In an interview with Russian news agency TASS on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the Kiev authorities and its Western backers of using a “meat knife” on the culture and population of the Ukraine region.
I have a realistic view. This is a monstrous phenomenon of the modern world—what is being done to the people of Ukraine and, in fact, to ethnic Ukrainians by those who call themselves the Kiev regime and, of course, its Western sponsors.
In fact, this is genocide. The population of Ukraine is being wiped out, and the historical experience that this people has—positive, creative, and wonderful—is being erased. Not without its ups and downs, not without its betrayals and crimes. No, every society goes through different moments. But it’s as if they are trying to reject everything, they are trying to carve out and erase what is worthy from the history of Ukraine.
Suppression of Orthodox Christianity
She discussed the suppression of Orthodox Christianity, which has previously been criticized by United Nations experts for “equating religious affiliation with threats to national security” and even by the Western-backed, anti-Russia Human Rights Watch, which asserted that “[any] prosecution or penalty not based on specific, unlawful actions but solely on the adherence to a peaceful practice of faith constitutes religious discrimination and is prohibited by international human rights law.” This story was covered by some news agencies, including UK’s The Independent.
Naming the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, shrines, and relics, Zakharova said:
This is really an authentic place of accumulation from the point of view of the spread of Christianity. There were so many items stored there, and it was a pilgrimage site for the whole world.
What’s left of it? Discord, strife, and a derogatory attitude toward both the clergy and the relics. And the most important thing is pitting people against each other and segregating them according to their religious affiliation. Literally driving people into barracks, where it says how to believe and how not to believe.
Distortion, erasure of cultural, literary history
She continued, discussing historical culture, art, and literature:
[They] try to tell the people that [Nikolay] Gogol is supposedly only a Ukrainian writer, and translate him into Ukrainian, although it is monstrous to mock the memory of a great writer, a playwright who wrote in Russian. Then they begin to divide Gogol into his components—Russian and Ukrainian. Then they start making it up again…
Look, it’s the same with everyone: artists, poets, writers. They were hacked with some kind of shredder, some kind of meat knife, separating them and dissecting them for the benefit of those who are destroying Ukraine in the West.
Historical revisionism, monuments
Further, she cited the material results of the far-right resurgence in Ukraine:
Education, history, and monuments to the Ukrainian heroes of the WWII were destroyed. To those people, by whose efforts, sweat and blood the very United Nations Organization was created, which, by the way, Ukraine was then part of in its independent capacity.
After all, all these chairs, armchairs, and tables of the United Nations are literally set on the bones of those who did not spare their lives to defeat Nazism and fascism.
Zakharova argued that those who contributed their lives did not give their lives with the intent of “the world … [turning] into some kind of Nazi stall, [where] they are now declared not heroes. Their monuments were demolished; their bas-reliefs were destroyed.”
As previously reported by this publication, Kiev’s Zelensky has recently reburied Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator Andrey Melnik with “full state honours,” describing it as part of “a process of bringing home the heroes who fought for the independence of [Ukraine] and were buried in other states.”
On the topic of demolished Soviet-era monuments, the Kiev authorities have also created new monuments, commemorating known Nazi collaborators such as Stepan Bandera, among others.
What remains of Ukraine?
Zakharova concluded with the question, “What remains of Ukraine?”
In addition to Ukrainians being instrumentalized, it seems that the Kiev regime, itself put into power after the US-backed Euromaidan coup in 2014, has continued their destruction and revision of history, much like their ally Japan.