JRL NEWSWATCH: “Attacking Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam Fits Russia’s Centuries’ Old Pattern” – Newsweek
“… [T]his latest incident should be understood as yet another horrific atrocity in a long history of Russian colonial violence. … [D]ays before the destruction of the dam, a prominent Russian propagandist called for the destruction of ‘every living thing’ in one of Ukraine’s eastern regions in order to ‘punish and deter’ Ukrainians for resisting Russian occupation. This state news rhetoric is rooted in a colonial understanding of Russia’s own national and imperial history. … [There has been] a well-documented pattern of targeting Ukrainian civilians for destruction. Yet this is not Russia’s first attempt to destroy Ukrainian national identity. In the 1930s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin forcibly starved millions of Ukrainians in … the Holodomor. … [T]he Soviet police carried out a campaign to erase Ukraine’s cultural leaders. … The problem was not simply the poisoned ideology of Marxism-Leninism. The problem was Russian colonial chauvinism ….”