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A staunch supporter of Russian President Putin, Timofey Sergeytsev, has written extensively for RIA Novosti and one of his more recent pieces is bone-chilling. It has been difficult to determine what Russian objectives in Ukraine actually are and even more difficult to determine the political objectives of the sustained bombing of civilian centers. But Sergeytsev articulates objectives that are truly horrific and, if they represent the thinking of President Putin, causes me to reconsider my opposition to a more extensive NATO defense of Ukraine. Sergeytsev actually considers the annihilation of the state and nation of Ukraine to be appropriate objectives:

“The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. No significant distinction should be made between APU and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, carried out with the utmost care and discretion in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education….

“Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was not possible in 2014 in the rebellious Donbass either. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine.

“The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification.

“Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.”

Such language can justify anything and suggests that there are some elements in the Russian decision-making process that believe that the complete annihilation of Ukraine is justified.

If this is true, then NATO has to consider stronger measures to defend the Ukrainian population. I still would not entertain sending any troops into the conflict. But the situation is becoming as horrific as any humanitarian crisis that I have witnessed in my life. No state should be allowed to bomb a people with impunity. Perhaps it is time for NATO to supply Ukraine with planes that Ukrainian pilots can fly.