About the author: Yaroslav Kharitonov is a Moscow-based journalist, a Master of international relations objected to global conflicts.
By the second year of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, lots of Africans still can not decide whom to support in this war. The US, the EU, and the Western media totally favor the Ukrainian side — as well as they favoured the organisers of the Rwandan genocide.
Moreover, to defeat Russia, the West has already supplied Ukraine with over $110 billion of financial, humanitarian, and military aid during the first 12 months of the war. Even 1% of this sum would be enough to feed every starving child in Africa (given their number is 1,5 million according to the UN).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/ https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1110282
In my opinion, the reason of entente cordiale between the West and Ukraine is that the latter performs the same systemic racism which has become the part of the Western policy since colonial times. In my view, there are lots of political similarities between the current Ukrainian authorities and the Rwandan génocidaires — and hereby I’ll try to explain my position.
TWO PEOPLES WITHIN ONE COUNTRY
For centuries, Ukraine has been a home for two ethnic groups who speak related languages: Russians and Ukrainians. Since Ukrainian independence after the 1991 USSR collapse, the nationalistic governments of this largest European country have begun to impose divisionism and restrict basic rights of the Russian minority.
This process dramatically accelerated in 2014, during the Kiev Maidan, when the neutral government was violently changed to the ultranationalistic one. On YouTube, you can find a video as of December 2013 where Victoria Nuland, the then US Assistant Secretary of State, admits that Washington has spent $5 billion to promote ‘democracy in Ukraine’ — which had resulted in the bloody coup and ensuing civil war.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2fYcHLouXY (the quote begins at 7:25)
Among other similarities to 1994, the fate of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana — whose death has unleashed the genocide — was being prepared for the then moderate Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. The coup organisers planned to kill him and only his evacuation from Ukraine with the help of Russia has saved his life.
DIVISIONISM, HATE SPEECH, AND THE FIRST MASS MURDERING
Soon after the February 2014 coup, the first intention of the new Ukrainian interim government was to legally restrict the Russian language.
This has sparked mass pro-Russian demonstrations in the South-East of Ukraine and led to the deployment of the Russian government forces in Crimea and reunification of this peninsula with Russia.
The Western countries were outraged that Crimea, a strategic naval base, had become a part of Russia, forcing Moscow to look for ways to negotiate and resolve the conflict — but not the new Ukrainian government.
The latter, feeling impunity and approval from the West, proceeded to radical measures, effectively implementing the Ten Commandments of the Rwandan génocidaires: in Ukraine, the Russian language became the marker of an enemy that could and should be killed.
This culminated in the tragedy of 2 May 2014 in Odessa: almost 50 pro-Russian protesters were burned alive in the city centre as the result of clashes between the pro-Russian and anti-Russian crowds. All the process was life-streamed in the media with the Ukrainian politicians and experts publicly praising the mass killing.
The Ukrainian nationalists labeled the dead — as well as the other pro-Russian persons — as ‘kolorads’ (harmful potato bugs), similar to hate speeches used during the Rwandan genocide.
No one has been punished for the Odessa incineration so far. The UN and the OSCE have ignored the Odessa 2 May tragedy which has let the killing spiral up. Unlike Crimea, other dominantly Russian regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, were not taken by the Russian government and remained face-to-face with Ukrainian nationalistic forces.
Throughout Spring and Summer 2014, the Ukrainian army bombed peaceful towns of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, killing children and women with shells, shooting those who resisted and suppressing dissenters. For example, the Russian-speaking presidential candidate, Oleg Tsarev, was repeatedly beaten and fled to Russia to save his life.
Thus, by Spring 2014, a situation similar to Rwandan 1994 had emerged: on one side, there were fierce radicals in power, on the other, there was a popular insurgency.
THE KILLS DID NOT STOP
Why do I recall all these bygone stories? Because those who blame Russia for ‘invading Ukraine in February 2022’ totally ignore the previous events.
