Campaigns

The legal legitimization of the partition of territories between the Tsardom of Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth behind the Hetmanate's back, which finally turned Ukraine into a rightless object of bargaining. "In 1686 Russia and Poland sign yet another so-called 'eternal peace,' under which they now officially divide Ukraine between themselves. For Mazepa and all Ukrainians this is a colossal humiliation." The deal was sealed financially: "So that Poland would recognize Kyiv as Russian forever, in 1686 Moscow paid it 146 thousand rubles in silver"^[1].

The Soviet regime's treatment of Ukraine as a colonial resource during the war. During the retreat of 1941, "scorched earth" tactics were employed — the blowing up of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station, the destruction of factories and food supplies (the total destruction of infrastructure and extraction of resources), condemning the remaining population to death. Upon the return in 1943–1944, a criminal mobilization was carried out (the "black-coat" conscripts, chornosvytnyky): hundreds of thousands of untrained, unarmed Ukrainian peasants were thrown against German machine guns as cannon fodder to exhaust the enemy's ammunition^[1][2].

The abolition of the traditional system of local self-government in cities. This decision switched the courts to the Russian language and deprived the Indigenous population of the ability to use their native language in the official sphere^[3].

An imperial reform aimed at liquidating the military-social structure of Slobozhanshchyna. The Cossack regiments were abolished, the Cossacks were stripped of their privileges and reduced to the status of state peasants ("military inhabitants"), and the territory was turned into an ordinary Russian governorate^[4].

The implementation of Catherine II's secret instructions on the institutional and cultural assimilation of the region. The liquidation of the regimental system, the introduction of imperial viceroyalties, the confiscation of monastery lands, and the final enserfment of free Ukrainian peasants^[5][6].

The empire conducts a general population census, which is used as an institutional instrument of colonization for the bureaucratic erasure of Ukrainian identity and the entrenchment of the ideology of great-power chauvinism^[7][3].

A conspiracy between two totalitarian regimes (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) that led to the USSR's invasion of Poland and the seizure of Western Ukraine. To legitimize the occupation, fake "People's Assemblies" were staged, which voted to join the USSR. Immediately afterward came mass arrests of the local elite and the forced deportations of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Poles to remote special settlements in Siberia and Kazakhstan^[1][2].

The annexation of the independent Ukrainian church through diplomatic pressure and corruption. Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem directly accused the Muscovite envoys of simony: "What [kind of] right is it to snatch away someone else's eparchy? Is it not a shame before people, is it not a sin before God! Thus you send money and lead people astray from their reason..."^[8]. The subjugation of the church was justified by geopolitics: "Golitsyn's main project... was the reform of the Ukrainian Orthodox church, or rather, the subordination of the Kyiv metropolis to the Moscow patriarch"^[9].

In 1732, the lowland part of Chechnya became the center of large-scale armed resistance. The uprising was provoked by the direct discontent of the indigenous population: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states that those assembled, «openly expressing their discontent with the actions of the tsarist authorities, began to threaten attacks on their fortifications»^[10]. Researcher Ya. Z. Akhmadov adds that «in 1732 lowland Chechnya once again turns into the center of a major insurgent movement», and «around 10 thousand highlanders gathered in Chechen-Aul», intending to set out «to destroy the tsarist fortifications»^[11]. In response, the occupation apparatus applied military force: the first author indicates that «on July 4, 1732, the tsarist authorities dispatched to Chechnya a military detachment headed by General Douglas, who commanded the troops in the fortress of the Holy Cross»^[10], which, according to the cited report, resolved, regarding the insurgents, «without allowing them to multiply, to avert and destroy them by the dispatched detachment»^[11]. The punitive action was coordinated with the loyal local elite: Sh. B. Akhmadov notes the participation of Prince Kazbulat, «who led the detachment of tsarist troops headed by Douglas to the village of Chechen-Aul to suppress the highlanders' uprising»^[10]. However, the insurgents avoided a direct clash with the empire's main forces: Ya. Z. Akhmadov records that «General Douglas, who had already set out on the campaign, received word that the highlanders had dispersed»^[11]. After this, the general sent Colonel Koch's dragoon detachment to punish the inhabitants, which, as stated in the sources, «on July 7 entered the village of Chechen, burned it down completely, and began hastily withdrawing»^[10]. The historical episode ended that same year with the complete physical destruction of the punitive forces: Ya. Z. Akhmadov summarizes that during the withdrawal Koch's detachment «was surrounded in dense forests, defeated, and annihilated», and that in the course of the battle «the senior Chechen prince Kazbulat also perished»^[11].

Having been forced to recognize Ukraine's independence under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the government of Soviet Russia attempted to retain control over the eastern industrial regions. To this end, a separate separatist entity (the Donetsk–Kryvyi Rih Soviet Republic) was artificially constructed on the territory of the Donbas and the Kryvyi Rih region, with the aim of directly subordinating these lands to the central Russian authorities, bypassing the UNR^[12][13].

After his escape from surveillance in the fall of 1830, the leader of the Chechen resistance Beibulat Taimiev — bound by his oath to Paskevich, by fractures of both legs, and by illness — took no part in hostilities, but his name alone inspired the insurgents. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "The tsarist command several times intended to do away with Beibulat, but feared to repress him openly, since this could provoke an undesirable resonance throughout Chechnya. And yet the continued presence of a man like Beibulat in insurgent Chechnya was becoming dangerous for the tsarist command. Preparations began for the murder of Beibulat, which was soon carried out"^[14]. On July 14, 1831, not far from the fortification of Tashkichu, Beibulat was killed from ambush by Prince Sali, who was in imperial service. D. A. Khozhaev recorded the official version — the murder was presented as a blood feud — and its exposure: "Prince Sali, who was in tsarist service, was not punished, whereas the other cases of blood vengeance were cruelly prosecuted by the tsarist command. Paskevich wrote of the slain Beibulat that he had been a traitor to the end, and that therefore the killer should not be punished"^[14].

An armed mutiny by the conservative wing of the Soviet leadership, the KGB, and the army in Moscow, aimed at derailing democratization, halting the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and forcibly keeping the republics, including Ukraine, within the centralized empire. The failure of the putsch demoralized the Communist Party, stripped the union center of legitimacy, and opened the way to the immediate proclamation of Ukraine's independence^[1][2].

The use of the autonomy as a free resource and labor base for Peter I's ambitions in the south. The population bore extremely heavy logistical obligations: "Provisions for the volunteer troops were supplied by the commoners, who also stocked hay for the winter for the army's artillery." In addition, Moscow established military control by deploying a network of bases near the Zaporizhian Sich: "The Zaporozhians... put forward the demolition of Kamianyi Zaton as a condition for any oath... Mazepa was furious"^[15].

The Russian Empire continues to destroy the culture of the indigenous people on the eve of the war. Schoolchildren and students are forbidden to attend national theater performances, the local press is completely eliminated, and a ban is introduced on celebrating the anniversaries of national heroes^[3].

A state campaign to displace the language from public space and literature. It included a ban on speaking one's native language at scholarly congresses and celebrations, total censorship of translations, a ban on importing books from abroad, and the destruction of children's literature in the native language^[3].

A campaign to introduce censorship and institutional linguistic assimilation. The issuance of a decree prohibiting the printing of books in the language of the Indigenous people at key printing houses, with the aim of suppressing local culture and achieving total unification of the printed word: "Decree of Peter I prohibiting the printing of books in the Ukrainian language at the Kyiv-Pechersk and Chernihiv printing houses"^[3].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy imposed vassalage on the Nokhchi elite under the guise of a military alliance through the procedure of oath-taking (shert). As historian Murat Yasar notes, to the Nokhchi this looked like a military pact: "many local rulers in Muscovy's southern and eastern borderlands, especially in the North Caucasus, regarded the shert more as a military alliance between themselves and one of their potential allies"^[16]. The administration, however, unilaterally interpreted this act as unconditional submission: historian Michael Khodarkovsky points out that "in Moscow's eyes the shert now meant an oath of allegiance by the tsar's new and loyal subjects"^[17]. Historian Murat Yasar adds that consent was incentivized through bribery: "the signing of the shert went hand in hand with the monetary allowances and gifts that the tsar gave to the local rulers"^[16]. To maintain control, the forcible seizure of relatives of Nokhchi leaders was employed: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of a collection of documents, writes that "his nephew Batai was left as a hostage (amanat) in the Terek town"^[18]. The subjugated Nokhchi communities were obligated to take part in the military operations of the occupation administration: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of a collection of documents, points to documents "on the possibility of the participation of Murza Shikh... in a campaign of Russian fighting men"^[18].

A covert military invasion and occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, marking the beginning of the Russian Federation's hybrid armed aggression against Ukraine. The operation included the seizure of administrative buildings by soldiers without insignia ("little green men"), the forcible installation of a controlled prime minister, and the holding of a sham referendum. It concluded with the official legal absorption of the territory by the State Duma of the Russian Federation^[1][19].

The imperial authorities covertly arm and sponsor radical Russian nationalist organizations to suppress the revolution and to organize pogroms and terror against dissenters^[20].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy expanded legal control over the societies of the Nokhchi, bribed loyal elites, and coerced the mountain societies into vassalage. The metropole officially rewarded the leaders who served it, granting them privileges and power over dependent people: the register of files of the Ambassadorial Prikaz for 1645 records a petition from the serving Okotsk murza Chepan Kokhostrov to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and a report memorandum of the central apparatus «on granting him an increase to his salary and ownership of the uzdens and «people» of his brother, murza Albir Kokhostrov»^[18]. In parallel, the administration forced the mountain societies of the Nokhchi (the Shibutians and the Michkizians) into legal subordination. In 1647, under pressure from the Terek voivodes, the Shibutians «placed themselves under your lofty sovereign hand in direct servitude... and swore the shert on the Quran»^[18], while the Michkiz people «together with the entire Michkiz land placed themselves in servitude under your lofty sovereign hand... and swore the shert on the Quran»^[18]. To guarantee the fulfillment of the imposed obligations, the representatives of the metropole demanded hostages: a dispatch from the Terek voivode Prince Venedikt Andreevich Obolensky and his associates to the Ambassadorial Prikaz of 1647 dryly records the fact of «the giving of an amanat to the Terek town»^[18]. The documents record that the metropole instructed the voivodes «to order that amanats be taken from among their kin, men of note... to order that they be kept and given food and drink in the same way as other such amanats»^[18], as a result of which the mountaineers «gave a good amanat to the Terek town, Kasa»^[18][21].

