The Institute for the Study of War said in its latest update that Moscow City Duma Deputy Andrey Medvedev posted to his Telegram channel on Nov. 23 a note in which he "categorically denied the existence of the Ukrainian nation, relegating Ukrainian identity to a 'political orientation.'” Medvedev also called for the total “liquidation of Ukrainian statehood in its current form.”
"This rhetoric is openly exterminatory and dehumanizing and calls for the conduct of a genocidal war against the Ukrainian state and its people, which notably has pervaded discourse in the highest levels of the Russian political mainstream," the ISW found. As ISW has previously reported, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has similarly employed such genocidal language in a way that is "fundamentally incompatible with calls for negotiations."
