The Wall Evidence project, curated by the Mizhvukhamy team, collected and archived hundreds of inscriptions left by the Russian military in Ukrainian regions occupied within the first months of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The areas that the project covered include Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Kherson. The collected inscriptions tell the story of the initial advances of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. At the same time, these images indicate how the Kremlin rhetoric of eradicating Ukraine as a sovereign state and Ukrainian identity is carried out by Russian combatants.
The inscriptions echo and parrot Russia’s eliminationist rhetoric against Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies have been integrating into the Russian public space at least since 2008.
Putin started creating an aggressive elimination rhetoric toward Ukraine as an independent state after his failed attempt to establish Russia’s control over Ukraine in 2004. The Orange Revolution participants exposed an egregious voter fraud arranged by Putin protégé and Ukraine presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych and prevented him from winning the election.
Early instances of genocidal language toward Ukraine
During 2004 Putin undertook an overt linguistic gesture to refer to Ukraine in Russian by using the preposition “na” or “on.” The preposition typically designates geographical territories but not independent states. In English, this reference would be equal to the usage of “the Ukraine” instead of “Ukraine.” The same applies to the spelling of Kyiv in Russian sources that are published in English. In 1995, Kyiv officially mandated its new English spelling that follows the Ukrainian language name and dropped the Russified “Kiev.” The Kremlin does not recognize these changes and continues to linguistically mark Ukraine as a part of Russian space.
Statements undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty have been circulating in the censored Russian media long before Russia’s full-scale assault. The Russian narrative is that Ukraine is a “failed state” and a state that came to be by mistake. This now must be remedied through its eradication and the erasure of its people’s identity as distinct from Russians.
In his infamous 2021 article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin portrayed the Ukrainians as victims of “radicals and neo-Nazis” and the West. He also presented a distorted history of Russia and Ukraine, positing that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” i.e., Russians. That gave the green light to genocidal rhetoric that has been broadcast to the Russian population.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Russian propagandists doubled down on the portrayal of Ukrainians as “radicals,” “nationalists,” and “neo-Nazis.” The calls for the extermination of Ukrainians intensified, and Ukraine presented as highly anti-Russian, became an “existential threat” to Russia. Vladimir Solovyov, a Kremlin mouthpiece, expressed overt threats to all who criticize Russia’s actions and unambiguously stated that Ukraine was nothing but an “intermediate stage” in Russia’s strategies to establish its global security. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, falsely accused Ukraine of following NATO instructions and rejecting Russia’s peace negotiations on multiple occasions. According to Lavrov, Russia today “defends its security.”
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The presentation of Ukraine as a NATO proxy gained traction in Russians’ perception of Ukraine. As Timothy Snyder, an American historian, points out in Road to Unfreedom, Russia has always needed an external enemy to justify its aggressive policies, and to sustain its martyrdom and victimhood.
For Putin and his aides, there is no Ukraine outside Russia. In their vision of Russia as “a unique civilization,” Ukraine does not exist. Yet, simultaneously, there is no Russia without Ukraine. This understanding of Ukraine, unfortunately, resonated with the collective perception of Ukraine in Russia: Ukraine does not, and today cannot and should not, exist on its own.
In the former Soviet Union, Ukraine remained under Russian control. Russians have underestimated Ukraine’s ability to resist despite political pressure and Moscow’s attempts at physical extermination through the Holodomor and the Executed Renaissance.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians did not reevaluate their relationship with Ukrainians—Ukrainians remained for them “younger brothers” who had to be guided, protected, and punished if they misbehaved and deviated from the “Russian route.”
Erasing Ukraine through history textbooks
In a new history textbook for eleventh-graders written by Vladimir Medinsky and Anatoly Torkunov, the “special military operation” narrative about Russia’s war against Ukraine solidifies the erasure of Ukraine as a democratic, independent state. The authors describe Ukraine as an “ultra-nationalist” state. The Russian soldiers who fought against and committed war crimes against Ukrainians are Russia’s new heroes.