In 1735, following the large-scale invasion by the forces of the Crimean Khanate, the diplomatic and administrative apparatus of the Russian Empire used the new balance of power to consolidate its influence among the Nokhchi elites. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that during this period «the pro-Russian political orientation of the lowland part of Chechnya intensifies»^[11]. To bind the local aristocracy, the occupation administration employed institutional bribery: the researcher records that the senior prince Aidemir «was accepted into Russian subjecthood and was assigned a permanent tsarist salary»^[11], and, on the whole, «The princes and their uzdens even began to receive monetary allowances from the Russian government»^[11]. In parallel, the empire entrenched the system of holding relatives of the nobility: Akhmadov indicates that Prince Aidemir «as a pledge of fidelity to his obligations gave his son Bardykhan as an amanat, while another influential Chechen prince, Alisultan Kazbulatov, gave his brother Bamat as an amanat»^[11]. He also adds dry statistical confirmation: «In 1735, two amanats from the Chechen domain were already being held in Kizlyar»^[11].

In February–April 1807, the Russian Empire undertook a punitive expedition deep into Greater Chechnya under the command of General Bulgakov, commander of the Caucasian Line, devastating Nokhchi villages and coercing them into allegiance. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes of General Bulgakov's troops as having «come with fire and sword to the Chechen land»^[14]. The plan of the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, was to strike suddenly, before the inhabitants could shelter their families in the mountains: «you would have caught them all by surprise, their cattle and families could not yet have been hidden by them in the mountains, and therefore their punishment and complete success in the matter would have been surer and more convenient»^[22]. General Bulgakov, commander of the Caucasian Line, broke through the fortified Khankala Gorge by storm and put villages to the torch; General Ivelich reported that Greater Chechen Ataga had been «consigned to fire», and its inhabitants had submitted, «whose villages were destroyed by fire»^[22]. Displeased that instead of a sudden reprisal a bloody war had resulted, General Gudovich, in a directive of March 20, 1807, refused to accept the storming of Khankala «on his own account» and emphasized the punitive, rather than military, character of the assignment: «you were sent not to wage war with the Chechen peoples, but to punish them and bring them into complete submission»^[22]. Summing up the expedition, General Bulgakov, commander of the Caucasian Line, reported that by force of arms the Chechens had been «brought to such a state that they will long feel the blow dealt to them, and, of course, will not soon regain strength»^[22].

In the fall of 1830, General Velyaminov, who had taken command of the troops operating against Chechnya, began with collective property exactions from the Chechen villages standing on the Terek River near the imperial border. The imperial historian Potto admits: for the driving off by Chechens of ten head of cattle from the stanitsa of Chervlennaya, Velyaminov "immediately ordered that ten head of cattle likewise be taken from the inhabitants of the two villages of Braguny and Novy-Yurt, past which the raiding party had gone, and returned to the Cossacks," and after a herd of horses was driven off in the Nogai steppe, "Braguny again paid with exactly the same number of head"; the owner of Novy-Yurt, Shah-Girei, was summoned to Groznaya and confined in a casemate — a prison cell inside the fortress^[23]. On December 18, 1830, a detachment assembled in Groznaya consisting of four infantry regiments — the Moscow, Butyrsky, Tarutino, and Borodino regiments — a composite battalion of the 43rd Jaeger Regiment, five sotnias of line Cossacks, and twenty-two guns, and at night the troops moved on the village of Dzulgai-Yurt, where the Karabulak leader Astemir lived. Potto wrote: the Cossacks, bursting into the village at dawn, rushed to Astemir's house; he himself managed to escape, "but his family — a young son, a daughter, a grandson, and a female cousin — fell into the hands of the Cossacks. Besides them, thirty-nine people were taken prisoner, and about twelve were cut down"^[23]. Then the villages of western, Lesser Chechnya were destroyed one after another: Kiter-Yurt "was given over to the flames," Pkhan-Kichu was burned down, at the village of Daut-Martan "the inhabitants managed to flee, but all their property remained the booty of the detachment," Edin-Yurt and Daut-Yurt were burned, "enormous stores of harvested hay" were destroyed, Martan-aul and Dzhargan-Yurt were occupied, the aul of Engeli was exterminated^[23]. Between campaigns, the troops cut a clearing through the forest between the village of Aldy and the fortress of Groznaya. In January 1831 the blow was shifted to eastern, Greater Chechnya: Uzeken-Yurt was burned, Besenber with all its hamlets was destroyed. The villages of Avtury, Geldigen, and Mairtup sent their elders with an offer of submission and hostages, but Velyaminov rejected them, demanding the surrender of all Russian captives and deserter soldiers. The condition was a double impossibility, and Potto himself deciphers this: they "could not have had many" captives — captives did not settle in the villages but left through exchange and ransom, which both sides practiced; as for deserters, the Nokhchi did not hand them over — the Chechens, by Potto's admission, "regarded them... as men who had given themselves under the protection of their hearths, and therefore never surrendered them"^[23]. Hospitality is a value celebrated in Chechen illi (heroic songs) on a par with courage and fidelity to one's word, and handing over a fugitive meant sending a guest to his death: the historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote of the marching gallows "on which the general [Yermolov] hanged highlanders and fugitive Russian soldiers and Cossacks who were hiding in mountain auls," and recorded that the demand for "the surrender of fugitive Russian soldiers and Cossacks living in the mountain auls" was a constant instrument of the imperial bailiffs (pristavs)^[14]. By demanding simultaneously the nonexistent and the inadmissible, Velyaminov engineered a refusal: "this belated and forced submission was not at all part of Velyaminov's designs; he understood the necessity of punishing these auls cruelly, and perhaps that is why he set before them conditions which, in the view of the highlanders, were unthinkable"^[23]. Avtury was taken by storm and burned, Geldigen was consigned to the flames with all its stores, and on January 21 Mairtup "with its luxuriant gardens and plantations" was destroyed together with the surrounding auls^[23]. Potto sums up the result with an admission: "all of lowland Chechnya, traversed through and through as far as the Kochalykovsky ridge, was given over by Velyaminov to fire and sword"^[23].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy gathered military-strategic and economic intelligence on the mountain societies of the Nokhchi (the Shibutians) and made attempts at their forcible subjugation. In 1658, the central apparatus of the Ambassadorial Prikaz instructed the Terek voivodes to send a mission into the mountains, in order «concerning those little lands... to order that they be examined and truly scouted out — how many of them there are and what kind of people they are... and what fighting capability they have... and what grows in their land, and what craftsmen there are»^[18]. The document of the central authority also directly stated «to order that amanats be taken from among their kin, men of note»^[18]. To carry out the order, in 1659 the Terek voivodes Melenty Kvashnin and his associates dispatched a military emissary: an extract for the report of the Ambassadorial Prikaz to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1660 states that the voivodes «sent a streltsy head into the Shibut land and ordered him to inspect in the Shibut land the Christian faith, and church building, and towns, and places, and to bring them to the faith, and to take an amanat to the Terek»^[18]. The emissary carried out the reconnaissance, reporting that «they have no church building, nor to]wns, nor any fighting forces»^[18], but he was unable to subjugate the population: «he did not brin[g] the inhabitants of the Shibut land to the faith»^[18]. The seizure of new hostages likewise ended without result; the emissary merely stated that the mountaineers «wish [to be] under the lofty sovereign hand, and on the Terek they [have an amanat]»^[18].

In 1809-1811, the Russian Empire consolidated its power over the lands of the Nokhchi through the bribery of elders, control over the sale of grain and salt, and the setting of neighboring peoples against the Chechens. To incline the Chechens to submission, the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Tormasov, ordered that Chechen elders and clergy be paid «250, and others 150 silver rubles each, as a one-time payment, for which the required sum, 1,400 r. in total»^[24]. The empire funneled the sale of grain and salt to the Chechens through controlled barter yards under quarantine, established «for the peaceful Chechens in Naur… for the mountain Chechens in Lashchurin»^[24][10]. In a proclamation to the inhabitants of the Chechen land, General Tormasov laid the blame for the devastation of 1807 on the inhabitants themselves — «you yourselves were the cause of the misfortune that befell you the year before last» — and threatened a new invasion, «to bring sword and flame upon the guilty»^[24].

In the period from 1736 to 1740, the diplomatic and administrative apparatus of the Russian Empire maintained control over the borders of the Nokhchi societies through infrastructure construction and hostage-taking. The established evidence base demonstrates that the metropole began by erecting new fortifications: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov records the establishment in 1736 of fortified posts, among them «three new Cossack stanitsas: Borozdinskaya, Kargalinskaya, Dubovskaya»^[11]. Historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova emphasizes their engineering-defensive status, recording that each such stanitsa «was, as it were, a small fortress serving for protection against enemy raids»^[25]. The construction of infrastructure was followed by the physical settlement of military contingents: the first researcher indicates that garrisons were placed on these frontiers, «and from Kizlyar toward the sea another 430 Cossack families are being settled»^[11]. In parallel, the occupation administration continued to physically hold relatives of the local elite seized in previous years: Akhmadov notes, in a list of archival documents, a paper from 1738 identified as «Letter of the Chechen lord A. Bartykhanov to Lieutenant Colonel Bunin about his faithful service to Russia and with a request to release his sister from Kizlyar»^[11].

The physical and economic exhaustion of the region through the transformation of the Cossack host into unpaid labor for imperial megaprojects in the swamps of Ingria, where colossal mortality among Ukrainians was recorded^[15].

In 1722–1724, the Russian Empire carried out military-infrastructural colonization and demographic manipulation on the seized frontiers. In the autumn of 1722, construction of a new military base began: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that Peter I «founded the fortress of the Holy Cross on the Sulak»^[11]. To ensure forcible control over the territory, the metropole carried out settlement by loyal troops: the researcher indicates that at the fortress «1 thousand families of Cossacks from the Don are being settled»^[11]. At the same time, the occupation administration liquidated the former administrative center and forcibly relocated the subjugated Nokhchi societies: the author records that «the Terek town had been razed by 1724, and its entire population, including the Okotskaya sloboda, populated by natives of Chechnya... was transferred to the new fortress»^[11]. A controlled buffer zone was taking shape around the new fortification: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov notes that «next to the fortress of the Holy Cross, slobodkas populated by Circassians, Chechens, Ingush, Kabardians, and others very quickly began to appear»^[10].

The expansion of Russian aggression through the seizure of administrative buildings in eastern Ukraine by armed detachments of Russian militants (I. Strelkov's group) in order to create the puppet "DNR" and "LNR". The campaign was accompanied by terror against the local population, the downing of flight MH17, and massive disinformation. In the summer of 2014, the Russian Federation brought in regular troops, which led to the battles near Ilovaisk and Debaltseve^[1][19].

