I think I've been hasty to judge other people's positions in the past. I'm guilty of confidently stating a view on a topic despite knowing that I haven't taken the time to really understand the others' position. Probably 80% of the time, my final conclusion matches my initial one. But I'm trying to become more responsible about this kind of thing. So to that end...
I'd like to understand Rogozin's reasons for holding those beliefs. I know basically nothing about that region's history. Is he working from bad factual / historical data? Has he been exposed to specific propaganda / psy-ops? Has he seen or experienced something traumatic that makes him hyper-vigilant about Ukranian leadership or non-Russians in general?
>People say though that Rogozin is not a big believer in anything, he’s just a huge cynical careerist coming from a very privileged nomenclature background riding any wave that brings him to the top. Right now he’s one of the major pro-war hawks.
(quote from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32108578)
Going down that rabbit hole or learning about things like the "2014 Odessa Clashes [2]" (and think about how we would treat that event, or even call it, had it happened to the side that we're supposed to like) or even the Language Policy in Ukraine [3], and you can actually start to see how deep in information warfare we currently are. And it's unpleasant.
I am avoiding doing much beyond giving references for you to read yourself largely because of what you mentioned. In the current atmosphere it's basically impossible to actually discuss the war in an open fashion, and probably will remain so for years to come.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
They then retreated to the House of Unions where pro-Russian opposition was based. Basically taking them as hostages.
The house was set on fire and multiple people died a horrific death.
While immensely tragic, don’t “both sides” this and spread Russian propaganda. The skirmishes were all captured on long live streams.
Afterwards Russian TV used it to further spread anti-Ukrainian hatred.
How the Ukrainian government conducted the investigation is quite telling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes#Investigat...
It’s a really easy climb if you share Nazi and homophobic views of Russian elites and being vocal about it.
Plays very well with army generals, old Kremlin elite and general population as well.
Nomenclature was a very small class of people with privileged exclusive access.
It’s either families with relatively short ties to Kremlin: people with high positions, spies, diplomats, nuclear scientists, state journalists, pro-government writers.
Or people like heads of grocery chains, import shops who controlled access to goods and clothes.
People like these could put their children at most successful universities without exams, buy them Western cars and spoil with caviar while most people stood at the queues for hours to get sour milk or bones for soup.
Luckily I decided to look into it a bit.
It turned out that Shahnazarov was saying the reverse -- some evil forces decided to eradicate Russians (and that's why Putin fights the war) and 'they' won't have mercy even for the anti-war activists -- hence 'concentration camps, reeducation and sterilization' for pro-Western Russians too.
Here is the full video from which parts were cut and rearranged -- https://t.me/kolezev/11213 .
The article itself is written by an American and helpfully translated into Ukrainian to let Ukrainians know what Russians think of them.
Rogozin's quote seems real though -- the link leads to what looks like his Telegram channel :-(
"Dmitry Rogozin (Director General of Russia’s Roskosmos State Space Agency, former Deputy Prime Minister) – comments on his Twitter feed and Telegram channel (June 13, 2022)
“In general, what has grown up in the place of Ukraine is an existential threat to the Russian people, Russian history, Russian language and Russian civilization. If we do not put an end to them, as, unfortunately, our grandfathers did not do away with them, we will have to die, but end up at an even greater cost to our grandchildren. So let’s get this over with. Once and forever. For our grandchildren.”"
https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rh...
He also was a leader of right-wing party Rodina in early 2000s, see more details in Wikipedia:
>Under Rogozin, Rodina shifted towards the right wing of Russian politics and became the second largest and one of the country's most successful parties. A number of controversies on Rogozin's policies culminated in it being banned in 2005 from standing for election to the Moscow City Duma for using what was considered as chauvinist slogan 'Let's Clean the Garbage!'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Rogozin#Early_career