So by autumn 2014, the Ukrainian radicals realised that they could not win by force and tried to negotiate. In Minsk, the ceasefire agreements were signed under Russian mediation. Later this format was upgraded into the so-called Normandy quartet, with the participation of the French president and the German chancellor — meaning that the key Western powers became the guarantors of the Minsk agreements.
The main point of these agreements was clear: to stop the war and to reintegrate Donetsk and Luhansk back to Ukraine upon the conditions of their political and linguistic autonomy. All Ukraine had to do was to secure the status of the Russian language, grant amnesty to combatants and give autonomy to the region densely populated by the Russian-speaking population.
In reality, all the agreements were just a sham. Moreover, Angela Merkel, one of its guarantors, has recently admitted that all that ‘ceasefire process’ was only a dirty trick to distract Russia and to help Ukraine to recreate its military forces.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/22/ffci-d22.html
But back to our story. The international community did not notice the Ukrainian war crimes, and new “Interahamwe” were born during the conflict. The so-called Azov battalion, a military unit with Nazi symbols, committed multiple war crimes, beginning from the shooting of a peaceful demonstration commemorating the anniversary of the WW2 victory over fascism in Mariupol (a seaport to the South of Donetsk) on 9 May 2014.
Simultaneously, Ukrainian society was totally brainwashed with the far-right ideology. All Russian TV channels were banned and all Ukrainian media became the collective Radio and the Television of the Thousand Hills, calling for war with the Moskals (a derogatory nickname for Russians). Opposite journalists have been exterminated, for example, Oles Buzina, an influential antifascist and the main critic of the new regime, was killed in Kiev in 2015.
FINAL
For eight years, Russia had been trying to influence Ukraine through international bodies to draw their attention to the regime’s crimes, but with zero result. Ukraine went further, imposing various restrictions and oppressive measures against Russian-speaking citizens, reducing the share of its mother tongue in education, government, media, and business.
By February 2022, Ukraine deployed up to 250,000 troops, including hundreds of tanks and rocket launchers at the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It was clear that if Russia might have been not retaliate, a kind of the Rwandan tragedy could repeat — the Ukrainian publicists openly spoke about ethnical purges in Donbass:
‘If we take, for example, just the Donetsk oblast, there are approximately 4 million inhabitants, at least 1.5 million of which are superfluous… no matter how cruel it may sound – there is a certain category of people that must be exterminated’, a Ukrainian journalist called on Hromadske, the TV channel sponsored by the West.
https://thesaker.is/its-perfectly-simple-you-need-to-kill-1-5-million-people-in-donbass/
Why do I compare Ukraine and 1994 Rwanda so much?
After the outbreak of both conflicts, the international community took the side of evil. Just as in 1994, when UN peacekeepers passed over murders and atrocities — in 2022, they did not want to see 8 years of Russians being killed, burnt, and tortured for the right to be Russians. With Russia’s arrival in the new territories (so far Russia controls the parts of four former Ukrainian regions), the repressions and atrocities stopped. It can be compared to the RPF advances in 1994, only they stopped the killing.
While France used its troops in 1994 and provided the then-Rwandan government with the time and opportunity to carry out the genocide — in 2022, NATO and the EU have pelted Ukraine with weapons and mercenaries with the same objective: to maintain a profitable regime, never mind that its hands are in blood.
Despite all the tragedy, there is still hope that suddenly one can expect a fair punishment for the criminals, perhaps an impartial criminal tribunal can be formed? Let us recall recent history. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) lasted almost twenty years from 1994 to 2012. And it is remembered for the most egregious decision: it freed Protais Zigiranyirazo, one of the principal architects of the genocide — I’m sure my Rwandan readers know this story.
Now, in May 2023, speaking in The Hague, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky expressed a desire to see Vladimir Putin in court. The Kiev leader grinned with his hands up to his elbows in blood, knowing that there would never be any punishment for his own crimes. The international community is unprofitable and uninterested and is once again inactive and covering up criminals, the new Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, just like 29 years ago in Rwanda.
About the author
Yaroslav Kharitonov is a Moscow-based journalist, a Master of international relations objected to global conflicts.
End.