May 24, 2017

During the discussion, the political scientist asked the rhetorical question, whether the abolitionists in their time had the right to fight discrimination against an ethnic minority. And if that is true, then do we have the right today to fight discrimination against Russians … who are not even a minority, but who are placed in the same circumstances as Black people were placed in America?

Kurginyan stressed that if Lincoln fought against discrimination to have no “second-class people”, then the leaders of the DPR (the Donetsk People’s Republic – Editor) and the LPR (the Lugansk People’s Republic – Editor) are the same abolitionists. Today they are fighting to eliminate the same discrimination; therefore, the war in Donbass is a civil war.

Kurginyan explained that, according to international law, ethnic cleansing is genocide; therefore, if Chernyshev’s calls for action were to be brought to life, then the UN would have to recognize that Ukraine is a country committing genocide. “From that moment, the country is deprived of its right to autonomous statehood; it must be brought under international control; those responsible for genocide must be arrested and brought to account before an appropriate court. The country must be re-assembled, because by committing genocide it has abandoned its right to a sovereign national existence,” the political analyst said. “Therefore, if the physical extermination of Russians begins, the Russian army will reach Kiev in a few days, in strict accordance with the international law,” Kurginyan emphasized.

This is how Sergey Kurginyan reacted to a statement made by a Ukrainian TV presenter, Sergey Chernyshev, who called over television for ethnic cleansing and executions and to the words of a Ukrainian guest of the First Studio, Tatyana Voronina, who said that “it is an internal Ukrainian matter”.