Fear that genocidal language in the Russian media will lead to more war crimes

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Two days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an editor (later deleted) celebrating the country’s rapid victory over Kiev and boasting that “a period of division of the Russian people has come.” .

After the bloody months of the war and the discovery of evidence of possible war crimes in cities such as Bucha and Borodyanka, the language of the same publication became more extreme, calling for social cleansing, “re-education” and “liquidation”, which, according to Western government sources. According to him, it could lead to new violence on the territory of Ukraine.

In Russia, views that were once limited to publications have found their way into mainstream media and prime-time television as bets on the war between Russia and Ukraine grow. With this in mind, Western observers are concerned that these arguments could lead to crimes against civilians by soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

“This is another test for the future trial of Russian war criminals,” said Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, citing an article in RIA Novosti that caused a stir in the West. One of his advisers, Mikahilo Podoliak, accused the news agency of calling for the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians.

Ukrainian civilians have claimed that Russian soldiers were quoting conspiracy theories about bio-weapons laboratories, saying they were only in the country to “clean up the mess”.

A Western government source told The Guardian that “such comments really create an even more toxic media environment” and could “absolutely contribute” to further insults to civilians in Ukraine. “The responsibility for this, of course, lies with the authors of the acts, but also with the Russian leadership,” he added.

Prominent commentators in the Russian media are increasingly spreading the view that a significant portion of Ukrainian society is under Nazi ideology (a country where, unlike Spain, extreme political parties failed to get 2.5% of the vote and were left without a seat. Place in the 2019 parliamentary elections). Similarly, they attribute Ukraine’s strong resistance to collective psychosis rather than resistance to Russian invasion.

“To my horror, to my regret, a significant portion of the Ukrainian people found themselves immersed in the madness of Nazism,” said Margarita Simonyan, director of the RT news network, in an interview with NTV. . “And on such a massive scale!”

The reason for the escalation of Russian rhetoric, analysts point to Russia’s failure in the early stages of the war and protests against Russian occupation forces in various Ukrainian cities.

“At first the Russians believed that ‘denazification’ could be achieved through regime change and that the Ukrainians should be liberated,” Russian sociologist Greg Yudin wrote earlier this week. “Obviously, this concept failed when the Ukrainians started resisting. With that in mind, a natural conclusion was drawn from it: Ukrainians were deeply infected by Nazism. ”

Speech adopted by the Kremlin

Just as Vladimir Putin called on members of his government to stand up to the “information war” in the West by claiming that Bucha’s brutality was staged, the Kremlin line also approached some of Russia’s most extreme views. news.

Former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said earlier this week that the same fate awaits Ukraine as Nazi Germany, the same view as written in a column published by RIA Novosti a few days earlier.

“It should come as no surprise that Ukraine, which has been mentally transformed into a third Reich … is suffering the same fate,” Medvedev wrote in a statement to the Telegram.

Translated by Julian Cnochaert.

Source: El Diario

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