President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin justifies this war with a mixture of appropriating racism and imperial nationalism. He sees the national people of the state of Russia as (still) spread across national borders and deplores this. As we can read in an essay by Putin in the weekly magazine Die Zeit: "Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are all descendants of the old Rus^[1] (...). If we are talking about a single great nation, a triune nation, what difference does it make what people see themselves as - Russians, Ukrainians or Belarusians?" (Die Zeit, 10.02.2022) From Putin's perspective, this unfavourable situation is to be changed by means of a murderous war of aggression. At the same time, he claims a change in identity, which he believes can be observed in Ukraine, and he sees this change as the result of "forced assimilation" by the West, which is "comparable in its consequences" to "the use of weapons of mass destruction against us" (ibid.). Putin sees the identitarian core of "Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians" as incompatible with parliamentary democracy, open debate and freedom of opinion, with a political system that can regularly lead to a change of government.

Putin likes to use such arguments to present himself as a knowledgeable historian and ethnologist. He combines this with a public presentation that Ute Scheub describes as "toxic masculinity" (Scheub 2020, Heldendämmerung; here Frankfurter Rundschau from 26/27 February 2022). He likes to show himself in the media with a naked upper body and in a powerful pose and makes sexist remarks.

We do not know how high the level of support for Putin and his power apparatus, his ethnic-racist nationalism and his aggressive masculinity is in Russia. Opposition is undoubtedly difficult in an authoritarian regime that does not admit freedom of expression and persecutes its critics with marks and violent repression, imprisonment and sometimes even murder.

The Russian leadership is similar to the Belarusian leadership in its crackdown on opposition voices. Russian academics are using dramatic words to address their colleagues in Germany, risking their own arrest and/or the destruction of their careers. We admire the courage with which these critics in Russia and Belarus are acting in the face of the serious consequences this may have for them. And we hope (and must work on) that we ourselves will show such courage in similar situations.

We stand in solidarity with all those in Russia and Belarus who are not in favour of this war and have been demonstrating against it from the very beginning at the highest risk to life and limb - many have already been arrested.

We also remember the special history that connects Germany with Russia. The invasion of the Soviet Union by the so-called Third German Reich on 22 June 1941 brought endless suffering to the people and between 24 and 40 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union died in the course of the war. In the German extermination camp Auschwitz, it was initially Russian prisoners of war on whom extremely cruel experiments were carried out with Zyklon B, which ended fatally. From our perspective, there is therefore no alternative to continuing to work towards "reconciliation between Germans and Russians after the Second World War" - as Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphasised in his government statement (27 February 2022) - and not forgetting these "chapters of our shared history". Anti-Russian racism or anti-Russian resentment would be completely out of place: it is Putin's regime and its power apparatus that have planned and prepared this war and are now carrying it out, it is not the Russians!

A further justification for the necessity of the military operation is being disseminated to the Russian population, but also in international contexts. Talk of the "genocide" of the Russian population in eastern Ukraine and the need for "denazification" in Ukraine are being used. It should be noted that: A considerable proportion of the Russian population has relatives in Ukraine. The military action against Ukrainians therefore also affects people in Russia. Putin's rhetoric is commented on by the German Society for International Law (DGIR) as follows:

"We note that the language of international law is being misused by Russia to make legally untenable legal claims. We call on all states and international actors to debunk these bogus arguments."

The DGIR also refers to the obligation in the United Nations Charter:

"The Charter of the United Nations obliges all members to refrain in their international relations from the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (Art. 2 para. 4 UN Charter)." ^[2]

By now, most people know that the Ukrainian government is democratically elected. President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president in 2019 in democratic elections with a large majority of the votes cast by the eligible electorate. Any arrangements for dealing with ethnic minorities must be the subject of political negotiations.

Accordingly, Kenya's Ambassador Martin Kimani urgently called on the Russian head of state to respect Ukraine's borders at the UN Security Council in its special session on 22 February 2022, referring to the colonial crimes in Africa, including the arbitrary drawing of state borders, which are nevertheless accepted and respected by African countries. In his well-received speech, Kimani said:

"Kenya and almost every African country was born through the end of an empire. We did not draw our borders ourselves. They were drawn in the distant colonial metropolises of London, Paris and Lisbon, regardless of the old nations that divided them.

Today, our compatriots live across the borders of every single African country, with whom we share deep historical, cultural and linguistic ties. If we had decided at independence to create states on the basis of ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be fighting bloody wars many decades later. (...)

But Kenya refuses to pursue such a yearning by force. We must complete our healing from the ashes of dead empires in a way that does not throw us back into new forms of domination and oppression. We rejected irredentism and expansionism, on any basis, including racial, ethnic, religious or cultural. We reject it today as well." ^[3]

The ECCHR (European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights) condemns the war:

"The Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory is a blatant violation of international law and is in no way justifiable. (...) Russia's war of aggression with the participation of Belarus and the massive attacks on the civilian population that accompany it violate fundamental principles of international law and meet the criteria of aggression, a fundamental crime against international criminal law." ^[4]

A UN resolution in the Security Council has failed for the time being due to the blockade of the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian ambassador to the UN Security Council, Sergiy Kyslytsya, strongly condemned the war crimes committed by the Russian government, which began during the special session (on 24 February 2022). In a dramatic address to ambassadors of those countries that strongly condemned Putin's war of aggression, the Ukrainian ambassador thanked the mothers and fathers of these representatives of democratic states, alluding to education for democracy.^[5]

We hope that further intensive international efforts will be made to end this war and this suffering. The adoption of the resolution in the UN General Assembly on 2 March 2022, in which 141 states condemned Russia's attack on Ukraine in the strongest possible terms and called on Russia to withdraw its troops^[6]gives us hope. We stand in solidarity with all the people in Ukraine who are suffering from this war. People in their homes, on the run and in forced emigration to neighbouring countries. We remember the people who have lost their lives in this criminal war and we express our sympathy to their families. We welcome any assistance provided to the population and express our deep appreciation for the incredibly courageous resistance of Ukrainian society. We hope that this resistance will persuade the leadership in Moscow to give in. The most important thing now in this humanitarian disaster is to keep the escape routes safe and open. We welcome the willingness of the European states to organise refugee aid with great commitment and to simplify the reception procedures. We appeal to the EU countries to continue this practice in future and to put an end to the restrictive treatment of refugees and human rights violations at the borders of European states.

Those responsible for this aggression must be held accountable and brought to justice in international proceedings. Ukraine has already appealed to the International Court of Justice. ECCHR informs that the war will also be subject to international criminal proceedings.

In the long term, more international efforts are urgently needed to strengthen the effectiveness of political instruments to achieve the goals of the United Nations Charter through negotiation. However, this also requires political realism and a competent assessment of autocratic rulers and regimes. This is where the EU must practise self-criticism - and it has already begun to do so.

In the words of the ECCHR

"we call for global solidarity and more civil society cooperation, greater respect for political and social human rights and the strengthening of international law to help us emerge from this painful low point and create a more just and peaceful world." ^[7]

Written on 3 March 2022 by

Rudolf Leiprecht, Lucyna Darowska, Angela Janssen, Antonia Kiel, Christian Pfeil