In 1835–1836 the empire combined systematic punitive expeditions in Chechnya with covert reconnaissance of the territory. Corps commander Rosen, in a report to the emperor, admits the practice of clandestine study of unsubdued lands: the undertakings "consisted either in the collection of topographical information... or in covert surveys of the lands of the mountaineers hostile to us"; "in 1836, to survey the direct route leading from Kakheti to Chechnya, a topographer was sent, who, having crossed the snowy ridge, came out onto the Caucasian Line at the fortress of Groznaya, and from there, through Chechnya and the lands of the Kists and the Didoi, returned to Kakheti"; at the same time "I sent from Vladikavkaz Ensign Prince Utsmiev of the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment with a topographer, through Chechnya, to Andia"^[26]. Against the movement of Imam Tashu-Hajji, Colonel Pullo, commander of the Sunzha fortified line, conducted constant expeditions; the imperial review of military operations admits: Tashu-Hajji's attempts "were forestalled in good time by the expeditions of the commander of the Sunzha Line, Colonel Pullo, which inflicted total ruin on the inhabitants"^[26]. On August 23, 1836, Pullo's detachment, in a covert night march, reached the aul of Zandak on the Yaman-su River, where Tashu-Hajji was staying. Rosen reported to the minister of war: Pullo, "in order to shake the influence of Tashev-Hajji, to quell the unrest among the Chechens, and to instill fear in them, resolved to undertake movements to punish the inhabitants of the village of Zandak"; "the sudden appearance of our troops struck terror into the inhabitants"; the infantry, having driven out the defenders, seized "31 souls of male and female sex as prisoners. In addition, the property of the inhabitants and 384 head of horned cattle fell to our troops as booty"; before the withdrawal, the houses of the murids and of "other principal adherents of Tashev-Hajji" were annihilated^[26]. The Chechen writer Abuzar Aydamirov, in his "Chronology of the History of Checheno-Ingushetia," recorded: "Punitive expedition of Colonel Pullo to the auls on the Yaman-Su River. Destruction of the aul of Zandak. Retreat of Pullo's detachment, under the pressure of Tashav-Hajji, to the fortress of Vnezapnaya"^[27].

Having suffered defeat in Kyiv, the pro-Bolshevik delegates moved to Kharkiv, where they held an alternative congress and created a puppet government — the People's Secretariat. This served as political cover for the start of the First Soviet-Ukrainian War (1917–1918) and allowed Soviet Russia to disguise the direct invasion by its troops as an internal civil war. During the offensive, the aggressor provoked an uprising at the Arsenal plant in Kyiv, while the invasion by regular troops itself was accompanied by heavy fighting for junction stations and the tragic Battle of Kruty (January 1918), where the defense of the state was taken up by youth. In February, the Red troops carried out the Muravyov massacre in captured Kyiv. The campaign was halted by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (February 1918), which brought the UNR international recognition and forced the RSFSR troops to retreat^[12][1].

An official USSR campaign to erase national distinctions. The Communist Party proclaims a course toward the merging of all nations, national schools are massively converted to the language of the metropole, and scholars are prohibited by law from writing and defending dissertations in their native language^[3].

Administrative absorption. The erasure of the historical borders of the Hetmanate and the implantation of the imperial system of control over the Left Bank through the appointment of governors-general with enormous powers^[28].

Institutional substitution: the transfer of the administration of Ukrainian lands from the Ambassadorial Prikaz, which handled international affairs, to a specially created domestic prikaz in Moscow. This amounted to a legal and administrative downgrading of the Hetmanate's status from a subject of international relations to an internal colonial province^[29].

A secret police strike against the intellectual elite of the indigenous people. The identification and liquidation of the first political organization of Ukrainians, which advocated the abolition of serfdom. It was accompanied by trials, exile to Siberia, and the conscription of the organization's leader into the army as a common soldier^[30].

The abrupt rollback of the policy of "Ukrainization." The start of the physical extermination and political defamation of the intellectual elite — writers, scholars, film directors, as well as the old national communists (M. Skrypnyk was driven to suicide). In parallel with the physical terror came the destruction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, large-scale censorship, the rewriting of history, and the artificial convergence of the Ukrainian language with Russian^[13][1].

The Regular Army of the Tsardom of Muscovy carried out the cyclical elimination and renewal of its military presence on the lands of the Nokhchi at the mouth of the Sunzha River. The first military base, erected in 1567, was soon destroyed: historian E. N. Kusheva notes that "the town of 1567 was demolished around 1571"^[21]. Military historian V. A. Potto indicates the reason for the base's elimination: it "was soon destroyed to appease the Turkish sultan"^[31]. Later, the military presence on the lands of the Nokhchi was renewed: historian E. N. Kusheva writes that "in 1577-1578... the Russian town was restored on the Terek River at the mouth of the Sunzha"^[21]. However, the second military base was also eliminated: historian E. N. Kusheva indicates that this "Russian town was likewise soon destroyed at the demand of the khan"^[21]. The subsequent fortification was rebuilt many times: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of a collection of documents, indicates that the military forces of the Tsardom of Muscovy "rebuilt the ostrog in 1590 and 1635"^[18], and also notes that in the intervals "the fortress was abandoned for political reasons in 1605"^[18]. Another attempt to gain a foothold on the lands of the Nokhchi took place later: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of the collection of documents, records that "in 1651 a Russian ostrog was built anew on the left bank of the Sunzha"^[18]. However, it was soon eliminated for good: compiler E. N. Kusheva indicates that "in 1653 the ostrog was burned by Persian troops and was never rebuilt"^[18].

After Yermolov's punitive campaign of 1826 and the ebbing of the uprising of 1825-1826, the empire, having failed to subdue Chechnya by force of arms, turned to deception, division, and hostage-taking. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "Paskevich, trying to lure the principal leader of the Chechen insurgents out of Chechnya, throughout the whole of 1828 offers Beibulat, through intermediaries, a return to 'Russian service.' He is promised the rank of captain, pardon, and honors"^[14]. On March 6, 1829, Beibulat Taimiev and 120 elders of Chechnya were forced to accept nominal allegiance in Tarki through the Shamkhal of Tarki. D. A. Khozhaev recorded the motive: the elders "sought to avoid subordination to the tsarist pristavs (superintendents), to avert from Chechnya the threat of constant raids"^[14]. Emanuel, commander of the troops on the Caucasus Line, set a condition in his report to Paskevich: "the submission of Bey-Bulat and the other unsubdued Chechens will be recognized as well-intentioned only when they unconditionally take the oath and hand over amanats (hostages)"^[32]. In his instruction to Emanuel, Paskevich revealed the calculation of splitting the people: "it is not without use for us to have two factions in Chechnya, which, both remaining submissive to our government, will by internecine discord be restrained from hostile designs against the Russians"^[32]. Having summoned Beibulat and the elders of his faction to Tiflis ostensibly for negotiations, Paskevich detained them with the army in the field for the entire Turkish campaign. D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "Realizing that he had been deceived, he tries to return to Chechnya immediately, but he is detained in Tiflis by force"^[14]. Paskevich himself acknowledged the scheme in his instruction to Emanuel of August 2, 1829: "I at once resolved to summon to me, under the guise of explanations, their elders and the elder Bey-Bulat known to you, so that, having drawn them away here, I would deprive this tribe of the possibility... of undertaking anything hostile"; "Having kept them in this way for the whole summer, I secured tranquility for the Line on their part"^[32]. The same instruction confirmed the regulation on Chechnya: amanats from every elder's district "as a pledge of submission" in the fortress of Groznaya, the son of the Shamkhal as commissar over the Chechens, and travel into imperial territory only with tickets (written passes) from the commissar^[32]. The oath was signed by a people that had lived through a wave of arrests, executions, and exiles at the hands of the imperial command. The Chechens wrote to Paskevich in April 1829: they "arrested, took captive, hanged, and exiled to Siberia and other places many of those who, being submissive, served the great Sovereign"^[32].

An imperial decree prohibiting the use of the Ukrainian language in official institutions and introducing a ban on baptizing children with traditional national names^[3].

After the erection of the Groznaya fortress on the Sunzha in 1818, General Yermolov continued, as historian D. A. Khozhaev writes, to "squeeze unsubdued Chechnya with new fortresses and fortifications," and among these, in 1819, appeared the fortress of Vnezapnaya^[14]. Imperial historian Potto names its purpose outright: founded on the eighteenth of July 1819, it "separated the Chechens from the Kumyks" and "blocked [the Chechens'] path through the Salatau mountains"^[33]. Potto writes that Yermolov "decided to clear the entire Kumyk plain… by making the Chechens leave it for beyond the Kachkalyk mountain ridge," and getting them to take their families away themselves "was possible only by an example of terror"^[33]. The Nokhchi aul of Dadi-Yurt was chosen as the demonstrative victim. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that the aul of 200 households was "one of the richest in Chechnya" and "was famed for its brave and industrious inhabitants and for the beauty and nobility of its girls"^[14]. Yermolov ordered Major General Sysoev to surround the aul and, "should they resist, to punish them with arms, giving quarter to no one"^[34]. On the fifteenth of September 1819 the aul was surrounded by six Kabardian companies and seven hundred Cossacks, who took it by storming each household under artillery fire^[33][14]. Yermolov himself admits the outcome in his "Notes": "all who bore arms were exterminated, and their number could not have been fewer than four hundred men"; of women and children "up to one hundred and forty were taken prisoner… but a far greater number were slaughtered or perished in the houses from the effects of artillery and fire," while the village "consisted of 200 houses" and was "razed to its foundations"^[34]. The surviving women and children were led away as prisoners beyond the Terek; historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that during the river crossing 46 captured girls, "unwilling to endure abuse in captivity," perished, "dragging their guards with them into the turbulent river"^[14]. After the destruction of the aul, Yermolov finished off the Kachkalyk villages with almost no resistance left; he himself admits: "the example of Dadan-Yurt spread terror everywhere"^[34].

