What Russia Should Do with Ukraine

The article advocates for "brutal censorship" of the Ukrainian culture, large-scale "de-ukrainization" of Ukrainians on the territories occupied by Russia in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.[4][12][8]

The author insists that Ukraine's ethnocentrism is an artificial perversion,[13] that Ukraine's existence is "impossible" as a nation-state,[12] and that the word "Ukraine" itself cannot be allowed to exist.[3][4] According to the author, Ukraine should be dismantled and replaced with several states under direct control by Russia.[14] He adds that the "ethnic component of self-identification" of Ukraine would also be rejected after its occupation by Russia.[12]

The author claims that "most likely the majority" of Ukrainian civilians are "passive Nazis and Nazi accomplices. They supported the Nazi authorities and pandered to them",[12] thus, they "technically" cannot be punished as war criminals, but can be subjected to "denazification" and are to blame.[15] While Sergeytsev notes that there are no Nazi parties, symbols, racist laws, or other evidence of actual Nazism, he counters that by asserting that "Ukrainian Nazism is unique due to its amorphism and ambiguity", which is, per Timothy Snyder, equivalent to a "special Russian definition of Nazism".[5] The author asserts that Banderites are actually marginal to "Ukro-nazism", and that the real menace is Pro-Europeanism.

He claims that Ukrainians must "assimilate the experience" of the war "as a historical lesson and atonement for [their] guilt". After the war, forced labor, imprisonment and the death penalty would be used as punishment. After that, the population would be "integrated" into "Russian civilization".[12] The author describes the planned actions as a "decolonization" of Ukraine.[13][14]

According to Anton Shekhovtsov, writing in Haaretz, the article is an expanded version of a 2016 article by Russian columnist Alexander Zhuchkovsky, who is linked to Russian Imperial Movement. In that article, Zhuchkovsky called for the dehumanization of Ukrainians, saying "It is natural and right, as we are fighting not against people but against enemies, [...] not against people but against Ukrainians."[16]

The author of the text, Timofey Sergeytsev, advised Victor Pinchuk projects from 1998 to 2000, including Pinchuk's 1998 parliamentary election campaign in Ukraine, and was a member of the Board of Directors of Interpipe Group.[17]

He was born in 1963.[18] He studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1980, where he was a student of Georgy Shchedrovitsky.[19][20]

In 1999, he worked for the presidential campaign of then incumbent Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. In September 2004, he was a consultant to Viktor Yanukovych. In 2010, he worked with Arseniy Yatsenyuk.[17] During Russia’s 2012 presidential elections, he worked as a consultant for Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov and his party Right Cause.[21] In 2012, Sergeitsev co-produced the Russian feature film Match which was criticized for Ukrainophobia.[22] In 2014, it was banned on the territory of Ukraine as propaganda.[23][24]

According to Der Tagesspiegel, Sergeitsev supports the (since 2015) pro-Putin (formerly opposition) political party "Civic Platform" financed by one of the oligarchs from Putin's inner circle.[4] According to Euractiv, Sergeitsev is "one of the ideologists of modern Russian fascism".[25]

According to Mika Aaltola, director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the article showed Russian war propaganda "developing in a worrying direction".[36]

According to Latvia-based Russian media Meduza, the article is "essentially a blueprint for the genocide" of Ukrainians.[13]

According to Oxford expert on Russian affairs Samuel Ramani, the article "represents mainstream Kremlin thinking".[26]

The American historian Timothy Snyder wrote that the text "advocates the elimination of the Ukrainian people as such".[37] He later noted that it uses a special definition of the word "Nazi": "a Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit being a Russian". In his opinion, the article reveals the genocidal intent of Russia.[5]

Slavoj Žižek wrote: "So, Russia plans to do with Ukraine what Bertolt Brecht describes in his 1953 poem "The Solution": dissolve the people and elect another. By reading Sergeytsev's mad ravings alongside Putin's claim that Lenin invented Ukraine, we can discern the current Russian position. Ukraine has two fathers: Lenin, who invented it, and Hitler, who inspired today's “ukronazis” to actualize Lenin's invention... Now, we are told that Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine will be “decolonized” by way of... Russian colonization. Territories will be liberated against the will of their people (who will have to be re-educated or otherwise dissolved). If a new world war is to be avoided, it will be through a “hot peace,” with massive military investments sustaining a fragile new balance of power. The fragility of the situation stems not just from conflicting economic interests but also from conflicting interpretations of reality, which is not just about settling facts. But simply trying to prove that Russian claims are false misses the point made by Aleksandr Dugin, Putin's court philosopher: “Post-modernity shows that every so-called truth is a matter of believing. So we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept.” Faith, it seems, overrides knowledge. According to the “special Russian truth,” Russia's soldiers left behind no corpses of brutalized civilians in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities and towns; Western propagandists supposedly staged those atrocities. Given these circumstances, Westerners must stop proposing that Zelensky meet with Putin to negotiate a peace settlement... Any eventual negotiations will have to be conducted by lower-level bureaucrats. Putin and his inner circle are criminals who must be ignored as much as possible".[38]

• "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", 2021 essay by Vladimir Putin
• "On conducting a special military operation", 2022 speech by Putin
• "Where have you been for eight years?" a phrase used during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
• "Address concerning the events in Ukraine", 2022 speech by Putin
• Russian imperialism
• Russian nationalism
• Rashism
• Bucha massacre
• Claims of genocide of Ukrainians in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
• War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
• Krasovsky case
• RAM Plan

• 'A chance for revenge': The rise and fall of ‘methodology,’ the school of thought that produced the idea of the 'Russian world' - article by Meduza with short biography of Sergeytsev
• Sergeytsev, Timofey [at Wikidata] (3 April 2022). "Что Россия должна сделать с Украиной" [What Russia should do with Ukraine]. RIA Novosti (in Russian). Rossiya Segodnya. Archived from the original on 3 April 2022. Retrieved 3 April 2022.