Russian hate and propaganda are part of the Kremlin’s intentional memory construction and knowledge production regarding Ukraine. This led to the deepening of Russians not seeing, not recognizing, and not remembering Ukraine. Younger generations in Russia, again, likely will see Ukraine only as an integral part of Russia.
The erasure of the memory of and about Ukraine is a signature of Russia’s current war. The Kremlin swiftly renames the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson that Russia occupies. It also takes intensive and extensive measures to incorporate these territories into Russia administratively, economically, militarily, and culturally.
Laying the groundwork for eliminating Ukraine
The imperial term “Novorossia”—distorted and misinterpreted by Russian officials—has circulated within Russia’s information space since the initial stage of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014. The Ukrainian territories have been systematically presented on both official and broader public channels as part of Russia. The Kremlin has eliminated the territories’ Ukrainian history, culture, and names.
In today’s Russia, killers and terrorists become heroes and martyrs. Violence and aggression evoke respect and admiration. The death of the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was mourned across Russia. Prigozhin was responsible for the bloodiest battles in Ukraine. Among his recruits were criminals who were imprisoned for homicide in Russia. They signed contracts with the Wagner Group to escape prison tortures and earn money. Notably, Prigozhin is mourned by those who support Russia’s war in Ukraine and those who criticize Moscow for the military aggression.
The atrocities committed by Russians in Ukraine provide insights into Russian combatants’ hate and spite toward Ukrainians. A perverse glorification of violence has become part of Russia’s systematic erasure of Ukraine as a nation.
As ghastly as it might sound, what sustains Russian combatants’ barbarity in Ukraine is not “the threat of NATO expansion” and “the dominance of the West,” as the Kremlin has touted Russia’s assault on Ukraine, but the sense of superiority, the spite and animosity toward Ukrainians as a people. “We [Russians and Ukrainians] are one people”—the statement made by Putin in 2021—is a driving force for Russian soldiers to kill Ukrainians and raze Ukraine to the ground.
Chauvinism
Ukrainians are dehumanized in Russian soldiers’ perceptions. The inscriptions rarely mention Ukraine as a nation. Ukrainians are called “Nazis,” “Fascists,” Banderovites,” “Ukrops” (slur for “Ukrainians”), “*itches,” “losers,” and “shmucks.”
Inscriptions were left in public places, such as schools, shops, supermarkets, and administrative buildings. Private properties were ruined, vandalized, and marked by Russians. Inscriptions reiterate Kremlin propaganda and also reflect the current mentality in Russia, where the support for the invasion of Ukraine remains high. They testify to Russians’ longstanding imperialist and chauvinistic attitudes toward Ukrainians and their sense of superiority, which is driven by their belief in Russia as a “great Motherland.”
A fragment from a Russian soldier’s diary (dated 24 March 2022) shows consistent use of slur toward Ukrainians:
Another diary discovered in Katiuzhanka, Kyiv Oblast, contains the author’s confession about being “merciless” during interrogations. The author of the diary (only once he mentions his first name, “Konstantin”) summarized that all detainees “turned out to be Nazis.” Not only does the writer have no empathy, he enjoys the power of the interrogator’s role.
Imperialism
Russian soldiers draw Russian symbols over Ukrainian words and symbols. The Ukrainian language is corrected to the Russian language. In this symbolic gesture of correction, the Russian occupiers eliminate Ukraine as a state and culture distinct from Russia.
“Ukraine should not happen” may sound like boilerplate rhetoric of the current Russian government, but this illustrates the representation of Ukraine that Russia has been entertaining for centuries. The 1863 Valuev Decree that banned publications in the Ukrainian language summarized the Russian Empire’s attitude toward Ukraine: “The Ukrainian language never existed, does not exist, and shall never exist.” This understanding of Ukraine in Russia has yet to be critically reevaluated. Since Putin acceded to power, the tendency has been the opposite: Ukraine has been perceived as one of the “eternal lands” of Russia and the Ukrainian language as a language that cannot compete with the “greatness” of the Russian language. According to this imperialist mentality, everybody under Russia’s control should convert to Russian.