The occupation administration of the metropole liquidated the autonomy of the Nokhchi communities (the Okochans) in the Terek town, establishing alien governance over them and beginning to exploit their resources. Historian E. N. Kusheva states that in 1614 Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich ordered the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky "to be prince over all the Okochans..., to judge them and to have charge of them in military organization and in all matters"^[21]. The appointed ruler proceeded to the physical and economic exploitation of the indigenous population. Kusheva points out that he forced those under his rule "to perform all manner of labor for him, to plow the fields and to mow the hay"^[21]. Facts of administrative extortion and slave trading are documented: in a petition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the service Okochans of the Terek town reported that the ruler "having taken from us by force 8 good horses from the herd, sent them off to his kabaks in Kabarda"^[35][18], "wrongfully sold four of our Okochan comrades"^[35][18] and "took a wife into bondage and sent her off to his kabaks in Kabarda"^[35][18]. The document adds that he subjected the Nokhchi to corporal punishment: "he orders us to be thrown into prison and beaten with the knout without thy sovereign knowledge and without guilt"^[35][18]. The administration of the metropole itself for years compelled the Nokhchi to serve without pay: a report from the Terek voivode Pyotr Petrovich Golovin to the Astrakhan voivode Ivan Nikitich Odoevsky records that they "serve the sovereign tsar... in all manner of the sovereign's Terek... services... yet for the tenth year have not been granted the sovereign's monetary and grain salary"^[35]. The indigenous population was also forced to fight against their own compatriots: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of an academic collection, indicates in the heading of a primary document that there took place "a campaign of the Terek fighting men and the Terek Okochans... against the Endirey ruler Saltan-Magmut and the people of the Okotsk and Michkiz kabaks who had joined him"^[18]. In parallel, the metropole imposed tribute on the mountain communities of the Nokhchi: an extract from the book of the Terek town's Prikaz office records that the administration sent men "to the Michkiz lands for the sovereign's yasak"^[18]. The compilers of the academic collections dryly state the outcome of the Nokhchi protests: "The petition of the 'Okochans' was not granted"^[35].

Economic and political pressure by V. Putin on V. Yanukovych in the fall of 2013 aimed at derailing the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU in exchange for a 15 billion dollar loan and a discount on gas. After the start of Euromaidan, the Kremlin categorically forbade Yanukovych to make concessions to the protesters, directly demanding that he use force and shoot people following the scenario of the suppression of the Andijan uprising^[1].

A covert operation (an act of sabotage) by Muscovite emissaries disguised as monks, aimed at the physical destruction of historical archives. The arson of the library of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra pursued the goal of destroying ancient documents (charters of Lithuanian princes, Polish kings, and Ukrainian hetmans) and erasing the written memory of the independent political and spiritual past of the colonized territories: "The fire destroyed 'the written memory of the independent Ukrainian political and spiritual life of the Lavra'"^[3].

Between 1817 and 1818, the Russian Empire forcibly moved the fortified line from the Terek to the Sunzha and secured the seized territory of the Nokhchi communities by building a fortress, accompanying this with the driving off of the population, the taking of hostages, and coercion into submission. Historian D. A. Khozhaev records that the relocation of the line "squeezed unsubdued Chechnya with new fortresses and fortifications," while the fortress of Groznaya was built "on Chechen land," where "eight flourishing Chechen villages… were destroyed, and the population driven off its lands"^[14]. Imperial general Yermolov, commander of the Caucasus Corps, testifies in his "Notes" to the deployment of troops ("on May 24 the entire detachment crossed over… moved from the Terek to the Sunzha River"), to the demand that the elders "renew their long-standing oath of submission," and to the taking of amanats (hostages) "from their villages"^[34]. Imperial historian Potto confirms the founding of the fortress on June 10, 1818, "with six bastions, which Yermolov named Groznaya"^[33].

After Yermolov's punitive campaign, which devastated the lowland villages of the Nokhchi in 1826, some inhabitants of the destroyed villages refused to resettle under the conqueror's control and took refuge in the forests. The imperial historian Potto admits: "the inhabitants of some auls destroyed by Yermolov took refuge in the forests and, unwilling to resettle, abandoned even their fields sown with grain"^[23]. The village of Uzeni-Yurt on the bank of the Argun became a refuge for these people and a stronghold of the Karabulak leader Astemir, an associate of Beibulat Taimiev in the uprising of 1825. On the night of January 10, 1827, General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, covertly led against the village a detachment of 350 line Cossacks with two horse-drawn guns, forcing four hundred Chechens from subjugated communities to take part as well. Potto wrote: they "swam across the Argun and had to take a roundabout route in order to cut off the inhabitants' retreat to the forest"^[23]. Warned by a horseman, the inhabitants fled across the Argun. Potto recorded: the Cossacks, overtaking those fleeing, "seized... three women and killed and wounded some fifteen people," after which "the village of Uzeni-Yurt, with all its property and even its livestock, was destroyed to the ground"^[23]. That same winter Laptev exacted hostages from the village of Geldigen, rejecting a ransom for a captured young man of Geldigen. Potto wrote: "Laptev rejected all offers and demanded one thing - amanats (hostages)"^[23]. In the summer of 1827 his successor, General Engelhardt, set an ambush during the harvest near the aul of Samashki. Potto admits: the inhabitants were freely allowed onto the fields, and then "everything that was in the field turned out to be encircled by a dense Cossack cordon"; the population was released, while the leader Tara-Adzuev and the family of the resistance leader Bakar-Bulatov were taken prisoner, and the grain of the Galgai, who lived by the aul, was "burned... standing in the field"^[23].

A campaign to suppress the legal civic activity of the Indigenous people. The empire began mass closures of enlightenment societies, officially recognized the educational work of the local population as a threat to the state, and then legislatively classified Ukrainians as aliens ("inorodtsy") with a complete ban on any national associations^[3].

After the demonstrative destruction of Dadi-Yurt, General Yermolov moved on to devastate the remaining Nokhchi villages of the Kachkalyk plain and drive their inhabitants off the land. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that under Yermolov "cruel punitive raids on peaceful Caucasian auls — with the annihilation of the population, houses, crops, orchards, and forests, the driving off of livestock, and the plundering of property — which disgraced Russian arms, became the rule," and following Dadi-Yurt the Kachkalyk villages of Isti-Su, Noiberdy, Alleroi, and others were "taken by storm and destroyed"^[14]. Yermolov himself describes the campaign in his "Notes": on September 30, 1819, he "himself set out with 6 battalions and 16 artillery pieces toward the Kachkalyk villages"; on October 2 he attacked "the village of Goryachevskaya, the strongest of them" (also known as Isti-Su), and a day later devastated Noen-Berdy and Allayar-Aul: "from the first the Chechens were driven out by heavy cannonade, the latter was abandoned by them… Both were utterly devastated"^[34]. At the same time, Major General Sysoev invaded Chechen land from Groznaya through Khan-Kale, drawing the forces of the Chechens away from the Kachkalyk plain^[34]. The imperial historian Potto confirms: the Apsheron men "went in with bayonets without firing a shot, burst into the aul and committed it to the flames," while Noim-Berdy and Allayar-Aul "were utterly devastated"^[33]. One village survived by submitting: Yermolov writes that "the village of Khangeldy begged for mercy… The Aksai owners vouched for its inhabitants, and mercy was granted them"^[34], while Potto adds that "the aul of Khosh-Geldy met Yermolov with bread and salt and was spared"^[33]. The remaining villages the punitive forces found empty, because the Dadi-Yurt terror had driven the inhabitants off the plain in advance. Yermolov admits that "in none of the villages were there wives and children; the property had likewise been carried away," for "the example of Dadan-Yurt spread terror everywhere"^[34]. Potto writes that "the remaining auls were empty, their inhabitants had fled beyond the mountains," and "within a few days the Kumyk plain was completely cleared of the predatory Chechens"^[33]. On October 5 the troops returned to Vnezapnaya^[34].

In January-May 1826 the Russian Empire conducted a large punitive campaign against the Nokhchi, devastating lowland villages for participation in Beibulat Taimiev’s uprising and forcing the inhabitants into submission. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that "in January 1826, having waited for a period inconvenient for the inhabitants of Chechnya, when the frosts made it difficult to shelter families, Yermolov begins a large punitive campaign into Chechnya," occupying the aul of Bolshaya Ataga on January 26 and burning settlements one after another^[14]. General Yermolov himself, in a report to Emperor Nicholas I of May 28, 1826, admits the course of the devastation: during the storming of Urus-Martan "the village was burned and its splendid orchards cut down," at Stavna-Kul "16 souls of both sexes were taken prisoner, several people killed," and the village of Shali he "ordered to be exterminated… and its orchards cut down"^[36]. The historian D. A. Khozhaev sums up: by May 18, 1826, "flourishing settlements had been destroyed, splendid fruit orchards cut down, fields burned, livestock driven off. People were killed, women and children taken prisoner… People were dying of hunger, cold, and disease"^[14].

Public diplomatic blackmail by V. Putin at the NATO summit in Bucharest aimed at blocking the granting of a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine. The Russian leader directly threatened G. Bush with the dismemberment of Ukraine should it join the Alliance, declaring that under such a scenario Ukraine "would leave without Crimea and the east"^[1].

The use of international leverage by M. Gorbachev's union center to keep Ukraine within the USSR. It culminated in the visit of US President G. Bush to Kyiv, who, from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada, warned Ukrainians against independence, urging them to support Gorbachev and calling the striving for freedom "suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred" (the famous Chicken Kiev Speech)^[1].

In the period from 1726 to 1731, the Russian Empire exerted routine administrative and economic pressure on the Nokhchi societies while avoiding large-scale military interventions. The occupation administration imposed harsh taxes on commercial travel by the indigenous population: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov cites customs documents, stating that in 1726 «from the travel document of the Terek resident, the Okochan Kurman Bogomatov... duties of 24 altyns in money were collected by decree»^[11], and also that «a report of February 15, 1726 states that duties were collected from the Terek Okochans Surkai Usmanov...»^[11]. The economic strangulation provoked armed resistance: Akhmadov indicates that the highlanders «carried out attacks on the tsarist fortifications, kept the fortress of the Holy Cross «in great oppression»»^[11]. In addition, the empire conducted the gathering of military-strategic intelligence: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov notes that in 1728 the officer I. G. Gerber «on the government's assignment... compiled a description of the localities and population... as well as a map of this district»^[10].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy in the town of Terki used the subjugated Nokhchi (Okochans) to carry out state tasks while artificially keeping them in a state of economic dependency. In their petition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the Okochan murza Kokhostrov Biytemirov and the serving Okochans of the town of Terki reported constant coercion into military action: «against your sovereign's disobedient ones we fight, we, your sovereign's kholops, not sparing our heads; for you, sovereign, we shed our blood and lay down our heads»^[18]. At the same time, the metropole deliberately withheld basic subsistence resources from the Indigenous population for five years. A memorandum from the Ambassadorial Prikaz to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace records: «the sovereign's grain allowance for the past years — for the 125th, and the 126th, and the 127th, and the 128th, and the 129th year — was not given to them»^[18]. The result was the exhaustion of the population: Biytemirov reported that they «have been left without grain, have utterly perished from hunger and every hardship and have fallen, sovereign, into great debt, and we are dying a death of starvation together with our wives and children»^[18]. To resolve the crisis, the leader of the Nokhchi set out for Moscow, but perished while returning to the Caucasus. A memorandum from the Ambassadorial Prikaz states that «Kokhostrov-murza together with his man drowned in the Oka River»^[18], while representatives of the metropole resolved to confiscate the property of the deceased: «his clothing and all his belongings were taken into our treasury»^[18]. The delegate's death was used to further curtail the rights of the Nokhchi. In a petition submitted to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the Okochan murza Chepan Kokhostrov indicated that in the incident «the sovereign's charter of grant was lost together with him»^[18], as a result of which the occupation administration artificially lowered the status of his family in order to impose obligations upon it: an official extract of the Ambassadorial Prikaz records that the heirs were «made equal in everything with the Okochans, with the plowing people, and carts and wagons are taken from them», whereas previously from them «no taxes whatsoever had been taken»^[18].

