When Vladimir Putin launched his "special military operation" on February 24, 2022, he included the denazification of Ukraine as a Russian war aim. Many observers did not take this seriously or thought it monstrous. In the desultory Russian-Ukrainian negotiations the issue has not been raised leading to the conclusion that the denazification objective has been quietly dropped. Yet, on April 3, 2022, Russia's official news agency RIA Novosti published an article by political consultant Timofey Sergeytsev titled "What Should Russia Do with Ukraine". Sergeytsev's response is a detailed blueprint for the eradication of Ukrainian 'Nazism' complete with tribunals, death sentences and forced labor plus a generation-long reeducation process for the population that was guilty of backing a Nazi-like regime. Russia will carry out this process alone without any "Marshal Plans".
It is worth mentioning that in the capacity of political consultant, Sergeytsev served two pro-Russian Ukrainian presidents – Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovich.[1] The latter was ousted from power in the Maidan revolution in 2014 and fled to Russia. He has personal reasons for detesting the Ukrainian regime.
Sergeytsev argues that precisely because there is no official Nazi Party in Ukraine and no Fuhrer, the amorphous 'Nazism' in Ukraine is more dangerous and therefore only extreme measures will succeed.
Sergeytsev's article follows below:[2]
Timofey Sergeytsev (Source: Svpressa.ru)
"We already wrote back in April last year about the necessity for denazification of Ukraine. We have no need of a Nazi, Bandera Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and the West's tool for the destruction of Russia. Today, the issue of denazification has crossed into [the realm of] practical implementation.
"Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people - most likely the majority - has been absorbed and drawn into the Nazi regime in their policies. Namely, in a case when the hypothesis 'the people are good - the government is bad' is inoperable. Recognition of this fact is the basis of a denazification policy, of all its measures, and the fact in itself constitutes its purpose.
"Ukraine finds itself in precisely such a situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for the 'peace of [Zelensky's predecessor Petro] Poroshenko' and the 'peace of Zelensky' should not lead us astray - the Ukrainians were fully satisfied with the shortest path to peace through the blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted upon their election. It was this method of 'pacification' of internal anti-fascists - through total terror - that was used in Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other Russian cities. And this quite suited the Ukrainian man in the street. Denazification is a set of measures in relation to the nazified mass of the population, 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. Substantive distinctions should not be made 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 implicated in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty in 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 have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the elite, a significant part of the popular masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty.
"They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only by incurring 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 precisely via culture and education that the population's deep mass nazification was prepared and implemented, reinforced by the promise of dividends from the Nazi regime's victory 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, implying (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to guarantee such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state - Russia - cannot proceed from a liberal approach on denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party undergoing denazification. Russia's recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine signifies recognition that the Crimean scenario [of direct annexation] is impossible 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 had defined itself as a Nazi society.
"The denazification time-frame can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and attain 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' rushing towards Nazism.
"The peculiarity of modern nazified Ukraine lies in its amorphousness and ambivalence, which allow it to camouflage 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 private 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."
Ukranian Nazism Poses A Greater Threat To Russia And The World Than German Nazism
"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 evolves as the fundamental basis of any Nazism - as European and, in its most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in compromise fashion, on the basis of a formula like '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 but one tool for the Naziification of Ukraine. Ukronazism poses not a lesser, but a greater threat to the world and Russia than German Nazism of the Hitlerite adaptation.
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"The name 'Ukraine' apparently cannot be preserved as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people's republics newly created in space free of Nazism should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of the population's life support systems.
"In fact, their political aspirations cannot be neutral in practice- expiation of guilt before Russia for treating it as an enemy can only be realized 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 can only draw upon Russia's direct military and organizational support.
"Denazification will inevitably be a de-Ukrainization as well- a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflammation of the ethnic component of self-identification by the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, initiated by the Soviet authorities. As an instrument of the communist superpower, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless after its [the Soviet Union's] fall. In this official capacity, it passed under the authority of another superpower (an authority standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be restored to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality.
"Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries, Ukraine, as history has shown, is an impossibility in the form of a nation state, and attempts to 'build' one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that lacking its own civilizational substance, becomes a subordinate element to an alien and foreign civilization. DeBanderization by itself will not suffice for denazification - the Bandera element is only an executor, a front, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine also entails its inevitable de-Europeanization.
"The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. The social 'bog', which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of the war and internalize the experience as a historical lesson and expiation of 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, its vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who have been tempted and carried away by the role of Russia's enemy.
"Denazification as the goal of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself should be conceived as a military victory over the Kiev regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of the Nazis, the elimination of unreconcilable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, and the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification in peacetime."
Russia Will Revive The Nuremberg Trials Model For The Former Ukraine
"The latter, in turn, should begin with self-government organizations, police and defense bodies, purged of Nazi elements, launching on their basis the constituent 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 [The Russian Federal Agency for CIS Affairs, compatriots living abroad and international humanitarian cooperation), 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."
A reenactment of the Nuremberg Trials (Source: 39rus.org)
"All the aforesaid means that for achieving the goals of denazification, what is needed is the support of the population, its transition to the side of Russia after [its] liberation from the terror, violence and ideological pressure of the Kiev regime, after the withdrawal from informational isolation. Undoubtedly, 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 cannot be foreseen in advance exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The 'Catholic province' (Western Ukraine consisting of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of exclusion, however, will be found empirically. Behind it, a Ukraine hostile to Russia, but neutralized and demilitarized by force and Nazism officially banned, will remain. The haters of Russia will go there. The guarantee of the preservation of this rump Ukraine as a neutral state should be the threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the enumerated requirements. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature.
"The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow in peacetime the same logic of stages, as the military operation. It will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes with each of them that 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 (meaning any armed units 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 militias (defense and law enforcement) in the liberated territories, for protecting the population against the terror of underground Nazi groups;
"—Installation of the Russian information space;
"—Removal of educational materials and prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological beliefs;
"— Mass investigative actions to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology and support for the Nazi regime;
"- Lustration, publishing the names of the Nazi regime collaborators, holding them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those to whom the death penalty or imprisonment will not apply);
"—Adoption at the local level, under Russia's supervision, of primary normative acts of denazification 'from below', a ban on all types and forms of revived Nazi ideology;
"- The establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
"— The incorporation of a complex of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people's republics;
"—The creation of permanent standing denazification bodies for a period of 25 years."
The Eradication Of Ukrainian Nazism Also Means The Eradication Of Western Totalitarianism
"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 undergo eradication, but this will include, first and foremost, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the United States.
"In order to put the plan of denazification of Ukraine into practice, Russia itself will have to conclusively part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, realize itself as the last resort for protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that are appropriate 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, an antidote to the nation-states - a socialist, red project. It crushed German Nazism, the monstrous spawn [created by] 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 dismissed all these sacrifices, deprecated Russia's contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it unselfishly provided. Henceforth, Russia will go its own way, without concern for 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 allied relations with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to assume 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 opiate, seduction and dependency on the so-called European choice."
