What is Ukrainophobia? What are its roots? How can we explain this relentless persecution of the Ukrainian people? Where does the Putin regime’s obsession with its “anti-Ukraine” project come from?

To shed light on these sentiments and actions, the Centre for Democratic Integrity (Vienna) commissioned a study by several authors to examine the different facets of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in today’s Russia and the genocidal war the Russian regime is waging against Ukraine.

It is well known that Moscow’s false accusations about an alleged NATO encirclement serve as a smokescreen to conceal Russia’s true objective: to destroy the Ukrainian state and eradicate Ukrainian national identity, in the name of chauvinistic imperialism and a distorted historical narrative.

This volume brings together ten contributions to this innovative project, exploring the manifestations of Ukrainophobia in Russian official discourse, propaganda, the military, and academia – as well as the origins and motives behind this blind hatred of the Ukrainian people.

British researcher Andrew Wilson’s masterful study traces the phenomenon to ideas of Russian supremacy and hegemonic control over the Eurasian space – inspired by Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt – and to mass manipulation techniques developed during the Soviet era, notably by philosopher Georgiy Shchedrovitsky, founder of the Moscow Logic Circle in 1952 and, later, the Moscow Methodological Circle in 1958. These techniques were modernised in the 1990s, during the rule of President Boris Yeltsin. Hence the idea of “reforming” the Ukrainian people by subjecting them to military rule.

Russian writer Sergei Lebedev, for his part, recalls Sandarmokh in Karelia, a site of mass executions carried out in 1937. The Ukrainians murdered there – writers, scientists, artists, painters – were generally victims of the Soviet authorities’ late-1920s shift away from korenizatsia (“indigenisation”), which had encouraged the development of national identity (a socialist one, but with its own cultural and linguistic features), towards the criminalisation of nationalism and the imposition of a chauvinistic imperial agenda. This shift coincided with the policy of collectivisation and operations against former elites who had served the Soviet regime. According to Lebedev, Putin is merely continuing Stalin’s destruction of Ukrainian identity. The Russian intelligentsia – even those who oppose the war – reject responsibility for it. Yet in reality, they bear a heavy moral burden because, through their silence, they contribute to the concealment of past crimes and their repetition today.

Admittedly, Putin draws heavily on the figure of Stalin and even allows himself to write (or commission) historical essays – most notoriously, his text on the “historical unity” of Russians and Ukrainians. But it is several influential figures in his inner circle who have implemented the regime’s anti-Ukrainian ideology. Chief among them is Nikolai Patrushev, Putin’s aide and former Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, who is still highly influential over the “first person”. Swedish researcher Martin Kragh and German researcher Andreas Umland dedicate their study to this central figure of the regime, driven by a paranoid hatred of Ukraine. They show how Patrushev and other pan-Russian nationalists have come to believe that all Ukrainians conscious of their identity are “Nazis”. In the pan-Russian imagination of Patrushev and other proponents of Russian imperialism, a sovereign Ukraine can only be anti-Russian – and therefore fascist. This label, in turn, serves to justify Russia’s genocidal policies in Ukraine, which, for these ideologues, are a form of anti-fascism.

Cultural philosopher Alexander Etkind also analyses Putin’s aforementioned essay but poses original questions: What does it mean for the ruler of a country at war to proclaim that his friends and enemies are one and the same people? What rhetorical or political benefits did this idea offer, and what challenges did it encounter? And what does the letter Z symbolise?

Putin’s Kremlin was determined to destroy the ‘national pattern’ of the Ukrainians and replace it with the ‘national pattern’ of the Russians while proclaiming that they were one and the same people,” writes Etkind. Russians and Ukrainians have indeed shared close ties for centuries, but “those who sent soldiers to Ukraine needed to establish their own marks of difference. Since in their view, there were no real words or cultural symbols that could serve to differentiate friends from foes, a symbol had to be invented from scratch. It does not really matter where the Z first appeared — entirely senseless, it is the belief in the Z, the love for the Z, the identification with the Z, that identifies what the Russians call a true patriot.

Several contributions examine other aspects of Ukrainophobia in greater depth. Andreas Heinemann-Grüder focuses on Russian war propaganda, designed not only to mobilise society as a whole, but also to legitimise violence against Ukrainian military personnel and civilians. This is also the theme explored by human rights defenders Andrey Kalikh and Yuri Dzhibladze, who analyse the hateful – even genocidal – rhetoric of Russian propaganda and show how it has likely contributed to the perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In cases of genocide, they stress, international law treats incitement as a criminal act in itself.

Russian historian and ethnographer Dmitry Dubrovsky, now in exile in Prague, highlights the theories circulating in Russian higher education and academic circles aimed at “proving” the “deficiency” of the Ukrainian nation and state. Former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev explains how Russian diplomats – once the most enlightened segment of the state apparatus – have been reduced to mere executors of the supreme leader’s will. Even Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is compelled to repeat Putin’s conspiratorial and genocidal narratives, making diplomats an integral part of the Russian propaganda machine.

The powerful propaganda machine is dumbing down even those citizens who do not support the war. Russian sociologist Alexey Levinson, drawing on independent polls (which no longer exist), reaches a striking conclusion: “Russians have not yet realised that the war is a national disaster and a catastrophe of two peoples”.

This volume helps us understand not only what is going on “in Putin’s head”, but also among Russian elites and ordinary citizens. To conclude the volume, Viennese researcher Anton Shekhovtsov – who initiated and coordinated this publication project – offers a compelling interpretation of Putin’s obsession with Ukraine. As in a science fiction tale, the Russian head of state, in search of symbolic immortality, seeks to correct the course of history by subjugating the Ukrainian people, who gained sovereignty with the collapse of the USSR. But, as Shekhovtsov concludes, such a fantastical goal of “correcting” history by force can only lead to one outcome for Russia and its president: ruin.

One can only agree with this conclusion. History has already seen moments when messianic ideas, fantasies elevated to dogma and mingled with resentment, took hold of entire societies – as happened in Nazi Germany. And just as Hitler’s Germany was defeated, only a Ukrainian victory, supported by its allies, can overcome the deeply rooted evil of Russian imperialism. This evil is not only destroying Ukraine, but also corroding the Russian economy and the minds of its people. To grasp this fully, reading this volume is essential.