the political fact. It should be taken into account and conclusions drawn. Nazism in Ukraine must be banned and eradicated. This is a condition for achieving peace, tranquility and prosperity in the country. The population must be provided with the freedom to have, among other things, a Ukrainian ethnic identity without the obligatory Nazi ideological profile identified with it. The curse of Nazism must be lifted from Ukrainians.
Today, the Nazi practice of the Kiev regime in its entirety manifested itself in the course of hostilities, in terror against the “own” population. This terror is not limited by anything and is justified by the goal of creating a “Ukrainian nation”. This is the main sign of Nazism – “total war” for the self-affirmation of the nation, qualified and condemned by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Turning a blind eye to this, shrugging in bewilderment, pretending that there is no Ukrainian Nazism at all, is becoming increasingly difficult.
Meanwhile, allegedly “democratic” Kiev, which is furiously destroying the Donbass, enjoys ever-wider financial, military, political and ideological support from the United States and Europe. They are increasingly identifying themselves with just such a Ukraine. Recognition of the Nazi character of the Kiev regime – and denazification implies such unconditional recognition – means at the same time the recognition of the Nazisification of Europe and the United States itself, which explains the totality of the growing totalitarian tendencies in these societies, which are experiencing an acute crisis of their so-called democratic political systems, in reality based on an elitistocracy ( primarily in the USA) and external management (in desubjectivized Europe).
Russia is an ineradicably anti-fascist and anti-Nazi country. She has fundamental experience in denazifying a former military adversary and building new positive relationships with him. Unlike Kyiv, it has not lost its identity in 30 years of separate existence. There is no doubt that a denazified Ukraine will not be able to be under external control by the US and Europe. And then the whole set of facts of Ukrainian Nazi practice and the support of this practice by the West will become public property and the subject of legal assessment, as happened with the Nazi practice of Hitler’s Germany.
Russia consistently and systematically requires the UN (and nowhere else) to investigate all crimes on the territory of Ukraine and is not afraid of this. In addition to the existing set of qualifications of crimes – military and against peace and humanity – a new corpus delicti without a statute of limitations may appear: against the truth, which consists in waging a global information war, in a total distortion of social facts and manipulation of public consciousness, leading to a civilizational catastrophe, disintegration society and mass victims, in the information organization and support of the genocide.
It’s really scary.
