When confronted with the reality of Ukraine stubbornly insisting on existing and Russia's clearly exterminationist war aims, Mr. Dunn responded by medicalizing disagreement with his reader, me:
"You have fixed in my mind that you are a warmonger. It's plain for anyone to see. There seems to be no other cause for your being. You have a very bad case of war fever. Maybe someday, you will entertain some other fantasy than, "Ukraine will win" or "Russia will at last be destroyed". You might even heed the words of John Lennon, and give peace a chance."
The Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives and the abysmal condition of Russia’s mobiki clearly showed Ukrainian victory is no fantasy. Dunn’s “stalemate” version of the war is the fantasy. I’ll now introduce some accountability for Mr. Dunn’s previous appeasement.
Mr. Dunn wrote on February 26 that the war was a "manufactured distraction", in July that Russia was winning, so surrender was a better option for Ukraine, and in September, just before Ukraine's Kharkiv offensive, that the war was a stalemate. Mr. Dunn clearly prefers to evade responsibiliity for his own previously written words and psychologize those who hold him accountable for fantasy forecasts and genocide apologia. The Swiss NATO staffer, Jacques Baud, is another Russian useful idiot Mr. Dunn naively cites. Baud denied the Bucha killings and denied the FSB poisonings of Navalny and the Skripals in Salisbury, UK.
So, I'll again quote here the manifestly exterminationist war aims of Ukraine's counterparty in any negotiation. Mr. Dunn's call for a compromise peace with a clearly genocidal Russia incorporates Russia's claim that Ukraine as a state, culture, language and people are inherently contingent and negotiable, while Russia and Russkiy Mir are assumed to be permanent. Since the Russian empire has collapsed twice in the 20th century, we have empirical proof that the reverse is true. This is not war-mongering retribution advocacy, but historical fact Russia hides in plain sight, just as it tries to hide its genocidal history by dismantling memorials to the Holodomor in the cities it occupies.
The Russian state and its media mouthpieces have repeatedly, and with deafening clarity, announced who they are and what they intend for Ukraine. Mr. Dunn simply chooses not to listen and advocates a policy of defining ALL support for Ukraine as escalation, which ignores that clarity: (https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection/):
"To those who want and try to divide [Russia and Ukraine], I say – in your dreams.”--Putin, Nezavisimaya Gazeta (January 23, 2012
"There is “no historical basis” for the “idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.”--Putin – “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” – Kremlin (July 12, 2021)
"Russian economist and pundit Mikhail Khazin remarks – “They need to be partially eliminated” – YouTube video (December 27, 2016)
"Putin in press conference (February 8, 2022) and in official remarks (February 21, 2022) – An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent – Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy
“‘Like it or not, take it, my beauty’” references a “vulgar Russian rhyme about necrophiliac rape, implying an intention to inflict similar destruction on Ukraine and a view of Ukraine as a corpse.”
Modern Ukraine is considered to be “entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.”
Ukraine has “several million people [not loyal to Russia]” who “need to be partially eliminated and partially squeezed out.”
“New Russia,” or the territories from Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhye, and Dnepropetrovsk, “should be joined to the Russian regions, with full denazification, deukrainization.”
Russia should institute a “complete ban on Ukrainian fonts, Ukrainian texts, programs on [the] Ukrainian language, on teaching Ukrainian – ie completely.”
These implementations will cause a “surplus population – let the surplus population go to the [Russian] Far East.”
Former Putin aide Vladislav Surkov in Q&A – Surkov: “I’m Interested in Acting Against Reality” – Actual Comments website (February 26, 2020)
"There is “no Ukraine,” although there is “Ukrainianism” – a “specific mental disorder. Surprisingly brought to the extreme degree passion for ethnography. Such bloody lore. Muddle instead of the state. There is borscht, Bandera, bandura. But there is no nation.”
