{"id":81789,"date":"2025-10-20T12:40:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justsecurity.org\/?p=81789"},"modified":"2025-10-20T13:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T17:22:48","slug":"russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justsecurity.org\/81789\/russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia’s Eliminationist Rhetoric Against Ukraine: A Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor\u2019s note: This article, with the tracker by Clara Apt, originally published on June 6, 2022 and updated regularly, is now updated with a new introduction examining patterns in the rhetoric over time and conclusions drawn by analysts and historians. Examples added to the chart for its Oct. 8 publication continue to be noted in red as \u201c<\/i>New<\/i><\/span>\u201d or \u201c<\/i>Updated<\/i><\/span>.\u201d \u041f\u043e\u043f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0434\u043d\u044f \u0432\u0435\u0440\u0441\u0456\u044f \u0446\u0456\u0454\u0457 \u0441\u0442\u0430\u0442\u0442\u0456 \u0434\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0443\u043f\u043d\u0430 \u0443\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0457\u043d\u0441\u044c\u043a\u043e\u044e<\/i> \u0442\u0443\u0442<\/i><\/a>.<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Legal and policy experts and historians for the U.S. Congressional Research Service, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights with New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, Ukraine\u2019s National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and Harvard Law School\u2019s International Human Rights Clinic with the International Partnership for Human Rights \u2013 all have noted a pattern since Russia\u2019s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine: persistent rhetoric by Russian leaders and their associates that goes far beyond the ordinary bounds of verbal hostilities towards a wartime enemy, and may constitute evidence of\u00a0 genocidal intent.<\/p>\n

A number of such reports and briefs have cited Just Security<\/i>\u2019s chart below, which documents more than 500 examples of eliminationist rhetoric against Ukraine by Russian government officials, media commentators, and other public figures close to the Kremlin since the February 2022 invasion. The resource records genocidal, dehumanizing themes appearing to express an intent to eliminate the Ukrainian nation. The invective occurs in addresses, news articles, and social media posts issued by no less than Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Chairman of Russia\u2019s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, as well as Patriarch and Russian Orthodox Bishop Kirill of Moscow, Russian State TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, and Zakhar Vinogradov, editor-in-chief of the state-owned publication Ukraina.ru, among others.<\/p>\n

Alongside the intensifying bombardments across Ukraine in more than three years of full-scale war, the clear and pervasive Russian rhetoric \u201ccompels us to conclude that the Russian Federation has not only continued but escalated its efforts to commit genocide,\u201d wrote Kennesaw State University Professor Kristina Hook and four legal advisers in a July 2023 report<\/a> for New Lines and the Wallenberg Centre, updating an analysis they issued in May 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A legal memorandum<\/a> to Ukraine\u2019s Office of the Prosecutor General from Harvard\u2019s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) and the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) stated, \u201cRussian officials\u2019 declared intent is to target the Ukrainian nation, both physically and ideologically, and eliminate any manifestation of its collective identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long before the February 2022 invasion and even prior to Putin\u2019s 2014 capture of Ukraine\u2019s Crimean Peninsula, analysts had noted the threatening rhetoric against Ukraine by the Russian president and figures within his control. Dating at least to 2008 or 2009, increasingly hostile language laid the groundwork for rejecting Ukraine\u2019s existence as a state, a national group, and a culture.<\/p>\n

In May 2022, Beth Van Schaack<\/a>, then-U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, observed<\/a> to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in response to a question about the Russian atrocities coming to light in Ukraine, \u201cSome of the genocidal rhetoric that we\u2019re hearing out of Russia is extremely worrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts such as Francine Hirsch<\/a>, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of \u201cSoviet Judgment at Nuremberg,\u201d pointed<\/a> early on to such language as evidence of genocidal intent toward the Ukrainian people. Whether and how the concept of \u201cgenocide<\/a>\u201d applies to Russia\u2019s campaign against Ukraine is the subject of debate<\/a>, notwithstanding the reference in Article II of the Genocide Convention<\/a> to \u201cthe intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.\u201d A related issue under discussion is a concept often referred to as \u201ccultural genocide,\u201d which generally connotes the intentional destruction of a group\u2019s identity even in the absence of mass killings. \u201cThese calls for \u2018de-Ukrainization\u2019 are an incitement to genocide: to \u2018destroy, in whole or in part,\u2019 the Ukrainian nation,\u201d Hirsch wrote in April 2022. And Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder<\/a>, in reference to the same article in the Russian outlet RIA Novosti that prompted Hirsch\u2019s conclusion, wrote<\/a>, \u201cRussia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just Security\u2019s <\/i>documentation indicates several themes in Russia\u2019s eliminationist rhetoric:<\/b><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The denial of Ukrainian identity and statehood. <\/b>Russian leaders and propagandists portray Ukraine as having \u201calways\u201d been an inseparable part of Russia. They argue there is \u201cno historical basis\u201d for an independent Ukrainian state, delegitimize the country\u2019s current government, and claim that Ukraine\u2019s existence threatens Russian security. According to Mykola Riabchuck, a Ukrainian poet, author, and essayist who is an honorary president of Ukrainian PEN-center<\/a>, this perception of Ukraine as a \u201chistorical aberration\u201d with no right to exist legitimates<\/a> the so-called \u201cspecial military operation,\u201d which intends to return Ukrainian territories to Russian control, as was the case in the Soviet Union.<\/li>\n
  2. The desire to eliminate the Ukrainian national group. <\/b>Russian officials and others close to the Kremlin \u2013 including media personalities \u2013 express a desire or intent to destroy Ukraine\u2019s culture and even the very existence of its population. Russian politicians and media figures have endorsed \u201ctotal Russification,\u201d \u201ca complete ban\u201d on teaching Ukrainian language,\u201d \u201cpartially squeez[ing] out\u201d of Ukrainians disloyal to Russia, wiping the country\u2019s decision-making centers \u201coff the face of the earth,\u201d and incorporating Ukrainian territory into Russia so that \u201cthere are no more remnants of Ukraine.\u201d This discourse presents \u201ccultural eradication\u201d as a \u201cmoral necessity\u201d to salvage Ukraine, aiming to \u201ccreate a generation of Ukrainians who identify as Russians,\u201d writes<\/a> political scientist Martin Lary\u0161, deputy research director at the Institute of International Relations Prague.<\/li>\n
  3. The dehumanization of Ukrainians.<\/strong> Russian eliminationist rhetoric characterizes Ukrainians as subhumans requiring spiritual cleansing and treatment. State officials and others have referred to Ukrainians as \u201ctumors,\u201d \u201crabid dogs,\u201d \u201ccockroaches,\u201d \u201clice\u201d and \u201cvermin\u201d that Russia must \u201cdisinfect,\u201d while also alluding to a larger Ukrainian \u201corganism\u201d no longer capable of \u201creproducing itself.\u201d There is a precedent for such dehumanizing terminologies in past genocides, write<\/a> National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professors Denys Azarov, Dmytro Koval, Gaiane Nuridzhanian, and Volodymyr Venher. Tutsis were labelled \u201ccockroaches\u201d in Rwanda, while the Nazis referred to Jews as \u201clice\u201d and \u201crats.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Civil society organizations, legal scholars, and others are concluding that eliminationist rhetoric by Russian state officials and other affiliated individuals incites genocide and expresses a willingness to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity:<\/p>\n