Was Putin forced to invade Ukraine to stop a genocide of ethnic Russians?
No.
Putin apologists frequently defend his invasion of Ukraine by claiming that Ukraine was carrying out genocide. In this view, Putin's invasion stopped the genocide of ethnic Russians.
That view is very wrong. Extremely, obviously wrong.
cartoon by RednBlackSalamander
How did Putin justify the invasion of Ukraine?
It's hard to defend Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It's illegal: No UN resolution supports it. It's imperialist: Putin hopes to control Ukraine. It's immoral: The war has killed thousands and caused ~7.9 million refugees.
Pro-Russia pundits are forced to shift blame. One major tactic is to claim that Ukraine was conducting a cultural genocide or ethnic genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
For example, in July 2021, Putin claimed that "Russians and Ukrainians" are "one people", whose "kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation" based on "human and civilizational ties formed for centuries". But this "spiritual unity" has "been attacked", because "Russians in Ukraine are being forced" to "deny their roots, generations of their ancestors" and "to believe that Russia is their enemy". Putin claimed that "[i]t would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us".
In short: Ukraine is conducting a cultural genocide against Ukrainians, comparable to the use of WMDs against Russia.
On 21 February 2022, Putin announced the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. He also repeated this rhetoric of genocide: "the so-called civilised world" prefers not to see "this horror and genocide, which almost 4 million people are facing".
On 23 February 2022, Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine. He explicitly justified his invasion by claimed genocide of Russians:
It became impossible to tolerate it. We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. It is their aspirations, the feelings and pain of these people that were the main motivating force behind our decision to recognise the independence of the Donbass people’s republics.
The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.
In short: Putin claimed that Ukraine was conducting cultural and ethnic genocide. This claim is central to his support for Russian invasion.
Many pro-Russia pundits claim to be anti-imperialists, skeptical of capitalist regimes and state propaganda. We might hope that they'd interrogate this massive claim with the skepticism it deserves.
How did pro-Russia pundits react?
In reality, pro-Russia pundits simply ate up this talking point -- and took it further. Here are some examples:
Nazis slaughtering Russians: Three days after the invasion, on 26 February 2022, pro-Russia paid shill Dan Cohen (102k followers) tweeted that Ukrainian Nazis were "slaughtering ethnic Russians":
People who suddenly declared themselves “anti-war” when Russia began its operation just want to return to the status quo of Ukrainian nazis slaughtering ethnic Russians in Donbas. They’re not actually anti-war, they’re virtue signaling to the warmongers.
Ukrainians slaughtering Russians: On 27 May 2022, former "conservative communist", current fascist propagandist, and consistently pro-Russia pundit Jackson Hinkle tweeted that "Ukraine slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians in Donbas":
If you only believe in “defensive wars,” you should support the Russian military operation.
For the past 8 years, Ukraine slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians in Donbas & was on the verge of launching a full-scale invasion. In my opinion, Russia tried diplomacy for too long.
(He later tweeted that Joe Biden "trained Nazis to genocide ethnic Russians".)
Ethnic survival at stake: Days after Russia held fake referendums to justify annexing four oblasts in eastern Ukraine, on 30 September 2022, paid pro-Russia shill Vanessa Beeley tweeted that said referendum was "the only way for the people of Donbass [a region in Eastern Ukraine] to survive":
[Tweeter:] A referendum should take place, but only after the fighting is over.
[Beeley:] You mean after the entire region has been ethnically cleansed by NATO Nazi proxies? The referendum is the only way for the people of Donbass to survive. This isn't about Western political niceties, it is about prevention of genocide.
Ethnic bioweapons: And, perhaps most absurdly, a few weeks after the invasion, on 10 March 2022, pro-Russia military disinformation account ASB News tweeted that the US was creating "bioagents" to "target certain ethnic groups:
(In reality, about 6% of US residents have Slavic ancestry -- the US wouldn't even need "biolabs in Ukraine" to "harvest Slavic DNA". It could just harvest home-grown, patriotic, American Slavs!)