Unprecedented interference by the Russian Federation in the presidential election of a sovereign state in order to impose a loyal candidate (V. Yanukovych). The campaign included deploying a landing party of Russian political technologists (the "Russian Club"), V. Putin's direct participation in campaigning, and the informational demonization of the opposition. Chemical poisoning was used against the leader of the democratic forces, V. Yushchenko. In response to the protests, Moscow instigated the threat of splitting the country apart (the separatist congress in Sievierodonetsk)^[1].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy maintained a regime that deprived the subjugated societies of the Nokhchi (the Okochans) of autonomy in the Terek town, prolonging the power over them of a loyal foreign ruler for their subsequent mobilization. In 1661, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich issued a charter of grant to the Kabardian prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky, officially prescribing that he «be prince over the Okochans and over the Cherkasses who serve us, the great sovereign, on the Terek, and administer and judge them in military organization and in all our affairs»^[18]. Having received control, the appointed ruler became an instrument for implementing imperial objectives: in 1676, the central apparatus of the Ambassadorial Prikaz sent an instruction to Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky on the need to arrive at the Terek «to administer the oath of allegiance of the population of the North Caucasus to Tsars Ivan and Peter Alekseevich»^[35]. In the same period, the subjugated Nokhchi were forcibly thrown into the metropole's military campaigns against the Crimean Khanate. A dispatch from Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky to the Ambassadorial Prikaz of 1675 states that for the campaign into the Crimean uluses he had at his disposal various fighting men, including «190 Okochan men»^[35], and the historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova confirms that in 1675 detachments fought in Crimea that included men «with uzdens, with the newly baptized, and with «Okochans»»^[25].

The introduction of harsh discriminatory legislation (Decree No. 17006) restricting the rights of the Jewish population. The creation of a zone of physical segregation running predominantly through colonized Ukrainian territories^[37].

In the 1740s, the diplomatic and administrative apparatus of the Russian Empire scaled up the application of institutional colonial mechanisms to new territories of the Nokhchi. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that in 1741–1748 there was an «intensification of Russian-Chechen political and trade ties»^[11]. The occupation administration expanded the practice of institutional bribery: the researcher records «the granting of Russian salaries to 4 Chechen princes and their uzdens»^[11]. This process was accompanied by the legal subordination of new territories through the issuing of ultimatum demands. The author points out that, in response to the highlanders' requests for access to the plain, the empire gave its consent exclusively «on the condition that the highlanders take an oath of Russian allegiance»^[11], which led to the formalization of oaths «by new societies of Chechnya, including mountain ones»^[11]. Overall, as Akhmadov summarizes, «The process of formalizing relations with Russia at the official level covers the main districts of Chechnya», while, as rigid guarantees of obedience, «amanats (hostages) are handed over as a pledge of fidelity to the oath to the Russian authorities»^[11].

In 1818, after the fortress of Groznaya had already been erected on seized land, the Russian Empire used the nearby village of Solzha (Sunzhenskaya) as a resource base for the garrison, and then devastated it when its inhabitants refused to hand over a fellow villager and took up arms. Historian D. A. Khozhaev records the devastation of Solzha (Sunzhenskaya), as a consequence of which "most of the peaceful surrounding auls fled to the mountains, and the flourishing riverbanks stood deserted for a long time thereafter"^[14]. Imperial general Yermolov testifies in his "Notes" that he had previously ordered the troops to spare the village so that the fortress "could obtain from it all the necessary provisions." When soldiers were taking away from a villager an ox "which he called his own," the man shot at a soldier; the inhabitants refused to hand him over, declaring "that they would not give up the man who had shot at the soldier and would defend themselves if the troops came." When the chief of the corps staff "went himself with several companies," he "was met with gunfire." The families and property had been sent away in advance; the defense was held by the men alone. The troops were ordered to cut off the retreat — "to intercept the withdrawal in the forest" — but the defenders had pulled back earlier. Only after this did the troops enter the abandoned village, spending several days carting away from it "grain, forage, and timber fit for construction"^[34].

In August 1832, corps commander Rosen led a ten-thousand-strong detachment on a campaign through Chechnya and Ichkeria — the mountainous southeastern part of Chechen land, into which imperial troops had never before penetrated. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "Rosen's ten-thousand-strong tsarist detachment invaded mountainous Ingushetia and Chechnya, ablaze with the fire of a people's war of liberation. Despite the steadfast resistance of the inhabitants of mountainous Chechnya, who courageously defended every inch of their land, the tsarist troops destroyed several dozen auls and hamlets"^[14]. On August 22, after crossing the Argun River, the villages of Belgatoy and Dzhan-yurt were annihilated. On August 23, Germenchuk — the richest village of Chechnya, numbering 600 households — was taken by storm. Rosen reported to Minister of War Chernyshev: "more than 100 bodies were left by them in the village itself," while a group "numbering about 60 men, for the most part people sent by Kazi-Mulla to hearten the inhabitants of Germenchuk," led by Mullah Abdurakhman, "was cut off and surrounded by us in one large house"^[26]. The surrounded men refused to surrender and, on the order of General Volkhovsky, were burned alive. The imperial historian Volkonsky, writing from Rosen's dispatches, admits: "Major General Volkhovsky ordered burning firewood and hay to be thrown into the chimneys. This had its effect... but the greater part, together with Mullah Abdurakhman, perished in the flames, continuing to sing verses of the Quran"^[38]. For two days "the troops annihilated the houses of the village of Germenchuk"; on August 26, Shali was destroyed "with the exception of 11 households that had paid the fine and the tribute"^[38]. Rosen himself acknowledged the pattern of the campaign: the villages, "having been unable to agree among themselves on the release of our prisoners, were punished by the annihilation of their dwellings and plowlands, for which purpose, on the 27th and 28th of this past August, Colonel Shumsky was dispatched... He annihilated Alkhan-yurt, Sala-yurt, Katar-yurt, Lyalsin-yurt, Nazari-yurt, Uzden-yurt, Uruzbey-yurt, and Khyzin-Erzo-yurt"^[26]. Further annihilated were Anzeli-yurt and Chingaroy-yurt, the crops and dwellings of Avtury, Said-yurt, the plowlands and houses of Geldigen, Anto-yurt, Askhor-yurt, Taba-yurt, and Kudish-yurt; Mairtup was burned, and in Ichkeria — Shoni, Tsentoroy, Belgatoy, the hamlet of Khamer, Ali-yurt, Bey-Bulat-yurt, Bachin-yurt, Khelboyn-yurt; Benoy was burned^[38][26][14]. Rosen summed up the results in his report to Chernyshev of September 27, 1832: "In all, up to the present time, more than 80 Chechen and Ichkerian villages have submitted, a quarter of which had never been in dependence on us; 30 of our prisoners, men and women, have been returned; tribute and fines in money and livestock have been paid... about 5 th. r. s. [five thousand rubles in silver]. 61 unsubmitted villages have been annihilated, many of which, after punishment, declared their submission and fulfilled all demands"^[26].

The Russian Empire, through the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, addressed the Nokhchi elders with a proclamation offering economic benefits in exchange for accepting allegiance and ceasing armed resistance: for submission, the elders were promised access to salt, so that they «will be permitted to take from the local salt lakes by tickets, irrevocably, with payment of a very small fixed price», and the right «to drive cattle to this side of the Terek and freely use the vacant pasture lands»^[22]. Allegiance was not accepted; by the end of the year the empire moved to preparing an armed invasion, which began in February of the following year.

The first attempt by Soviet Russia (the Russian Soviet Republic) to liquidate Ukraine's independence by hijacking power at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. The Bolshevik government (the Sovnarkom) planned to plant its delegates, artificially create a majority, and legally vote to transfer power to the Soviets under its control. The Ukrainian leadership recognized the threat and mobilized its supporters, leaving the aggressor's delegates in an absolute minority and thwarting the takeover^[13][12].

The Soviet Union introduces a system of direct material incentives for assimilation. Russian-language teachers are given artificially created financial privileges (a 15% salary bonus), classes are divided into groups for better mastery of the language of the metropole, which is officially proclaimed the language of the "friendship of peoples"^[3].

An assault on the traditional way of life of the Ukrainian village, which remained the principal bearer of national identity and economic independence. Under the slogans of socialist modernization, Moscow carried out the forcible seizure of land, livestock, and equipment. Peasants who put up resistance (the so-called "kurkuls") were dispossessed en masse and deported to Siberia and the North^[13][1].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy made mass use of the subjugated Nokhchi (the Okochans) as a military resource in conflicts with the Ottoman Empire on distant fronts. In 1678, the Kabardian prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky received a tsarist charter in which the historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova records a reward «for his «many services», for having taken part in the Crimean and Chyhyryn campaigns»^[25]. The registers of archival documents for 1678 record a dispatch from the Chuhuiv voivode Ivan Rykhtarov to the Razriad Prikaz «on the march of the regiment of Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky to Chuhuiv»^[35]. The exploitation of military potential continued the following year as well: in 1679, Tsar Fedor Alekseevich issued a decree to the Ambassadorial Prikaz on sending Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky a charter «on his regiment's performance of guard duty in the vicinity of Chuhuiv and Kharkiv»^[35], while a dispatch from Kaspulat Cherkassky himself to the Ambassadorial Prikaz for the same year states «on the arrival of his regiment at Valuyki»^[35].

