I need some help with genocide explanation

[Bucky]

I'm having a running argument with a colleague.

Part of the discussion has turned to Vladimir Putin's insistence that Ukraine isn't really a separate nationality from Russia, as laid out in his famous On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians essay.

Now I've made all the familiar arguments like (a) if they were the same people, he wouldn't have to invade them, (b) Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine from the Holodomor in the 1930s to the Crimea invasion in 2014 to the suppression of the Ukrainian language under the czars, (c) they're actually separate languages, and (d) Russia may have evolved out of Ukraine, but saying they're the same is like saying the UK should be controlled by the US.

But when it turns to the genocidy parts of Russia's treatment of Ukraine, beside the erasure of forced depatriation of Ukrainian civilians and handing Ukrainian children over to being adopted by Russian couples, I also want to point out how denial of the Ukrainian ethnicity from Russian is also a stop in genocide.

The literature I've found so far says that dehumanization, calling an out-group community subhuman, is a step toward genocide. So is the symbolization or otherization, making the unique features of the targeted group seem lesser or hateable. But denying the separateness of the Ukraine people is almost the opposite of that--saying that they're not different from us, so they have to be loyal to us.

I've looked at the 10 stages of genocide and the 8 stages of genocide and seen plenty on denial of citizenship of a targeting minority. Only what Russia is doing at home is forcing Russian citizenship on reluctant Ukrainians, Which feels like erasure, but I don't see it listed among the steps of genocide per se. Isn't it?

So far I haven't found any literature by experts on the topic that defines not the emphasis on their separateness, but rather the denial of their separateness that is genocidal in nature.

Can someone help me find a source on this?

(please don't bother posting non-answers like "don't waste your time on people like that" -- I'm looking for help for me as much as for my interlocutor)

[Igel]

1. You don't need a source. You need perspective.

If I say that a trans woman gets no special treatment and, in fact, is obviously a man--like me--I'm not dehumanizing that person, I'm not othering that person--I'm "saming" that person.

But from that person's perspective I'm denying their claim and their distinctiveness. Their opinion, their perceived difference, is utterly meaningless. I'm devaluing them.

Since genocide is against a people--which entails that they are a distinct people--by forcibly assimilating them them I'd be no different than the "genocide" of forcing Native Americans into boarding schools where their first languages were forcibly forgotten.

I'd be extinguishing them as a (self-perceived distinct) people.

That's genocide.

On edit:

That was an overstatement. That is one way of committing genocide.

[Beastly Boy]

2. Here is where international law takes over.

What Russia is doing to the Ukrainians is more fitting with the legal definition of ethnic cleansing rather than genocide. It is likely that the difficulty in arguing genocide in this case comes from this distinction.

As an aside, though, Russia's claims of them and the Ukrainians being the same people had been debunked in legal terms during the Soviet era: Ukraine was one of the fifteen "independent" Soviet republics, recognized as distinct by the Soviet Constitution, just as Russia was distinct in that Union. And the distinction was pretty much along the cultural, ethnic and linguistic lines, making Ukraine a de jure separate nation.

[Bucky]

3. Thanks. That's a helpful distinction.

There's definitely a distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide here, although I'm pretty sure that Russia's forced adoption of Ukrainian children falls under both categories.

This argument is useful to me, cause it really has me boning up on Ukrainian history. It just sucks knowing I'm gonna have to make a case to a friend that she's been falling for Russian propaganda.