Further thoughts on 'ethnic cleansing' as a Russian war objective

Further thoughts on ethnic cleansing in the Donbas as a Russian war objective

Re-reading my essay of yesterday on the de facto demographic changes in Donbas that Russia has been achieving by its slow and methodical taking of the region hamlet by hamlet on the ground using its infantry, I am surprised that it took me so long to understand the logic to Vladimir Putin’s dragging out a war that he could conclude instantly via decapitation strikes on the political and military leadership in Kiev.

I called this process ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the full knowledge that the term is highly emotive. Indeed, one reader wrote to me directly, telling me that it is a form of ‘genocide.’ That goes to show how our language has been corrupted. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ such as one can see going on in Donbas is saving lives rather than taking lives. It is precisely the opposite of the American way of war, meaning indiscriminate carpet bombing of territory that you intend to take possession of. Moreover, the ongoing ethnic cleansing has the support of the Ukrainian government: it is they who try to withdraw to safety behind Ukrainian lines the entire population of towns under threat of Russian seizure. Indeed some residents of such towns and hamlets head West under compulsory evacuations. Others head east to the Russian side. And a minority of the core populations, mostly the elderly who cannot move, stay put and await ‘liberation’ by advancing Russian troops.

One comment on yesterday’s essay speaks of the territory being taken by the advancing Russians as a ’moonscape.’ Indeed, footage shown on Russian state television after the Russian flag has been raised on some bombed out building in hamlet X makes it clear that there has been heavy destruction from the initial Russian artillery shelling through their house to house search to kill lingering Ukrainian snipers and other enemy forces hiding in basements. However, Russia will rebuild these hamlets and towns just as it has done in the heavily destroyed cities in the eastern territories of Donbas, so that they will soon be repopulated by loyal pro-Russians.

I note in passing that the ethnic cleansing explanation for the war of attrition strategy also explains why the Russians have not bombed the Dnieper bridges, which would be the logical thing to do if the highest priority were strictly military victory. This failure to bomb falls into line with the old Roman saying of ‘all bridges open to the retreating enemy.’

Yet, my description of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ will be incomplete without mention of the policy’s historical context that Vladimir Putin and his colleagues described well before the Special Military Operation was launched. Let us remember that the Kremlin called the modern Ukrainian state an artificial construct resulting from the ideological games which the Bolsheviks played when they put together the Soviet Union. Under the Communist ideology, the leading force of the Revolution everywhere was the industrial working class. But Ukraine as constituted when the territory entered the Soviet state following the civil war was a rural country with a population of peasantry. That ideological flaw was then rectified by joining to the basically Ukrainian lands to the west the very Russian and very industrial working class Donbas to the east. We may call this an act of gerrymandering. What Vladimir Putin has been doing is to reverse the gerrymandering of the early 1920s.

I do not believe that this was a war objective in February 2022, which was more about countering an imminent threat of Ukrainian armed recovery of the Donbas from rebel forces, which would have amounted to murderous ethnic cleansing in the traditional sense. It was also about pushing NATO out of Ukraine and thereby removing a strategic threat to the Russian Federation. However, as the war evolved, objectives of the Kremlin also changed and reversing the Ukrainization of the Donbas rose as a new and achievable objective. However, this process has dragged on and on, while rising U.S. and NATO attacks on the Russian heartland now render untenable the slow meatgrinder activities. A decisive end to the war by decapitation of the Kievan junta becomes more urgent. And I believe such a strike will take place now that nearly all of the Donbas is in Russian hands and now that the September Duma elections are approaching. ‘Neutralizing’ the neo-Nazi junta in Kiev would steal victory for the United Russia party out of the jaws of defeat.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026