Putin's Ukrainian Genocide

 

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"Those who are currently calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine must take the genocidal nature of Russia’s invasion into account. Putin has made it perfectly clear that he intends to wipe Ukraine off the map of Europe. He views Ukraine’s very existence as an intolerable threat to Russia itself, and is prepared to pay almost any price to remove this threat by extinguishing Ukrainian statehood. His uncompromising stance is entirely in line with centuries of Russian imperial policy.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Putin has demonstrated his willingness to sacrifice Russia’s international standing, along with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers, in pursuit of his messianic objectives. It is dangerously dishonest to suggest he can be appeased with the relatively small portion of Ukraine currently under Russian occupation. In reality, Putin would use any pause in hostilities to rearm and regroup before launching the next stage of his criminal campaign to destroy Ukraine.

Ignoring this imperial agenda will not make it go away. Instead, it is time to acknowledge that today’s invasion is not a conventional war with limited political goals; it is an attempt to complete Stalin’s unfinished genocide of the Ukrainian nation, and it will not end until Russia is defeated."

FROM...

Vladimir Putin is aiming to complete
Joseph Stalin’s unfinished Ukrainian genocide

Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine echoes Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s earlier attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation

by Paul Grod

ADDITIONAL READING...from https://hrsu.weebly.com/holodomor.html

Holodomor

   The term "Holodomor" refers to the mass murder of millions in Ukraine by the method of artificial famine from 1932-33. 
   In 1928, Stalin introduces a program of collectivization of agriculture, aimed at implementing the Communist ideal in real life. This collectivization process requested the farmers from all over the Soviet Union to give up their private land, livestock, and equipment to the state in order to form a large, state-organized factory-like agricultural system, called collective farms. Stalin believed that the collective farms would not only provide enough food for the industrial workers in the cities but also have a surplus for export. Many farmers did not want to give up their private properties, in their last act of resistance, many slaughtered all their livestocks and feasted on the night before they were to be collectivized. So great was the hate and opposition towards the state authorities that the defiant farmers would rather see their livestocks rot and go to waste than for the state to enjoy the advantage of them. 
  In 1929, many Ukrainian farmers still refused to join the collective farms. To crush their resistance, Stalin implemented the new policy of "dekulakization". Kulaks, or kurkuls, as their were known in Ukraine, were affluent or rich farmers. Stalin decided to wage a "class warfare" and liquidate the kulaks as a class. This policy was enforced by the regular army and the secret police (NKVD). Eventually all who opposed collectivization were considered kulaks. 
  In 1930, 1.5 million Ukrainians fell to dekulakization. Close to half a million were deported to gulags or labor camps in the extremities of the Soviet Union. 
  From 1932 to 1933, the Soviet government, in order to teach the Ukrainians “a lesson they would not forget” for resisting collectivization, and to deliver “a crushing blow” to any national aspirations of the Ukrainian people, started the Holodomor. First the government raised the grain production quotas of Ukraine to ensure that they would not be met. Then all grain produced in Ukraine were shipped to other parts of the Soviet Union. In summer, 1932, a decree called for the arrest or execution of any person found to be stealing or hiding grain from the fields in Ukraine, even a child for taking as much as a few wheat stalks. Military blockades were erected around villages to ensure no grain is smuggled in to feed the villagers or the starving villagers from leaving in search of food. Brigades of young activists were brought in from over the country to sweep the villages to search for any hidden grain. Thus, though grain production is actually increasing in Ukraine for the past years, an artificial famine is staged to starve millions to death. 
  In 1933, at the height of the artificial famine, the death rate was as high as 30, 000 a day. It is estimated that 7 million deaths occurred from Holodomor in 2 years, as compared to 6 million deaths from the Holocaust by the Nazis over a number of years. 

Bodies of the victims of Holodomor

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Significance of Holodomor

  During Holodomor, the Soviet government denied famine and this was echoed by prominent Western journalists at the time, such as Walter Duranty. The Holodomor was not globally recognized until the late 1980s, when scholar on Soviet history Robert Conquest published a book named "Harvest of Sorrow". Holodomor is recognized as an act of genocide even though the Russian government still denies it to this day.

The Little Cracks in Russian Society will swell to Become a Greater Threat To Russia than Defeat in Ukraine

 From bne Intellinews...

Appalling from Russian society's point of view, is how far Putin is prepared to go to corrode Russian society in order to pursue grandiose imperialistic dreams.  That corrosion is apparent in countless small events in Russia that are becoming increasingly frequent.

As bne Intellinews writes briefly below, "one of those very unpleasant and frankly scary Russian stories" is Putin's pardon of Politkovskaya’s killer.

These little events will accumulate and eventually cause the collapse of Russian society.  Russia's defeat in Ukraine will be nothing compared to its self-inflicted defeat within Russia itself.

Putin pardons Politkovskaya’s killer This is one of those very unpleasant and frankly scary Russian stories. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pardoned a Chechen, who was jailed for participation in the murder of famous human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She was gunned down in 2006 in front of her front door on Putin’s birthday in probably the most high-profile slaying of an opposition journalist. She worked for Novaya Gazeta, a leading liberal newspaper that has seen several of its staff killed. She was also a vocal critic of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and accused him of human rights abuses of which he is almost certainly guilty. And she died as a result. Indeed, there are a string of corpses in Kadyrov’s wake. Kadyrov has also been linked to the death of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015 and also a Chechen who was gunned down in a park here in Berlin in 2021. Many of the high profile murders in Russia seem to be connected to the Chechen strongman. It is clear that Putin doesn’t have full control of him as he keeps shooting people he doesn’t like with impunity. For example, recently his son was filmed beating a man that disrespected Islam – and nothing happened to him. This is the problem of adopting the “power vertical” as your political model, rather than broad-based democracy: you become hostage to some of your underlings. Putin can’t do anything about Kadyrov as he is holding the lid on a third insurrection in Chechnya, making Putin powerless as there is no way he will send troops there for a third time. And if Kadyrov goes there is a good chance it will rise up again. There were rumours that Kadyrov had died last month (and he does look unwell, he has gained a lot of weight recently), but he survived whatever was wrong with him. There are also reports that his son was sent to Moscow and had a long interview with Putin. It’s widely assumed that Kadyrov is getting ready to retire and intends his son to take over.