Head of the Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky – Telegram posts by Slutsky – Telegram (Feb. 24 – Sept. 30, 2022):
“This is the harsh truth. Until the last Ukrainian, so until the last Ukrainian.” (Sept. 30)--
Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin – Telegram posts by Volodin – Telegram (March 15 – Oct. 13, 2022):
“In the end, everyone should come to the realization that we have one country, and we are obliged to defend it. And there shouldn’t be another!” (March 15) “Ukraine has lost its sovereignty and is on the verge of self-disintegration.” (July 21)
Pro-Putin pundit Timofei Sergeitsev op-ed – “What Should Russia Do with Ukraine?” – RIA Novosti (April 5, 2022):
“Nazi, Bandera Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and the West’s tool for the destuction of Russia, we do not need.”
The “denazification” of Ukraine entails “a set of measures in relation to the nazified mass of the population, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals.”....
There is “no significant distinction between the APU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished.”
In addition to Ukrainian defense forces, “a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power.”
These masses can be denazified through “re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, bit also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education.”
“The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification.”
Denazification will coincide with “de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.”
Russian State TV Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and other pro-Putin figures or officials – “Ominous rhetoric gains ground in Russia as its forces founder in Ukraine” – Washington Post (April 13, 2022):
“On state television, a military analyst doubled down on Russia’s need to win and called for concentration camps for Ukrainians opposed to the invasion. Two days later, the head of the defense committee in the lower house of parliament said it would take 30 to 40 years to ‘reeducate’ Ukrainians.”
Karen Shakhnazarov, pundit and filmmaker – “‘There will be no mercy’ Putin mouthpiece warns of ‘concentration camps, sterilisation’” – excerpts from Russian State TV channel Rossiya 1 via Express (May 4, 2022, via May 5, 2022 article)
Opponents of “Letter Z” must “‘understand that if they are counting on mercy, no, there will be no mercy for them. It all became very serious. In this case it means concentration camps, re-education, sterilization.’”
Vladlen Tatarsky, Pro-Kremlin blogger and war correspondent – Interview with Russian State TV host Sergey Mardan – translated by media monitor Julia Davis (Oct. 23, 2022)
“What are Ukrainians? I suddenly understood it. A Ukrainian is a Russian who got sick. Like a transvestite, he was born a man, then something happened, he had an operation, decided to become a woman and live like one. He puts on a dress, a wig, puts lipstick on, and goes that way all over town. It looks a bit peculiar, you think: is that a man? That’s a man – no, that’s a woman. A Ukrainian is a Russian spiritual transvestite, who is trying to squeeze into another skin. I was always interested: when was this moment when they have shifted from a healthy Russian person, let’s say, a Southern Russian person, and into total schizophrenia. The future of Ukraine, those people who live there, is that they are Russian people and they will return to their normal state.”
“When we win in Ukraine, the future of these people is that they are Russian people, who recovered from their craziness, their spiritual transvestism, and returned to their normal state.”
“In order to reset things way back, all of those [Holodomor] monuments have to be destroyed, and all of those cult sites, all monuments erected after 1991 that are related to Ukraine’s independence, or its new and remade history, have to be completely destroyed.”
Sergey Mardan then says, “It’s impossible to defeat Ukrainianism as an idea if you don’t formulate a counter-idea… [Alexander] Dugin is correct a hundredfold when he says that in order to defeat Ukraine, you have to defeat Ukraine within yourself. That aggressive, fascist, misanthropic ideology of Western liberalism has to be eradicated in its every form. They are countless, they permeate our entire life. We have to eliminate them here. And only then we will win.”
"Those are Russian people, who are possessed. We aren't coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don't want us to convince you, we'll kill you. We'll kill as many as necessary: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you."
— Pavel Gubarev, DPR leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Gubarev
Ukrainians understand it makes as much sense to negotiate with the people quoted above as for the Chinese of Nanjing in 1937-38 and the Polish Home Army in August 1944 to negotiate with their Japanese and German occupiers in thrall to imperial delirium. Ukraine will not sacrifice itself on the altar of Russia's useful idiot genocide apologists' fear of the nuclear blackmail Putin has voiced since 2008. Its purpose is crystal clear, to cause western support for Ukraine to crumble from within. Dunn and other useful idiot genocide apologists like him are Putin’s last hope:
All these useful idiots do is dilute and delay full western support for Ukraine, which delays an end to the war and raises the risk of a permanently more dangerous frozen conflict. Sail past fake peace sirens like Mr. Dunn as Odysseus did when tied to his ship’s mast.
