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Kimonos. Japan, Home of the Sun. 1963. Kikuko Mori, illustrator.

Little Snowy

Published (updated) on February 24, 2026

“Legal and policy experts and historians for the U.S. Congressional Research Service, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights with New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, Ukraine’s National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic with the International Partnership for Human Rights – all have noted a pattern since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine: persistent rhetoric by Russian leaders and their associates that goes far beyond the ordinary bounds of verbal hostilities towards a wartime enemy, and may constitute evidence of  genocidal intent.

A number of such reports and briefs have cited Just Security’s chart below, which documents more than 500 examples of eliminationist rhetoric against Ukraine by Russian government officials, media commentators, and other public figures close to the Kremlin since the February 2022 invasion. The resource records genocidal, dehumanizing themes appearing to express an intent to eliminate the Ukrainian nation. The invective occurs in addresses, news articles, and social media posts issued by no less than Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev (a former Russian president and prime minister), and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, as well as Patriarch and Russian Orthodox Bishop Kirill of Moscow, Russian State TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, and Zakhar Vinogradov, editor-in-chief of the state-owned publication Ukraina.ru, among others.

Alongside the intensifying bombardments across Ukraine in more than three years of full-scale war, the clear and pervasive Russian rhetoric “compels us to conclude that the Russian Federation has not only continued but escalated its efforts to commit genocide,” wrote Kennesaw State University Professor Kristina Hook and four legal advisers in a July 2023 report for New Lines and the Wallenberg Centre, updating an analysis they issued in May 2022.

A legal memorandum to Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General from Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) and the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) stated, “Russian officials’ declared intent is to target the Ukrainian nation, both physically and ideologically, and eliminate any manifestation of its collective identity.”

Long before the February 2022 invasion and even prior to Putin’s 2014 capture of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, analysts had noted the threatening rhetoric against Ukraine by the Russian president and figures within his control. Dating at least to 2008 or 2009, increasingly hostile language laid the groundwork for rejecting Ukraine’s existence as a state, a national group, and a culture.

In May 2022, Beth Van Schaack, then-U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, observed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in response to a question about the Russian atrocities coming to light in Ukraine, “Some of the genocidal rhetoric that we’re hearing out of Russia is extremely worrying.”

Experts such as Francine Hirsch, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg,” pointed early on to such language as evidence of genocidal intent toward the Ukrainian people. Whether and how the concept of “genocide” applies to Russia’s campaign against Ukraine is the subject of debate, notwithstanding the reference in Article II of the Genocide Convention to “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.” A related issue under discussion is a concept often referred to as “cultural genocide,” which generally connotes the intentional destruction of a group’s identity even in the absence of mass killings. “These calls for ‘de-Ukrainization’ are an incitement to genocide: to ‘destroy, in whole or in part,’ the Ukrainian nation,” Hirsch wrote in April 2022. And Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder, in reference to the same article in the Russian outlet RIA Novosti that prompted Hirsch’s conclusion, wrote, “Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine.”

Just Security’s documentation indicates several themes in Russia’s eliminationist rhetoric:

The denial of Ukrainian identity and statehood. Russian leaders and propagandists portray Ukraine as having “always” been an inseparable part of Russia. They argue there is “no historical basis” for an independent Ukrainian state, delegitimize the country’s current government, and claim that Ukraine’s existence threatens Russian security. According to Mykola Riabchuck, a Ukrainian poet, author, and essayist who is an honorary president of Ukrainian PEN-center, this perception of Ukraine as a “historical aberration” with no right to exist legitimates the so-called “special military operation,” which intends to return Ukrainian territories to Russian control, as was the case in the Soviet Union.

The desire to eliminate the Ukrainian national group. Russian officials and others close to the Kremlin – including media personalities – express a desire or intent to destroy Ukraine’s culture and even the very existence of its population. Russian politicians and media figures have endorsed “total Russification,” “a complete ban” on teaching Ukrainian language,” “partially squeez[ing] out” of Ukrainians disloyal to Russia, wiping the country’s decision-making centers “off the face of the earth,” and incorporating Ukrainian territory into Russia so that “there are no more remnants of Ukraine.” This discourse presents “cultural eradication” as a “moral necessity” to salvage Ukraine, aiming to “create a generation of Ukrainians who identify as Russians,” writes political scientist Martin Laryš, deputy research director at the Institute of International Relations Prague.

The dehumanization of Ukrainians. Russian eliminationist rhetoric characterizes Ukrainians as subhumans requiring spiritual cleansing and treatment. State officials and others have referred to Ukrainians as “tumors,” “rabid dogs,” “cockroaches,” “lice” and “vermin” that Russia must “disinfect,” while also alluding to a larger Ukrainian “organism” no longer capable of “reproducing itself.” There is a precedent for such dehumanizing terminologies in past genocides, write National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professors Denys Azarov, Dmytro Koval, Gaiane Nuridzhanian, and Volodymyr Venher. Tutsis were labelled “cockroaches” in Rwanda, while the Nazis referred to Jews as “lice” and “rats.”

Civil society organizations, legal scholars, and others are concluding that eliminationist rhetoric by Russian state officials and other affiliated individuals incites genocide and expresses a willingness to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity:

The July 2023 report by the New Lines Institute and the Wallenberg Centre concluded that Russia’s public messages of incitement to genocide have intensified throughout the war, with new dehumanization tropes and narratives. This incitement provides evidence that Russia has a “general plan” to “destroy the Ukrainian national group.”

An October 2023 Congressional Research Service report found that statements by senior Russian officials denying Ukraine’s existence and calling for the elimination of its population “could be considered evidence of the intent to commit genocide in Ukraine.”

In their April 2025 legal memo, IHRC and IPHR concluded that statements by Russian government officials and the use of aerial attacks to inflict civilian harm provide evidence that Russian officials have “acted with the knowledge and intent necessary to hold them accountable for crimes against humanity and war crimes.” A November 2022 statement from State Duma Deputy Speaker Boris Chernyshov, for example, claimed that Russian retaliatory strikes were “an expression of our hatred, our holy hatred. They’ll be sitting without gas, without light, and without everything else. If the Kyiv regime chose the path of war criminals, they have to freeze and rot over there.” These statements, among others, demonstrate that Russian officials “knew and intended the attacks to cause civilian harm and death,” according to IHRC and IPHR.

And, in a May 2025 article, international human rights lawyer and director of IHRC Susan Farbstein wrote in an article for Just Security that the “devastating humanitarian effects” of aerial attacks, combined with Russian officials’ rhetoric, “make clear that Russia’s relentless aerial campaign against Ukraine is intended to exterminate Ukrainian civilians.”

Laryš of the Prague institute took the analysis a step further to show how such rhetoric has impacted Russian society. “This discursive ecosystem operates with tacit approval from the Kremlin, which allows such rhetoric to thrive while criminalizing anti-war dissent. The result is a competitive landscape of ideologues and propagandists vying to outdo each other in their expressions of loyalty to the regime’s goals. This environment not only sustains but actively amplifies genocidal ideologies, ensuring their widespread penetration into mainstream Russian society.”

The following compilation seeks to collect examples of such rhetoric in one place, organized in chronological order and necessarily non-exhaustive, since such declarations occur at high frequency in various media controlled by the Russian government. We express our sincere respect and thanks for the work of expert monitors of Russian media such as Julia Davis and Francis Scarr, who are credited below for their entries, and to Maksym Vishchyk for his contributions.