The Russian state’s war against Ukraine did not begin in 2022; it is the logical endpoint of a project that started decades before the full-scale invasion. The West keeps treating each new confession as if it were a surprise.
The Case of Oleksii Selivanov
Oleksii Selivanov is the perfect case study. He is a Ukrainian citizen who spent the 2000s building “Vernoe Kazachestvo,” a structure that ran youth camps for roughly 200 kids at a time. It pushed the “single Rus” concept and maintained direct contacts with organizations inside Russia. This was not hidden. It was public. He received a certificate from Patriarch Kirill in 2012 for strengthening “traditional spiritual and cultural values between the peoples of Russia and Ukraine.”
Western commentators still occasionally describe the Russian Orthodox Church as a purely religious institution, even though its clergy function as an arm of Kremlin influence operations.
Then 2014 happened. Selivanov and his circle joined the “Novorossiya” project. Members of his organization fought on the Russian side in Donbas. By 2022 he was helping run the occupation “MVD” in occupied Zaporizhzhia. And now he sits in front of a camera explaining that Ukrainian children must be re-Russified. He says their identity must be broken. He says they are essentially genetic material for the Russian state.
Genocide and Legal Evidence
The part that should end the debate about whether Russia is committing genocide. The UN Genocide Convention explicitly lists the forcible transfer of children from one national or ethnic group to another as an act that can constitute genocide when accompanied by the intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. The ICC arrest warrant for Putin is specifically about the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children. Selivanov operates within a broader network. He is a sanctioned occupation official articulating state policy in public.
The soft power was never soft. It was infrastructure.
The sequence matters. First came the “cultural centers,” the Cossack organizations, the church awards, the youth camps, the soft-power language about brotherly peoples. Then came occupation, deportation, forced Russification, filtration, and now open discussion of erasing Ukrainian identity. The soft power was never soft. It was infrastructure. It was the preparatory layer for what we see today.
The West’s Misreading
The West assumes the problem began in 2022, which is why it cannot process the reality. It did not. The problem started when Western governments and institutions decided that Russian influence networks operating inside Ukraine were a cultural matter rather than a security matter. The same mistake is being repeated now with Russian influence operations in Europe and the United States, where Kremlin-linked networks push the line that Ukraine is the aggressor, that NATO provoked the war, that Ukrainian identity is artificial. Selivanov’s biography shows what occurs when those narratives operate without consequence for twenty years.
There is also the detail that even within pro-Russian circles, Selivanov was accused in 2022 of crimes against a minor. Girkin himself spoke publicly about the “corruption of a 17-year-old girl.” Russia elevates this person to occupation leadership. The person explains what should be done with Ukrainian children. The moral character of the occupation apparatus is central to the matter. That’s the point.
Continuity and Operational Doctrine
The video should be preserved, translated, and entered into every relevant legal record. This is one piece of evidence about what one man believed. It is evidence of continuity: from youth camps in the 2000s to occupation administration in 2022 to open genocidal rhetoric in 2026. The Kremlin is not hiding the goal. It is saying it out loud. Western institutions must finally treat these statements as operational doctrine rather than rhetorical excess.
