[swe_dima]

According to Wiki "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people, usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group...".

The initial goal of this war was to change Ukraininan government to a more friendly one. I have no idea what the current goal is, but it's very clear it's not killing people. Propaganda is trying very hard to deny any killings of civilians that do happen, if the goal was genocide they would try to portray Ukrainians as less than humans, the way some Germans considered jews to be vermin during Hitler.

Russians identify deeply with Ukraine, many have relatives and roots there (myself included). For this reason propaganda is trying to say that they are not fighting Ukraine, but NATO mercenaries. Again, this is horrible but does not sound like genocide.

[lostmsu]

> Propaganda is trying very hard to deny any killings of civilians that do happen, if the goal was genocide they would try to portray Ukrainians as less than humans

I fail to follow the logic here. If I beat you with a baseball bat, and will try very hard to deny that, does it mean my goal was not to beat you with a baseball bat? What if at the same time I will post articles in popular blogs about how you are a great human being and we are basically brothers?

[justsomehnguy]

Let me rephrase it: if the goal was the genocide then there would be much, much more civilian casualties. For now, civilian death count is slightly more than a total deaths from the car accidents in the whole country in the previous years. Doesn't pass the sniff test.

[swe_dima]

It may be semantics, but even by law a murder is different based on person's motivation.

If John kills Jane because she is black it is different than killing her by reckless driving. In this war civilians are getting killed because of disregard for human lifes while trying to kill the military, not intentionally because of the group they belong to.

I am not trying to say they are not killing people, it's the intention that I am questining. How can it be a genocide of Ukranians if Putin is killing a bunch of Russians that live there as well? And if there are many Ukranians in Russia's military doing the same thing.

[SllX]

The Holocaust is not the end all be all of what defines a genocide. The man who created the word wasn’t even trying to limit it to that when he was fleeing the Holocaust because he realized that there is more than one way to destroy a people even whilst the Germans were abjectly and mechanically destroying his people in a gruesome manner.

Here is Putin on the record in a speech he gave:

“ Putin said in a Monday speech: "Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood. There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine."

He argued that Ukraine was a creation of the Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin, its first leader, despite extensive evidence of a distinctive Ukrainian culture before that.

Putin also made a claim that Ukraine was a part of Russia's historic territory.

He said in his speech: "Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space.”

Here is the link for additional context including some nice words about having ties to Ukraine not dissimilar to what you just said: https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-denies-reviving-russia...

Maybe there is a cultural dissonance here and what Putin said means something completely different in Russian, but this to me reads as someone walking a fine line trying very hard not to admit that his goal is to erase Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as distinct from Russia and the Russian people. That was in February two days before launching a full scale invasion of Ukraine, and I don’t trust that the “official” reasons are the real ones. Putin is former KGB: deceiving foreigners and citizens alike is literally his bread and butter.

[therusskiy]

The official reason was not changing government, it's "denazification and demilitarization".

As for "not a real country", there's an opinion that I think has some truth to it, that Ukraine, Russia as well as other states were all forged in the flame of USSR. As I visit ex-USSR states they are very similar, like different flavors of the same country. National cloth and parts of language is all that is left.

This way there's not much need to change Ukraine to be like Russia, all of us already have the USSR culture.

[SllX]

Yes, Ukraine is also a Slavic culture. That doesn’t entitle one Slavic culture to dominate the rest of them politically and militarily.

Ukraine and it’s predecessor States were separate from any shared territory with Moscow and most of modern Russia’s western territory for something in the neighborhood of 700 years (at least!). There was even a force in Ukraine that fought against Union with Russia (and State Socialism) prior to Ukraine being subjected to Russian domination and eventually the USSR by Russian military force. Ukraine also declared independence from the USSR in 1991. That isn’t nothing either because Russia also went its own separate way and recognized Ukrainian independence. We also had an agreement since 1994 (the Budapest Memorandum) that Russia would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and that should have been the end of it.

But no, apparently that wasn’t enough and here we are, and for that matter you may as well call me British instead of American because apparently a few centuries of sovereign independence and cultural distinction don’t count.

[therusskiy]

I am not talking about Slavic culture, I am talking about USSR culture.

In my limited experience there's more in common between Russia and Ukraine / Georgia / Kazakhstan than between Russia and Poland / Czech / Croatia etc, latter being Slavs.

USSR did a lot of work to unify culture of its states.

In my personal experience I can never tell if someone is from Ukraine or Belarus until they tell me. I can tell that someone is from EU (including Slavs) just by looking at their back 20 meters away.

[justsomehnguy]

> Ukraine also declared independence from the USSR in 1991

And what happened on March 17, 1995?

[sofixa]

Thankfully there's an internationally recognised description of genocide:

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

The mental element, "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", is publicly there, in official speeches and everything.

The physical element ticks every box besides "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group", that we know of. The Russian army tortures murders civilians indiscriminately, puts them in grave peril (without access to food, water, heating), and kidnaps children.

It's textbook genocide.

[euos]

No. Initial goal was to occupy eastern Ukraine. There was no government in Kharkiv, Ukrainian south and such.

Stop repeating Russian propaganda.

[therusskiy]

I listen to Russian propanganda a couple times per month for educational purposes :-)

Believe me, that is not it.

You are likely right here though, that Donetsk and Lugansk would have likely became a part of Russia. I don't think anything would change for them, however, since these areas are already largely pro-Russian and were already controlled by military affiliated with Russia.

I expect after this war they are going to reconsider how much they want to be in Russia, because after promising to protect them, Putin sent all their young men to war.