Against the backdrop of large-scale territorial conquests, the empire conceptualizes its superiority over the colonized peoples. A state ideologeme takes shape holding that peoples incapable of creating a state would have to submit to the Russian nation^[1].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy established a new military base at the mouth of the Terek River to control the adjacent territories, including the lands of the Nokhchi. Historian E. N. Kusheva writes that the base "was built in 1588–1589... by Mikhailo Burtsev and Kelar Protasyev... the main force of its garrison consisted of streltsy armed with 'fire combat' — pishchal firearms"^[21]. The base's infrastructure was systematically expanded: historians A. S. Kulikov and V. A. Runov note that "by the beginning of the 17th century... the Terek fortified town had turned into a rather powerful fortress. Its artillery numbered 40 large guns, and its garrison — more than a thousand streltsy and Cossacks"^[39]. To hold its positions, the administration brought in additional military personnel: historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova notes that "in 1589, soon after the town was built, 800 streltsy and Cossacks were to be sent there from Astrakhan, but the Astrakhan voivode sent only 600 men"^[25]. A permanent military contingent on state provision was entrenched in this territory: historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova cites a tsar's decree according to which "in 1623, 'upon the petition of the Terek and Greben Cossacks,' a tsar's decree was sent to the Terek ordering the payment of salaries to 30 atamans and 470 rank-and-file Cossacks"^[25].

Open aggression and a large-scale military invasion of the territory of Ukraine by the Russian Federation from several directions. The goal of the campaign is the complete destruction of Ukrainian statehood and the erasure of Ukrainian identity. It is accompanied by carpet bombing, the destruction of entire cities (urbicide), mass executions of the civilian population, ecocide, and a systematic policy of assimilation in the occupied territories^[1][40].

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, unleashing the largest and bloodiest war in Europe since World War II and sharply escalating the conflict that had begun back in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, announced a "special military operation," setting as its goal the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine and effectively denying its statehood, after which Russian troops attacked from the north (from Belarus toward Kyiv), from the east, and from the south (from Crimea). After the failure of the attempts to seize Kyiv quickly and the retreat of Russian troops by April 2022, mass war crimes were uncovered, in particular the Bucha massacre. In the fall of 2022, Ukraine carried out successful counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, liberating Kherson, while Russia in response illegally annexed four partially occupied regions. In 2023, the Ukrainian counteroffensive did not achieve significant results, and in 2024 Russia captured Avdiivka and began a slow advance in the east, while Ukraine carried out a daring incursion into the Kursk region; Russia retook the territories in the Kursk region with the help of North Korean troops fighting on its side. As of May 2026, Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine's territory, about 8 million Ukrainians have become internally displaced persons, and 6-7 million refugees are in EU countries. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and five other Russian officials for war crimes, including the deportation of Ukrainian children, and the UN has documented systematic human rights violations, torture, sexual violence, and strikes on civilian targets. Russia has also carried out massive missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, while Ukraine in response has attacked Russian oil refineries and conducted Operation Spiderweb, which struck strategic bombers deep inside Russian territory. According to expert estimates, by the end of 2025 the number of killed and wounded on both sides had exceeded one million people, with 2025 becoming the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since the start of the invasion. Peace negotiations have repeatedly broken down; after Donald Trump came to power in 2025, the United States sharply shifted its position toward Russia.

The use of the state monopoly Gazprom as a political weapon against Kyiv's independent course. Gas supplies were cut off at the height of winter (January 1, 2006, and January 1, 2009) to destabilize the Ukrainian economy, blackmail European consumers, and coerce the Ukrainian government into unfavorable contracts through corrupt intermediaries (RosUkrEnergo) closely tied to the Russian authorities and organized crime^[1].

A period of intensive ideological conditioning of Russian society and the political elite to justify the complete destruction of Ukrainian statehood. It included the publication of pseudo-historical articles by V. Putin and D. Medvedev denying Ukraine the right to subjecthood, the indoctrination of the army, as well as military blackmail through the massing of troops near the borders under the guise of exercises^[40][1].

In the 18th century, the governmental apparatus of the Russian Empire began employing Enlightenment ideas and the construction of historical myths to ideologically justify the absorption of territories. Historian Michael Khodarkovsky states that by the mid-18th century officials had come to perceive their advance as a mission preordained by destiny to "bring both Christianity and civilization to the ‘wild and uncivilized’ peoples along its borders"^[17]. The local population was deliberately assigned an image of backwardness: the researcher points out that in the administration’s documents the Highlanders were described as "inconstant and treacherous," and their actions were explained by references to their "predatory craft, to which they are predisposed by their very nature and upbringing"^[41]. In parallel, fictitious grounds for control were being constructed: the author records that in 1748 and the 1770s the Collegium of Foreign Affairs fabricated reports claiming that the Indigenous population of the Caucasus had allegedly professed Christianity in the past, in order to contest the claims of other powers and "legitimize its efforts at their ‘re-Christianization’"^[41]. Building on this foundation, in 1784 the imperial governors asserted that, with the dispatch of missionaries, they would be able to spread their influence and shed "the light of divine bliss among all the peoples scattered in the mountains"^[41].

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire turned Ukrainian lands into its raw-materials colony, exploiting the resources of the Donbas and deliberately importing labor from the Russian governorates^[42].

The ultimate manifestation of the colonial administration's disregard for the lives of the local population. After the explosion at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the union center concealed the scale of the radiation threat. People were deprived of the right to evacuation and protection, and instead were driven out to May Day demonstrations under radioactive fallout to simulate well-being in the USSR^[43][2].

The final destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty through the imposition of treaties on a so-called military-political union. While formally preserving the status of an independent republic, the leadership of the RSFSR de facto brought the key Ukrainian agencies — military, financial, economic, and transport — under its direct control. The final chord in the suppression of organized armed resistance, and a symbol of its tragic end, was the execution by the Bolsheviks of 359 captured soldiers of the UNR Army near Bazar in November 1921^[13][12].

At the end of February 1830, the Caucasus was struck by a devastating earthquake that lasted more than a month and caused panic among the mountain peoples. The empire turned the disaster into a weapon of indoctrination and delivered this lie to the people. The historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov wrote: "supporters of the Russian orientation claimed that the earthquake had been caused by the wrath of Allah over the attempt at an armed uprising"^[44]. The mechanics of the indoctrination are acknowledged by the colonizers themselves. The imperial historian Volkonsky wrote: "the commander-in-chief accordingly ordered General Rosen 4th to spread entirely opposite rumors among the people, namely, that the earthquake had been sent down by God upon the mountain peoples for their ill-intentioned acts against the Russian government, and hoped by this means to tear his followers away from Kazi-Mulla"^[38]. The imperial historian Potto admits that the order was carried out: General Rosen 4th, who commanded the troops on the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the eastern section of the empire's fortified frontier along the Terek and the Sunzha), "resorted to proclamations in which he strove to assure the people that the earthquake had been sent down upon them as punishment for their treason and ill-intentioned acts against the Russian government"^[23].

Systematic exploitation of the Hetmanate's potential in a grueling war combined with the simultaneous launch of administrative absorption (the reforms of 1707). The Cossacks dispatched to distant fronts were «wearied, destitute, left horseless, and ruined by year-round military service». The empire began transferring Ukrainian affairs to the Razriad Prikaz in order «to convert the Cossacks into a regular army... to break the military rights and liberties» and «to take the Little Russian towns into its own domain»^[15].

A campaign to turn the free population into rightless military slaves, which provoked the suppressed uprising of the Buh Cossacks in 1817. Later, in 1828, it culminated in the luring away of Otaman Hladky and the liquidation of the last Danubian Sich by the Turks^[45][46].

Another stage of the assault on autonomy: a treaty with Moscow that eliminated independent diplomacy ("a hetman shall not be elected... nor shall they write anything to anyone on their own behalf"), prohibited declaring one's own subjecthood, and demanded: "to unite the Little Russian people with the Great Russian people by all measures and means... through marriage"^[15].

Formal consolidation of the seizure of Ukraine by dragging it into the so-called Union of SSRs. The unification of equal republics with the right of free secession was declared, but in practice the union treaty (December 1922) and the Constitution of the USSR (1924) became instruments of rigid centralization. The Ukrainian SSR was definitively stripped of control over foreign policy, the army, foreign trade, transport, and communications — all these spheres passed to the jurisdiction of union-level people's commissariats in Moscow^[13][12].

The destruction of the Cossack regimental order on the Right Bank by decision of the Polish Sejm. This event was a direct and inevitable consequence of the «Eternal Peace» (1686), under which Moscow and Warsaw divided Ukraine along the Dnipro behind closed doors, depriving the Right Bank of Muscovite protection and handing it over to Poland for final assimilation^[47].

Institutional seizure and spiritual unification. The empire officially liquidates the independent Uniate Church in Right-Bank Ukraine, forcibly transferring its faithful and property under the control of the loyal Moscow Patriarchate^[2].

The final abolition of political autonomy. Catherine II forced Hetman K. Rozumovsky to renounce his office and created an occupation administration (the Second Little Russian Collegium) headed by P. Rumyantsev for the complete unification of the region^[5][6].

A military operation by Muscovite forces to completely destroy the Zaporozhian (Chortomlyk) Sich as an autonomous military center, in retaliation for its support of Charles XII. The empire's goal was recorded explicitly: «to eradicate the Zaporozhian Host of the Lower Dnipro and erase its name forever»^[15][48].

Moscow's attempt to legitimize the preservation of the disintegrating empire. The head of the USSR parliament, A. Lukyanov, devised a cunning and ambiguous wording of the question ("Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics..."), which Soviet citizens were psychologically unable to answer in the negative, in order to use the results to coerce the republics into signing a new union treaty^[1][2].

In July 1825, at the height of Beibulat Taimiev’s uprising, the Russian Empire exterminated elders summoned under the pretext of an inquiry. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that after the insurgents’ five-day siege of the Gerzel-Aul fortification, "the tsarist generals decided to stage a demonstrative execution to intimidate the highlanders": summoned to the fortification were "318 respected men of the Aksai (Kumyk and Chechen) villages," whom General Lisanevich, "calling out those assembled one by one, threatened in the Kumyk language and subjected to insults"^[14]. When General Grekov attempted to "inflict a physical insult" on the Chechen mullah Uchar-Hadji from the village of Mairtup, the latter killed Grekov with a dagger and mortally wounded Lisanevich, after which, "upon Lisanevich’s command ‘Stab them!’, the mass extermination by the soldiers of all the unarmed highlanders present in the fortification began"^[14]. The imperial historian Potto confirms that both generals "fell at the hand of a fanatic," after which "the mutiny flared up again with redoubled force"^[33].

