Some pro-war commentators are cheering the idea of the "liquidation" of the modern state of Ukraine, as supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin use increasingly "genocidal rhetoric" when demonizing Ukrainians.
Since the Feb. 24 invasion, ultranationalists have been pushing the Kremlin to take a harder line with the Ukrainians and to be more critical of Moscow's military leadership.
Well-known commentators, ranging from military bloggers and journalists to politicians and officials, belonging to a nationalist group in Russian politics, have repeatedly called for Russia to adopt a more merciless approach to Ukraine, with some advocating the use of nuclear weapons.
One of the most closely followed pro-Kremlin blogs is owned by the former president of Russia who has over a million followers on Telegram.
The rhetoric he uses to describe Ukraine and Ukrainians has become increasingly dehumanizing, as this week he characterized officials within the government as "cockroaches."
He told his followers this week that "Kiev is the capital of Ancient Russia" and that "Kyiv is just a Russian city where people always thought and spoke Russian"
The sentiment is shared by other officials as well as militarybloggers.
The Ukrainian nation does not exist and it is a political orientation, according to a pro-Kremlin journalist.
He claimed that one does not need to speak the Ukrainian language to be a 'Ukrainian'.
The only way to stop this is through the dissolution of Ukrainian statehood.
A video on social media that Moscow says shows Ukrainian forces killing Russian troops who may have been trying to surrender has sparked a new round of rhetoric. The deputy prime minister said that it was unlikely that the edited snippets showed what Moscow claimed.
The video has caused a storm among pro-Kremlin commentators, with Russia's State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin taking to his Telegram channel to condemn Ukraine and repeat baseless accusations that the government is led by fascists andNazis.
Ukraine and Ukrainians are being characterized as evil orsadists by pro-war, pro-Putin websites.
The same derogatory language and terminology is often shared across the blogosphere showing the pervasiveness of anti-Ukrainian propaganda, as evidenced by the derogatory language and terminology used by one of the popularbloggers.
A view of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra complex in the capital Kyiv,According to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, the use of such language by pro-war commentators in Russia is akin to "genocidal rhetoric."
This rhetoric has been used in the highest levels of the Russian political mainstream to call for a genocidal war against the Ukrainian state.
The genocidal language used by Russian President Putin is incompatible with calls for negotiations.
It is similar to the language used in Nazi Germany prior to the Holocaust in which millions of Jews and other perceived enemies of Nazi Germany were described.
Genocide is defined by the U.N. as a crime of destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
One analyst said that ultranationalist propaganda has become a part of the mainstream.
There has always been extreme language in the Russian blogosphere, but what is changing is how much of it is being pushed into the mainstream by the Kremlin.
A lot of this rhetoric is endorsed by the Kremlin. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a meme about Zelenskyy and the missile that landed in Poland. He noted that this kind of rhetoric has not been seen before in the mainstream, and that it is being done in the most anti-semitic way possible.
The rhetoric on the main state talk shows is what it is not just in the sort of blogosphere or on those Kremlin social media channels. He said that it is the mainstreaming of it.
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