The Guardian reports:

Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country’s lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the “period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end”.

After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal purges and “re-education” that western officials said could provoke further abuses on the ground.

“Ukrainianism is an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilisational substance of its own, a subordinate element of an extraneous and alien civilisation,” wrote a RIA Novosti columnist earlier this week. The “re-education” of Ukraine could take a generation, he wrote, adding that “besides the highest ranks, a significant number of common people are also guilty of being passive Nazis and Nazi accomplices”.

Even the name Ukraine must be erased, the article argued. [Continue reading…]