In response to the autonomy's attempt to break its vassalage, the regular Muscovite army destroyed the hetman capital of Baturyn. Peter ordered: «and Baturyn, as a sign to the traitors (since they resisted), burn entirely as an example to others» ^[1]. The reprisal was accompanied by terror against the civilian population: «Funck slaughtered more than a thousand people in the small town... and burned that town»^[49], while in total «around 15 thousand Ukrainians perished in the Baturyn tragedy, including all the women and children»^[9].

The seizure of the Crimean Khanate and its forcible incorporation into the Russian Empire. For Crimea, the campaign meant the abolition of independence, military occupation, the removal of the khan, and the launch of the displacement of the Indigenous population ^[50]. For Ukraine, the annexation was secured through the forced mobilization of Cossacks as a military resource, the colonization of the adjacent southern steppes to create a loyal rear, and the erasure of Cossack toponyms in favor of the imperial construct "Novorossiya"^[1][2].

The treacherous military encirclement and destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich immediately after a joint war. The issuance of a manifesto abolishing the very name of the Cossack stronghold and the lifelong imprisonment of the last kish otaman, Kalnyshevsky^[1][51].

The implantation of colonial symbols in the public space of subjugated territories. The erection of the monument to Bohdan Khmelnytsky in Kyiv was constructed as a symbol of the submission and unity of Little Russia with Moscow under the rule of the tsar^[1].

Open military aggression by the Tsardom of Muscovy in response to the hetman's attempt to break vassalage. It was accompanied by the incitement of civil war through the sponsoring of an opposition ("the revolt of Pushkar and Barabash"^[52]) and by a direct invasion of the Muscovite army, which suffered catastrophic losses at Konotop: "The flower of the Muscovite cavalry... perished in a single day"^[53].

In the spring of 1820, General Yermolov and Grekov, commander of the left flank, moved troops to cut a road-clearing through the forests of the Nokhchi to the aul of Germenchuk, killing inhabitants and burning auls along the way, while rounding up the neighboring villages to fell this clearing through their own forest. The imperial historian Potto describes how, on the night of March 6, 1820, Grekov’s detachment secretly crossed the Sunzha and suddenly attacked the sleeping aul of Topli: the Grebensky Cossack regiment "burst without resistance into the aul, still sunk in deep sleep," the Cossacks "rushed through the saklias with daggers," and "part of the inhabitants were slaughtered before they could rise from their beds; the others begged for mercy"^[33]. Potto then writes that Grekov "gathered the elders of the surrounding villages and ordered them to send workers with axes at once for the felling," and "the smoldering ruins of the village… compelled the Chechens to obey" — the Nokhchi, rounded up under threat of the same reprisal, cut the clearing through their own "dense forest"^[33]. Three days later the clearing was ready, and the troops "advanced, burned Germenchug, and drew back to Groznaya," although the aul stood empty and its inhabitants had already left^[33]. Yermolov himself, in an instruction to Grekov of March 15, 1820, confirms and sanctions this design of strangulation: "only the squeezing of the Chechens in their essential needs can make plain to them the advantage of submission, and I long ago authorized you to employ every possible means to that end," noting that Grekov had "opened a road even onto the plain"^[36].

The total purge of ethnic minorities (Poles, Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians) during the Great Terror through targeted national orders of the NKVD. In parallel, in 1938, Moscow officially liquidated every single national district and minority school and issued a decree making the study of the Russian language compulsory in all schools of Ukraine, returning to overtly imperial practices of assimilation^[54][55].

The imposition of a new enslaving treaty on Yurii Khmelnytsky under pressure from Muscovite troops. The treaty abolished independence: "The Articles meant the rupture of the 1658 Treaty of Hadiach... and substantially narrowed the autonomy of Cossack Ukraine within the Muscovite state"^[56].

The oath of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the starshyna to the tsar. Establishment of control over the Hetmanate through a legal trap: the treaty was asymmetric by design. "Buturlin refused to swear an oath on behalf of the tsar, arguing that the tsar does not swear oaths to his subjects"^[57]. Ideologically, the seizure was presented as the salvation of co-religionists: "The return of these lands to Russia was then perceived by everyone as Reunification"^[1].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy introduced rigid statistical control and restricted the right of the Nokhchi societies (Okochans, Michkiz, and Shibut) to free movement within the controlled territory. In 1631, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich issued a decree to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace on a census of the newcomer population of the town of Terki, directly prohibiting the free residence of unsanctioned migrants. The document prescribed identifying persons «whom it will not be possible to trust», and such people were «to be ordered sent out of the town of Terki, and ordered to go back to wherever each had come from, so that no harm would come to the town from them»^[35]. To implement this mechanism, the metropole regularly conducted a total demographic accounting. In the state register of serving people for the region of the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace for 1637, the central authorities recorded in detail the number of inhabitants, including 350 serving «Okotsk people» and 680 newcomer «Okochans, and Tatars, and Michkiz, and Shibut»^[18]. In 1640, on the orders of the Terek voivode, the Terek syn boyarsky P. Lukin and the clerk F. Belkov compiled a detailed name-by-name register of the population of the slobodas, rigidly documenting every household of the subjugated Nokhchi (Okochans) to ensure constant surveillance^[35][18].

A return to total control over culture after the relative loosening of the war years. The crushing of the Ukrainian creative intelligentsia, accusations of "bourgeois nationalism" (attacks on M. Rylsky and Yu. Yanovsky, the hounding of V. Sosiura for his poem "Love Ukraine"). In parallel, a state antisemitic campaign of "struggle against cosmopolitans" unfolded, culminating in the execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the "Doctors' Plot"^[1][2].

In 1718, the government of the Tsardom of Muscovy organized a large-scale invasion of the lands of the Nokhchi: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that there occurred "a predatory expedition of detachments of Don Cossacks and Kabardian princes allied with Peter I into the ‘Chechen district’ along the Sunzha and the Argun"^[11]. As a result of the raid, "800 captives were taken, not counting ‘belongings’"^[11]. In 1721, the armed actions continued: the researcher points out that the Astrakhan governor A. P. Volynsky "invited the Don Cossacks and, together with the Terek Cossacks, organized raids to the Agrakhan and Aksai rivers against the Kumyks and Chechens"^[11].

In the 19th century, the occupation administration of the Russian Empire and its propaganda apparatus used inversion of roles and the broadcasting of a logic of superiority to legitimize military aggression. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that «The anti-colonial and anti-feudal uprisings of the population of Chechnya, referred to in official documents as 'mischief', 'robberies' and 'murders', were perceived by the Russian autocracy as a challenge and an insult... All of this provoked cruel punitive actions incommensurate with the apparent cause»^[11]. The practical application of this mechanism is recorded in reports: in 1800, the commander-in-chief of the troops, General B. F. Knorring, justified expeditions against the Indigenous population as protection from their «predatory plunder, villainous brigandage»^[11]. In parallel, official historiography constructed an image of backwardness: the researcher points out that pre-revolutionary military science was characterized by an «apologia for the tsarist policy of conquest», under which the defensive struggle of the local population was labeled «the actions of barbarians devoid of 'civilized' notions of independence and freedom»^[10]. Literature was used to broadcast chauvinism to the masses. The imperial historian and participant in the events V. A. Potto records that the poet A. S. Pushkin proclaimed in verse: «Submit, Caucasus — Yermolov comes!»^[33], while the poet V. A. Zhukovsky glorified the destruction of villages: «Toward the villages — the villages blaze»^[31]. Relying on this foundation, General A. P. Yermolov justified repressions on the grounds that «the proconsul of the Caucasus cannot tame the cruelty of the local mores with mercy»^[33].

The creation of the first large-scale ideological justification for the seizure of lands by the Muscovite tsars — the "Synopsis, or a Brief Compilation from Various Chroniclers on the Origins of the Slavic-Russian People..."^[58]. The author constructs a myth of unity: "he tailors history to the script he needs in order to substantiate that Kyiv is directly related to Moscow"^[1].

The occupation administration of the town of Terki undertook an armed invasion of the mountain lands of the Nokhchi. Historian E. N. Kusheva states that the 1618 military campaign of the Terek detachments into the mountains took place «at the request of «the Uvar Nutsal prince and his brother Suleman-murza and the Cherny prince's son Turlov-murza»»^[21]. Kusheva adds that «In 1621, the serving Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky and his son Prince Sholokh referred in their petitions to their participation in the campaign of the Terek fighting men into the mountains that took place in 1618»^[21]. Preparation for the operation included forced mobilization: in a petition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the Kabardian prince Sholokh reported that «voivode Mikita Dmitreevich Velyaminov sent me... together with my father on your sovereign's service... against your sovereign's disobedient ones, the Michkiz people, against their kabaks»^[18]. Having made the crossing «through the mountains and along mountain crevices, through impassable places»^[18], the detachments descended upon the settlements. In a similar document, the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky reported that they «burned down and utterly devastated many Shibut, and Kalkan, and Erokhan, and Michkiz kabaks, and took many captives, and killed many other peo[ple]»^[18]. Kusheva states that after the detachments «had made war upon «the Shibut, and Kalkan, and Erokhan, and Michkiz kabaks»», the Indigenous population was forced into submission: ««the Shibut, and Kalkan, and Erokhan, and Michkiz people... acknowledged their guilt»»^[21], as a result of which the mountaineers «petitioned in submission and gave the shert (oath) and amanats to the town of Terki»^[18].

In 1812-1814 Russia was at war with Napoleon and conducted no major campaigns deep into Chechnya. The troops on the Terek were commanded by General Rtishchev, who avoided large campaigns, but raids across the Terek continued under him. Colonel Eristov twice crossed the Terek and devastated Chechen villages; the second time he "exterminated several villages along the Sunzha" and forced the Nokhchi to give up amanats (hostages)^[31]. Even the imperial leadership itself condemned these raids. General Rtishchev demanded that the highlanders be won over "not by arms, but by kind treatment"^[31], and Emperor Alexander I, upon learning "of yet another raid on peaceful Chechnya by Colonel Eristov," ordered by special rescript "to establish tranquility on the Caucasus Line through friendliness and kind indulgence," that is, he deemed the raid unjustified^[14]. The raids did not stop because of this. Beyond the raids, the empire incited neighboring peoples against the Chechens. In 1816 the Nokhchi, led by Beibulat Taimiev, took Major Shvetsov prisoner^[14], and in response the commander on the Terek, General Delpozzo, by letter compelled the Kumyk lords of Endirey, Aksai, and Kostek to go to war against the Chechens, demanding that they "put an end to the brigand people"^[59]. The Kumyk lords signed "Obligations" in which they undertook to make war on the Chechens, to kill them or hand them over to the Russians, and to let no goods through to them^[59]. At the same time Delpozzo did not withdraw his own troops, and in the same report proposed keeping them on the Sunzha "until I exterminate their beastly freedom and independence"^[59].

