“Ria Novosti”, the Russian state news agency published a guest article by the author Timofei Sergeitsev on 03.04.2022. In it, the author calls for the destruction of Ukraine as a state under the keyword “denazification” and demands to punish and kill those people who participate in the defence of Ukraine during the war. DER TAGESSPIEGEL published a German translation of some passages from Sergeitsev’s guest article on 04.04.2022 and linked to both the Russian-language original and an English-language translation that Nataliya Popovych distributed via her Facebook page. In agreement with Nataliya Popovych, Europablog is publishing the English-language version in full below.

By Nataliya Popovych

So RIA NOVOSTІ, Russian state news agency, which communicates Kremlin’s position, has clarified Russia’s plans vis-à-vis Ukraine and the rest of the free world in a program like article: What Russia should do with Ukraine?

This manipulative piece of writing will make any healthy free people around the world sick. This is a normal first reaction. Do not fight your disgust. However, I hope that the second reaction will not be the entirety of Kubler-Ross many steps from denial to acceptance and your actual ability to fight – because we need you, people, to move through these stages faster. Please accept that Russia not only wants to exterminate Ukrainians as it clearly states in the article, but it sees the entire Western world as its enemy. It wants to manipulate all former colonies into its next frontier of leadership. It is critical that all our friends in the former colonies understand that Ukraine has been oppressed buy the Russian imperialism and then Russian Soviet Russian bolshevism for too long. There is nothing new in the this painting of the future that we have not previously seen from Russia. Our grandparents were killed, our parents prosecuted in the millions, our religion and language have already been banned before, our elites have been prosecuted and killed, and we are being put at the risk of extermination not for ever wanting to attack Russia, but for simply wanting to live, to be. To be free. To democratically elect our leadership. To live within a constitution of liberties, as the first of such constitutions Ukrainians had written in 1700s. I sincerely hope that the second most immediate reaction to this programmatic article, after you manage through your disgust, will be not more fear, but more courage to fight together with us and free the world of this Russian monstrous ideology of aggression and imposing its will over others.

Imaging replacing the word nazi with the word Ukraine in this article. If you are a national of Denmark, or Australia, or France or Argentina or Japan – imagine someone telling you, you cannot have your flag, speak your language, teach the traditions and wisdom of your homeland to your kids. Imagine, being told that loving them, that being who you are makes you a Nazi. Remember that the fraction of the ultra-right parties in Ukraine is lower than in any other country in Europe and they have never made it to parliament and simply do not exist in majority of the local councils. That your president is Jewish, and few other presidents and prime ministers have been Jewish too. And that you read texts where black is called white and white is called black. And where your love for your country, your patriotism is called Nazism and that your people begin to be killed, shelled, raped and exterminated for being Ukrainian.

Get over with whatever it is that you feel and finally help us destroy Russia before it destroys the world.

Ria Novosti piece in English

What Russia should do with Ukraine?

By Timofei Sergeitsev

Back in April last year, we wrote about the inevitability of the denazification of Ukraine. We do not need Nazi (read Ukrainian), Bandera type of Ukraine (read Ukrainian), as the enemy of Russia and the West’s tool for the destruction of Russia. Today, the issue of denazification has moved into a practical landscape.

Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people – most likely the majority – has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi policy in its politics. That is, when the hypothesis “the people are good – the government is bad” does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.

Ukraine is in just such a situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for the “peace of Poroshenko” and “peace of Zelensky” should not be misleading – the Ukrainians were quite satisfied with the shortest path to peace through the blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted at when they were elected. It was this method of “appeasement” of internal anti-fascists – through total terror – that was used in Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other Russian cities. And this quite suited the common Ukrainian. Denazification is a set of measures in relation to the nazified population mass, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals.

The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. There should be no significant differences between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism should be liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the above mentioned, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi government. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and prudently as possible in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that a deep mass nazification of the population was prepared and carried out, secured by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, as well as the eight-year war with the people of Donbass who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism.

Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and in the rebellious Donbass. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine, which defined itself as a Nazi society.

The duration of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine continued for more than 30 years, beginning at least in 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for “independence” towards Nazism.

The peculiarity of modern nazified Ukraine is in amorphousness and ambivalence, which make it possible to disguise Nazism as a desire for “independence” and a “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality – to degradation), to assert that in Ukraine “there is no Nazism , only localized individual excesses”. After all, there is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their truncated version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.

However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of German Nazism during the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” (essentially political technology) frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of any Nazism – as European and, in its most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, on the basis of a formula such as “NATO – no, EU – yes.” The collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Western Bandera cadres and their “historical memory” are only one of the tools for the Naziification of Ukraine. Ukronazism carries not less, but a greater threat to the world and Russia than German Nazism of the Hitlerite version.

The name “Ukraine” apparently cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people’s republics newly created in the space free from Nazism should and will grow on the basis of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of the life support systems of the population.

In fact, their political aspirations cannot be neutral – expiation of guilt before Russia for treating it as an enemy can be realized only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival and development. No “Marshall Plans” should be allowed for these territories. There can be no “neutrality” in the ideological and practical sense, compatible with denazification. The cadres and organizations that are the instrument of denazification in the newly denazified republics cannot but rely on Russia’s direct military and organizational support.

Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless. In this official capacity, it passed under the authority of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality.

Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries, Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a nation state, and attempts to “build” one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification – the Bandera element is only a performer and a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.

The Bandera elites must be eliminated, their re-education is impossible. The social “mud”, which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of the war and assimilate the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for its guilt. Those who did not support the Nazi regime, suffered from it and the war unleashed by it in the Donbass, must be consolidated and organized, must become the pillar of the new government. Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who have been tempted and carried away by the role of an enemy of Russia.

Denazification as the goal of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself is understood as a military victory over the Kiev regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of the Nazis, the elimination of implacable Nazis, the capturing of war criminals, and the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification in peacetime.

The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, police and defense bodies, cleansed of Nazi elements, launching on their basis the founding processes of founding a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for the denazification of Ukraine (newly created or converted, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo – ROSCOLLABORATION), with the adoption under Russian control of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification, the definition of the boundaries and framework for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in the field of denazification, the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.

All of the above means that to achieve the goals of denazification, the support of the population is necessary, its transition to the side of Russia after liberation from terror, violence and ideological pressure of the Kiev regime, after the withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of hostilities, to be convinced of Russia’s long-term intentions – that “they will not be abandoned.” It is impossible to foresee in advance exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found empirically. It will remain hostile to Russia, but forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine with formally banned Nazism. The haters of Russia will go there. The threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements will be the the guarantee of the preservation of this residual Ukraine in a neutral state. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. There will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature, based on the border with the exclusion line to the Russian border.

The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as a military operation. At each of them, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will become the results of the corresponding stage. In this case, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:

• liquidation of armed Nazi formations (which refers to any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, information, and educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
• the formation of bodies of people’s self-government and the police (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories, protecting the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
• deployment of the Russian information space;
• withdrawal of educational materials and prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological guidelines;
• mass investigations to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology and support for the Nazi regime;
• lustration, publication of the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who will not be subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
• adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification “from below”, a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
• Establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
• the inclusion of a complex of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people’s republics;
• creation of permanent denazification bodies for a period of 25 years.

Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Since this is a purely Russian business. And also because not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the United States.

To put the plan of denazification of Ukraine into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, realize itself as the last instance of protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve it and which the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for itself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and was expressed in the world war and the Russian revolution, inextricably linked with each other.

Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. It implemented the main Western project, an alternative to capitalism, which won the nation-states – a socialist, red project. It crushed German Nazism, a monstrous product of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was the outstretched hand of friendship from Russia, for which Russia received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.

Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it selflessly provided. Further, Russia will go its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage – leadership in the global process of decolonization.

As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and allies with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation and dependence of the so-called European choice.