What kind of warning did stay behind the words 'Never Again'? Does the world notice how, in the middle of Europe, transpire something that was supposed to never happen again? We thought that, after 1945, the terror of eradicating a whole separate people would not return. However, the post-war pathos is exhausted. The peace project, built on dignity and humanity, is exhausted. Ukraine is targeted by the country that claims to be a primary vanquisher of Nazism. Isn't it absurdist? It is a reality. For russia, Ukraine is the first step. The following steps have been announced in live broadcasting on russian state television — Poland, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

In 2022, the project of Europe, developed after World War II, is outdated. After 1945, when the Nazi plan of the free world destruction was overthrown, the globe resumed living with a project of a particular future. In this future, genocide atrocities and a totalitarian ruling wouldn't be possible. For the first time in history, the political perspective arose from the human rights framework. The highest virtue of human life and dignity became a starting point for developing new ideology, new political requirements, and new security guarantees in Europe and beyond. The post-war borders were recognised as immutable, and the international organisations were established to watch out for potential sprouts of a new evil.  

After the ordeal of worldwide mass murder, the shock manifested in the formulation of the principle 'Never Again,' and in the acknowledgement of the Holocaust's uniqueness, the establishment of museums and yearly commemoration ceremonies. The requirement to admit the events' extraordinariness is understandable: the creators of the new European project strove to conjure up all the terror to be left out forever for Europeans every day. It's right. But, when the past is museumificated, when we know precisely that inarticulate evil is unique, the implication is that the latter can't be repeated. Ostensibly, everything we may see now can't be compared with the World War II genocide. It's bewildering but calming. It puts 'Never again' off its guard.

It would seem that the countries that defeated Nazism and took responsibility for implementing the 'Never Again' principle just can't permit the return of evil. They have defeated it, after all. How can the country that has experienced the horrors of Nazi crimes support an ideology built in the same way? It looks absurdist. However, immediately after World War II, Hanna Arendt warned that the nations that hadn't participated in the Nazi offence shouldn't have perceived this abstention as their achievement. Arendt singles out the widespread arrogant belief 'We wouldn't do such a thing' as a 'vulgar reversal of Nazi doctrines.'

The reanimation of the crimes against humanity should have been prevented by the numerous international legal documents, the UN International Court of Justice, and the soothing motto 'Never Again.' But the post-war pathos is exhausted. The project, built on the values of dignity and humanity, is exhausted. 'Never Again' is not about knowing all about World War II's infinitely horrific and unique event. It is about the readiness to notice any ideology's sprouts that deny any nation right to exist. This is not about particular Nazis and particular Jews who were deprived of the right to existence by these Nazis. 

The well-known and familiar motto 'Never Again' is worthless today when in the centre of Europe the whole nation is being exterminated again. This nation is deprived of the right to exist. These people are proclaimed as non-existent, fake, fictional, and artificial. We all remember precisely that, in the Nazi ideology, Jews had no place in the racial hierarchy — they were denied of human nature. Similarly, for so many years in a row, russian state propaganda has been proclaiming Ukrainians a non-existent fake nation that must be punished, burnt, and exterminated.

In 2014, russia annexed Crimea and part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine under the guise of protecting the russian-speaking population. No one was willing to see the congruity of russia's acts and Nazi Germany in 1939. Why was the world silent? Because the country, the victor of Nazism, is supposed to be vaccinated against it?

The world didn't want to see the European principle 'Never Again' mutated in 'We Can Repeat' in russia. By claiming the right to speak on behalf of the liberators from Nazism, russia has secured itself against any possible criticism from Europe. Europe and the world peacefully contemplated how russia has been waging war against Ukraine for 8 years while lying outrageously. And it has been so profitable to trade with russia…

The post-war impulse to create a new world is exhausted, worn out in the face of Realpolitik. The world has already received several warnings that the past reiterates. When the genocide in Rwanda wasn't stopped, when the genocide in Srebrenica transpired.

The world was lulled with the confidence that evil would never return. And it allowed the exhaustion of humanity. It tolerated the propagandistic poison in which russia bathed the world (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines seems to be a childish joke compared to it). Only the exhaustion of humanity can make us oblivious of the propaganda ends. It's time to wake up. After the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the leading russian propagandist declared: 'If you think that we will stop in Ukraine, you have to think 300 times. Let me remind you that Ukraine is only an intermediate stage in ensuring the strategic security of the russian federation.' This is a threat not merely to Ukraine but to the whole world. It's naive and dangerous to perceive it as a delusion.

If the world doesn't hear that russia is threatening to carry out a 'final solution' to the Ukrainian question, then the humanity of the contemporary world is exhausted. The same humanity that was the core of the entire post-war world order. We find ourselves in Orwell's twisted universe, where 'War Is Peace; Freedom Is Slavery; Ignorance Is Strength.'