In short: Pro-Russia pundits happily extended Putin's language of "genocide" to absurd proportions, obviously fake proportions.
What was the reality?
Was Ukraine slaughtering ethnic Russians?
No -- and only a liar would tell you otherwise.
On 30 January 2022, the United Nations in Ukraine published a report titled "Conflict-related civilian casualties in Ukraine" in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. The report estimated that "conflict-related deaths" ended the lives of 14,200-14,400 people in "Ukraine from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021".
That's enough deaths to plausibly allow mass ethnic slaughter. Indeed, Russian media often presents this figure as such. However, looking any deeper at the facts shatters this illusion.
The vast majority of these deaths were combatants: The United Nations reports that just 3,404 civilians died from "conflict-related civilian deaths":
OHCHR estimates the total number of conflict-related casualties in Ukraine from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021 to be 51,000–54,0008: 14,200-14,400 killed (at least 3,404 civilians, estimated 4,400 Ukrainian forces, and estimated 6,500 members of armed groups), and 37-39,000 injured (7,000–9,000 civilians, 13,800–14,200 Ukrainian forces and 15,800-16,200 members of armed groups).
(298 of those deaths resulted from Russian soldiers shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014.)
The rate of civilian death dramatically dropped from 2,084 in 2014 to just 27 in 2019, 26 in 2020, and 25 in 2021. This is impossible to read as "slaughter of ethnic Russians":
The UN breaks down deaths by cause. Among all civilian deaths in 2019-2021, nearly 60% (46 of 78) resulted from Explosive Remnants of War (ERW), basically landmines and unexploded bombs -- not ethnic cleansing:
The UN also breaks down the casualty data by month, which completely collapses the idea of "mass civilian killings": During the 48 months of 2018-2021, the UN records only 10 months with 5 or more civilian fatalities and just 2 months with 10 or more civilian fatalities -- not mass casualties:
From 2016-2021, Eastern Ukraine was no longer an active warzone. (The period was often called a "frozen conflict".) Over those 6 years, 365 civilians died.
(For comparison, since 2000, the Israeli military has killed about ~10,300 Palestinian civilians, or ~450 per year.)
If we use the common meaning of "genocide" -- "mass killing of people for ethnic reasons" -- the frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine could not have been a genocide simply because there was no mass killing.
In short: Anyone who claims that Ukraine was conducting mass slaughter of ethnic Russians is lying or catastrophically malinformed. You should fully disregard their opinions.
Has Putin's invasion brought peace to Eastern Ukraine?
No. Obviously not.
The United Nations didn't stop counting civilian deaths in 2021 -- they kept counting after Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
I combined the UN’s three datasets into one: Yearly for 2014-2017, monthly for 2018-2021, and daily to half-weekly for 26 February 2022 onward. The results follow.
Keep the civilian deaths during frozen conflict in mind. Then look at the dramatic rise of civilian deaths that occurred both times after Putin invaded Ukraine, in 2014 and 2021:
The UN corroborates nearly 6,500 civilian conflict-related deaths in Ukraine died since Putin invaded Ukraine -- about 720 deaths per month. (That's 28 times more deaths per month, since Putin's invasion, than occurred in 2021 as a whole.)
In total, violence during Euromaidan and deaths from armed conflict have killed about 10,050 people in Ukraine. The vast majority of those deaths (~9000) are squeezed into 2014-15 and 2022, both immediately after Putin invaded Ukraine.
In short: If you oppose war because you oppose suffering and death, you cannot support Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Conclusion and shilling
In short: UN data shows that, in 2016-2021, Ukraine was not conducting mass slaughter of any civilians, much less an organized mass slaughter of ethnic Russians.
Anyone who promotes this talking point should either be shamed as a Russian shill or embarrassed at their total failure of reasoning.
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