In one of his alleged diary entries, Konstantin quotes Tsar Nicholas II, in express admiration for Russia’s imperial past. He is troubled not by Russia’s war of conquest, but by the fact that he might be held responsible due to “deceit” and “cowardliness” inside the army:
For Russian occupiers, Ukraine is a territory of “lost people” who must be saved and liberated. Many images show Ukraine and Russia are viewed as one land: Russia. Ukraine as a separate state is a mistake that should be fixed, the Russian propaganda trope goes. Correcting this “mistake” entails the elimination of Ukraine as a state and the Ukrainians as a nation.
Russian occupiers look at Ukrainians as “inferior people,” and their mission in Ukraine is to “liberate” them from the “Kyiv regime” led by President Zelensky and from the influence of NATO.
The Russians’ mission is to “educate” the Ukrainians and explain to them that Russia “wants peace” that is sabotaged by NATO and the West. Russians treat Ukrainians as an “inferior class.”
Expansionism
Many images say “Russia,” “V,” “Z,” and “Glory to Russia.” This is one of the ways to mark the occupied territory. Land occupied by Russian soldiers becomes “Russia.” This re-mapping aligns with the Kremlin strategy to not only establish Russian administration in the occupied territories but also to present the occupation as “liberation” of the “eternal Russian lands” from the “Kyiv regime.” Last year, the Kremlin declared the occupied territories of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk oblasts part of Russia. Putin continues to specify that Ukraine was created thanks to Lenin and signals that Ukraine does have any right to any form of independence because its current territory is Russian.
Expansionism and imperialism continue to be part of the Russian population’s attitude toward neighboring countries. A fragment of one inscription is an eloquent play on the meaning of the “Russian world.” In Russian, “Russkiy mir” can be interpreted as the “Russian world” and “Russian peace.” The inscription left on a piece of board says, “We need peace. The entire world, preferably.”
Some inscriptions left by Russian occupiers sound somewhat apologetic:
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, cases have occurred where Russian soldiers defected or inflicted self-injury to avoid combat operations. In Russia, there have been silent protests against the war, and prominent figures who left Russia after the invasion in February make occasional public statements condemning the war. The recent data also show that many Russian soldiers killed since the launch of the Russian assault on Ukraine are either from distant regions of Russia or from the regions that struggle economically.
Some combatants may have regretted their decision to join the Russian Army for financial or career reasons. Nevertheless, in most cases, the level of destruction carried out by Russian occupiers leaves little doubt regarding the intent of these messages. The goal is to further Ukrainian humiliation.
For Russian combatants, the physical extermination of Ukrainians goes hand in hand with eradicating Ukrainian identification and cultural distinctiveness.
Russian occupiers and combatants are not simply “zombies” who blindly follow orders. The eradication of Ukrainians as a nation is a conscious act by Russia today. This month, the international UN commission investigating violations in Ukraine published a statement saying that, at the moment, they do not have a sufficient amount of evidence that meets the legal qualifications outlined in the Genocide Convention and provides grounds to confirm that Russia is carrying out genocide against Ukraine. At the same time, Erik Möse, chairman of the international UN commission, added that there are certain statements in the Russian mass media space that can be related to the incitement of genocide. The investigation is ongoing.
International lawyers and researchers document and investigate Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine to prove that they meet the legal qualifications of genocide. Russia has already employed vast media resources to not only spread the eliminationist rhetoric against Ukraine but also to construct and perpetuate a narrative that justifies and whitewashes the Kremlin’s aggressive policies.
This genocidal war actually reflects a deep inferiority complex. Moscow has already failed to subjugate the nation that not only resists Russia’s imperialism lasting for ages but also exposes its weaknesses and political, civic, and, in many ways, cultural impotence. Because of its inability to reconsider, rework, and reject its imperial past, Russia continues to welcome and espouse imperial thinking that embraces fascism disguised as patriotism.
Edited by Mike Cronin
Related:
- Four towers of Kremlin propaganda: Russia, Ukraine, South, West
- Russia’s state ideology of Ruscism: what you need to know
- Russian ideology: imperialism, militarism, and racism
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