Ukraine can’t negotiate with a nation that wants to erase its people from existence

Two of Russia’s recent missile attacks in Ukraine neatly convey its genocidal intent in pursuing its criminal war. They also remind us that when Vladimir Putin speaks of negotiations and peace, as he does with predictable regularity, he really means genocide, revanchism and war.

And when Western policymakers and analysts call for negotiations, they are in effect endorsing Putin’s agenda of destroying Ukrainians, enslaving Russians and terrorizing their neighbors.

On May 23, the Faktor-druk printing house in Kharkiv was hit by Russian guided aerial bombs; more than 50,000 books were destroyed.

Faktor-druk is, according to Ukraine Business News, “one of the largest full-cycle printing complexes in Europe, where books from almost all Ukrainian publishing houses were printed, including 50 percent of all textbooks in Ukraine.”

Two days later, Russia struck the Epicentr shopping center in Kharkiv, killing at least 18 and injuring 48. According to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, “This is pure terrorism.”

Not quite. Better to say, “It’s pure genocide.”

Kharkiv is being bombarded daily, and the targets are invariably civilian. Until a few months ago, Russia terrorized the city’s residents by dropping occasional bombs. More recent attacks are far more frequent, intensive and sustained. Their goal is no longer to intimidate Kharkivites, but to turn them and their city into human ashes and heaps of bricks.

Killing civilians intentionally with the goal of eradicating them in large numbers is genocide.

But targeting Faktor-druk and Epicentr is also genocide, even though it may not seem so at first glance. The printing house serves the needs of the Ukrainian spirit. The shopping mall serves the needs of the Ukrainian body. Russia isn’t just killing people and blasting buildings; it is purposefully destroying Ukrainian culture and the physical foundations of life in Ukraine. Mother Russia and her monstrous son, Putin, are out to eradicate Ukrainians as a nation.

Back in 1953, Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish scholar who invented the term genocide, wrote that “perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide” was “the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.” Lemkin meant more than killing: “This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.”

Putin and his comrades have more than amply stated that Ukrainian culture, identity and nationhood are their ultimate targets. Anyone can butcher, as the Russian armed forces have shown since day one of the invasion. But eradicating a soul — that takes the finesse of a career agent of the criminal Soviet secret police.

The International Criminal Court has already accused Putin of war crimes. But as Russia’s chief perpetrator of genocide, he is more than just a war criminal. He should be despised and shunned, not embraced and coddled. President Biden got it exactly right when he called Putin a “brutal tyrant” at West Point last week.

Ironically (and coincidentally?), just as Kharkiv was being leveled by Putin, an organization calling for understanding of and dialogue with Putin reared its head: The American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. According to its mission statement, “ACURA is a nonpartisan, tax-exempt educational organization of concerned citizens from different professions — business, academia, government service, science, law, and journalism — who are deeply concerned about the serious decline in relations between the United States and Russia.”

ACURA does not appear concerned with the war against Ukraine, the genocide of Ukrainians, the half-million dead and wounded Russian soldiers or Putin’s transformation of Russia into a dictatorship that shares as many features of Nazism as it does of fascism. Nor does the group seem worried by the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine or threats to incinerate Western Europe and the U.S.

Indeed, Ukraine, war and Putin aren’t even mentioned in the statement. Not even in passing: it’s as if they don’t exist — a sentiment that Putin shares with the committee. Instead, ACURA says the following: “While we believe it is important to recognize that we have serious disagreements with Russia, these should not close the door on dialogue or on the possibility of cooperation on matters of mutual national interest.”

Serious disagreements? If a genocidal war is nothing more than a serious disagreement, then one can only imagine how ACURA’s appeasers would have responded to Hitler’s predations.

It’s no surprise therefore that, “The primary mission of ACURA is to promote diplomacy, dialogue and cooperation with Russia.” Forget peace, justice, human rights and all that silly stuff. Forget Ukraine, which is in the throes of war; forget Belarus, which has been transformed into a Russian vassal; forget Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya and the many others who were murdered by the Putin regime; forget that the “international LGBT social movement” has been put on Russia’s list of terrorist organizations. Instead, cooperate with Putin. Talk to him. Who knows? Maybe he’s a great guy.

ACURA’s board of directors includes a variety of intelligent and accomplished people. They’re anything but “useful idiots.” They know exactly what they’re doing: giving succor to the murderous Putin regime.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”