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By Aleks Phillips
U.S. News Reporter
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Pundits in Russia have taken to daytime television to discuss whether Ukrainians should be "eliminated" or "re-educated" as the war continues.
In a clip of a TV discussion on Channel 1 Russia, panelists repeated the propaganda lines that Russia has used throughout its invasion of Ukraine, including describing Ukrainians as Nazis and suggesting they were somehow to blame for the conflict.
Yuri Kot, a pro-Kremlin journalist who has previously threatened nuclear attacks on the U.S. and Britain, made reference to the "illness of Ukrainianism" and suggested Russia's enemies should be "strictly eliminated."
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The words come as Russian forces appear to have made an advance in recent days on the salt-mining town of Soledar—a strategic outpost for either side, lying 6 miles from Bakhmut, which Ukrainian forces recaptured in the last month. The Russian military has failed to make any significant territorial gains in recent months, typified by a retreat from Kherson—the only regional capital it had been able to completely subjugate—in November.
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In an apparent recognition of Russia's setbacks on the battlefield, General Sergei Surovikin, the head of the Russian forces in Ukraine, was demoted after just three months, and replaced by General Valery Gerasimov. In an intelligence update on January 11, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said the move was "an indicator of the increasing seriousness of the situation Russia is facing, and a clear acknowledgment that the campaign is falling short of Russia's strategic goals."
It added that this would likely be greeted with "extreme displeasure" from Russian ultra-nationalists given Gerasimov's role in the planning of the initial invasion, which Russia maintains is a "special military operation."
That balance of the war would not be easily gleaned by watching Russian TV, however, which continues to craft a narrative in which Ukraine and its people continue to misunderstand Russia is a civilizing force.
In a translation provided by BBC Monitoring of a recent discussion, a presenter referenced a recent interview with Daniil Bezsonov, the Russian-installed minister for the Donbas region of Ukraine, in which he "asks himself the question: is it not now time to recognize them as enemies?"
In response, Kot differentiates between "involuntary Russians" who "are the same nation as us"—a reference to the stated objective of the Russian offensive to successfully annex the Donbas, which since 2014 had been held by Russian separatists—and "Russophobes who have caught the illness of Ukrainianism [and] who are holding our brothers hostage."
In the clip, another presenter asks of "call the mothers of our soldiers and say 'your son has died,' when he hasn't", an apparent allusion to a Ukrainian tactic of contacting the families of dead Russian soldiers to ask them to collect their bodies.
"Absolutely right, those are guns too," Kot replies. "You know, there are different types of guns. Words are also guns in this situation. That is to say, such people have taken the dark side and are proving themselves to be Russophobes, so it's simply pointless trying to talk to them in human terms."
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"They're enemies, just enemies," he adds. "And by the way, it wasn't us who defined them as such. Look—even after all this time we're still trying to gain an understanding of the different types of Nazi essence. But in actual fact they've defined all of us as enemies."
The Kremlin has often claimed the invasion of Ukraine was an effort to "denazify" the country, without clear explanation as to what it means. Ukraine's Azov battalion, a paramilitary group, has links to far-right and neo-fascist organizations, but has been used as an effective fighting outfit by Ukraine's Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Asked if Russia's enemies should be "eliminated or re-educated," Kot responds: "Strictly eliminated! The enemy's children can be re-educated but the enemy himself must be eliminated." Russia has been found to have deported Ukrainian children from their homeland to Russia in order to make them citizens, The Associated Press reported in October.
"In many countries, daytime TV consists of anodyne cookery or travel shows," Francis Scarr, a BBC Monitoring journalist, commented. "Meanwhile in Russia, they're discussing whether Ukrainians can be 're-educated' or need to be 'eliminated'."
"As part of any eventual democratization process in Ukraine, we'll need to send over Al Roker to punch up their morning programs because this isn't just hateful... it's also boring," Sam Sokol, a journalist and author of Putin's Hybrid War and the Jews, tweeted.
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