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BEST OF 2022

“Vladimir Putin has been making a case for genocide against Ukrainians for years. Have we been listening?”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/23/putin-genocide-language-ukraine-wipe-out-state-identity/

A decade ago he proposed that politics begins with friend or foe, following the Nazi legal thinker Carl Schmitt and the Russian fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin, whom Putin regards as a teacher. Ukraine was a forced friend: Anyone who did not understand that Ukrainians were part of Russian civilization was an enemy. For Putin, the “unity in the souls” of Russians and Ukrainians was the will of God defended by an act of cleansing violence.

In a long essay in July, Putin argued that there was no Ukrainian nation. Complementing his earlier claims with some that he presented as historical, Putin wrote of the “unity” of Russians and Ukrainians. The West had confused Ukrainians to believe that they had their own separate identity, but that could be corrected.