At the end of the 17th century, the Tsardom of Muscovy exerted continuous military, diplomatic, and economic pressure on the societies of the Nokhchi. In response to the alliance of the Indigenous population with Russian Old Believer Cossacks, the regular army conducted armed operations: the historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that in 1691–1700 «punitive expeditions were carried out in retaliation by the tsarist authorities against the rebel Cossacks and their mountaineer allies»^[11] and records «retaliatory punitive raids by tsarist forces»^[11]. In parallel, the diplomatic apparatus expanded legal control over the region, formalizing in 1696 «an expression of Russia's protection over the Braguny principality in Chechnya»^[11]. Military methods were supplemented by official fiscal pressure: the historian Sh. B. Akhmadov emphasizes that «the Okochans (Akkin Chechens) living in the town of Terki were obligated without exception to pay duties on the various goods and wares they took out for sale to their compatriots in Chechnya and Ingushetia»^[10]. The economic strangulation was aggravated by the arbitrariness of the local occupation administration: he adds that «the venality and bribe-taking of the voivodes, who permitted themselves great abuses — all this was a phenomenon far from new»^[10].

A military-diplomatic attempt to restore Ukraine's independence by émigré forces with the support of allies. The campaign failed due to the advance of Muscovite troops and a stab in the back: «Зрада татар... татарські загони розійшлися по Україні, беручи ясир і руйнуючи поселення»^[60].

From the mid-16th century until 1721, the diplomatic apparatus of the Tsardom of Muscovy justified military expansion into the North Caucasus with theological rhetoric and invented historical rights. Historian Michael Khodarkovsky states that the government apparatus positioned the tsar as a "universal Christian ruler, who 'upheld the true Christian faith'"^[17]. Invasions were motivated by a "divine obligation to rescue Orthodox Christians from infidel captivity"^[17]. As a result, as the researcher summarizes, "Moscow's military and political interests could no longer be separated from the ideological and theological rhetoric of expansion"^[17], and the North Caucasus "became a religious frontier"^[41]. In parallel, fictitious grounds for territorial claims were being constructed: the author records that officials produced false reports for foreign rulers claiming that the indigenous peoples of the Caucasus had allegedly been Muscovite "subjects in the Riazan region since ancient times, and then fled from Riazan and settled in the mountains"^[17], which gave the metropole a formal pretext to legalize the absorption of their lands and the construction of its fortifications.

A systematic campaign by the Russian Empire to eradicate the language of the Indigenous people from the spheres of education and religion. It included the confiscation of educational literature, a complete ban on primary education in the native language, as well as a ban on its use in church services and institutions of higher education^[3].

Yet another use of the inhabitants of the Ukrainian governorates as cannon fodder in a geopolitical war in the Balkans. Imperial expansion was cynically justified by religion and the ideology of Pan-Slavism, which postulated Russia's historical mission to conquer the Slavic lands^[1][61].

The use of Ukrainian resources in yet another geopolitical war of the empire, which ended with the seizure of Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire and its incorporation into Russia under the Treaty of Bucharest^[62].

The use of Ukrainian resources and Cossack regiments to defeat the Ottomans on the Danube. The diplomatic severing of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire through the recognition of a fictitious "independence" in preparation for the future annexation of the peninsula^[63][1].

A conspiracy of the Russian Empire with the Habsburg and Hohenzollern monarchies to dismember a neighboring state. As a result, the empire annexed Right-Bank Ukraine, Volhynia, and Podolia, liquidating the Polish republic^[64].

After the withdrawal of the Austro-German troops, the Red Army of the RSFSR reoccupied most of Ukraine. The aggressor launched a large-scale extraction of resources: special food-requisition detachments forcibly confiscated grain and raw materials from villagers for export to the RSFSR. The resistance of the local population, which erupted into powerful revolts of the insurgent front (including the uprising of Otaman Hryhoriv), was brutally suppressed by punitive expeditions and mass terror by the Cheka and the army. The campaign was aggravated by the intervention of the White Guard troops of General Denikin, which led to the "Kyiv Catastrophe" (August 1919), when the Ukrainian troops were forced to surrender the liberated capital^[13][12].

Suppression of the national revival in the USSR. The campaign included the closure of educational societies in places of compact residence of Ukrainians outside the Ukrainian SSR, the physical extermination of the national intelligentsia and writers, and the forced imposition of the Russian language in all schools of the republic^[3].

The conservative party apparatus under the leadership of V. Shcherbytsky attempted to contain the growth of the national liberation movement. Because of KGB pressure and the threat of an immediate ban, the founders of the Ukrainian independence movement were initially forced to disguise their goals, naming the organization the "People's Movement for Perestroika" (ostensibly in support of M. Gorbachev's course)^[1][2].

The suppression of all protests and the implementation of an agrarian reform that economically squeezed out millions of Ukrainian peasants and forced them to resettle en masse to Siberia and the Far East^[65].

The metropole temporarily reduced the intensity of direct military strikes, shifting to infrastructural fortification and the study of the region. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that, owing to the foreign policy situation, "issues related to the mountain peoples ceased to be of primary importance to them"^[11]. Nevertheless, the occupation apparatus continued preparations for further expansion. In 1711–1712, the government consolidated the military lines on the border with the lands of the Nokhchi: the researcher points out that "the small Greben Cossack towns along the Terek were consolidated, by order of Tsar Peter I, into 5 stanitsas — from Chervlyonnaya to Kurdyukovskaya"^[11]. In parallel, conceptual and economic reconnaissance was under way: in 1714, the tsar’s adviser A. Bekovich-Cherkassky submitted a report in which he considered "drawing the Highlanders over to Russia’s side" to be "in keeping with the vital interests of the Russian state"^[11]. In 1717, to inventory the potential of the Nokhchi lands, the government dispatched a specialist: the author records "the survey of mineral springs and other natural riches of the Terek River (including the Bragun warm springs) by Doctor Gottlieb Schober on the assignment of Peter I"^[11].

After Stalin's death, the amnesty did not extend to political prisoners, among whom Ukrainians made up an enormous share. This provoked large-scale uprisings within the concentration camp system (Vorkuta, Norilsk, Kengir). In Kengir, the insurgents created a system of self-government, a radio station, and workshops for making weapons, demanding the arrival of a commission of the CPSU Central Committee. The uprisings were suppressed by regular troops using tanks, which led to mass killings^[66][67].

A years-long punitive campaign by the Russian Empire against a large-scale uprising of disenfranchised Ukrainian peasants (haidamaks), who fought against serfdom and imperial oppression. The movement was suppressed by force^[2].

The armed suppression of the liberation uprising of Poles and Ukrainians on the Right Bank. The Russian army used force to eradicate the preconditions for independence, after which followed a ban on Ukrainian educational hromadas^[1][68].

In 1821-1822 the Nokhchi rose up against the Russian Empire’s imposition of a fortress line on the Sunzha River and the driving of the plain’s inhabitants into the mountains. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that in early 1822 Beibulat Taimiev, with the help of the qadi Abdul-Kadyr of Germenchuk and mullah Mustafa, who had fled the burned Sunzha aul, "attempted to raise a general uprising in Chechnya"^[14]. Grekov, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, suppressed this resistance with punitive devastations of villages and the forced cutting of clearings through the forests of the Nokhchi by the hands of the inhabitants themselves. The historian D. A. Khozhaev cites Grekov’s report, in which he himself set out his aim: to drive the Chechens into the forests, where "only snow and cold weather were lacking for the Chechen people to experience all the calamities inevitable in such cases and to feel the necessity of submitting"^[14]. The imperial historian Potto confirms the course of the suppression from the conqueror’s side: on March 1, 1821, the troops "surrounded the village of Oisungur… and, as punishment of the inhabitants, who had fled before their arrival, destroyed it completely," felling the forest "in one direction as far as Isti-Su, in the other — as far as the Michik"^[33]. In February 1822, when the qadi Abdul-Kadyr met the troops on the Argun with arms in hand, "a cannonball tore off Abdul-Kadyr’s leg… he died on the third day," after which Grekov "burned the villages of Shali and Malye Atagi"^[33].

The Regular Army of the Russian Empire suppresses the national liberation uprising of Poles and Ukrainians. An era of tightening the screws begins on the Right Bank^[69].

The forcible suppression by the authorities of the Russian Empire of a mass anti-serfdom uprising in Sloboda Ukraine, in which more than 3000 peasants took part^[70].

In 1708, the Tsardom of Muscovy employed radical violence to suppress an armed uprising of the Indigenous population. The revolt was caused by the methods previously laid down by the metropole within the campaign C1124: Punitive Raids and Economic Strangulation of the Nokhchi, 1691–1700: systematic abuses by the voevodas and a discriminatory economic policy. Historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states that, because of the duties, "the economic interaction of the Vainakhs with Russia... was practically paralyzed"^[10]. In response to the siege of the town of Terki by detachments led by Murat Kuchukov, the government organized large-scale operations: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that "the measures taken by Peter I to combat the Bulavin ‘rebellion’ and other uprisings, including on the Terek against Chechnya, were, in essence, punitive"^[11]. The Regular Army carried out sweep operations: he emphasizes that "military detachments were sent to the Terek that physically exterminated any population showing the slightest disobedience"^[11]. Military pressure was supplemented by collusion with a third party: the researcher adds that on September 30, 1708, the diplomatic apparatus concluded an agreement with the Kalmyk khan Ayuka that included a clause "on the persecution of Chechens and Nogais"^[11]. To neutralize the opposition, the metropole took the leader of the insurgents captive: Akhmadov points out that the tsar "personally decided the fate of the rebel leaders"^[11], as a result of which the leader, "taken prisoner while wounded, was hanged"^[11]. Total intimidation was ensured through demonstrative terror: the author records that the execution was carried out "by the rib on a hook, in accordance with Peter I’s order to P.M. Apraksin (‘inflict a cruel death penalty’)"^[11].

In 1722, the Russian Empire employed the regular army for the physical suppression of the armed resistance of the Indigenous population. The uprising was caused by the economic policy of the occupation administration: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states that "the mountain peoples continued to motivate their discontent by the discriminatory measures of the administration of the town of Terki toward trading Highlanders"^[10]. As a result of this pressure, "the Chechen and Enderi lords and their subjects refused to swear an oath of submission to the tsarist authorities"^[10]. In response, the metropole organized punitive measures: within the framework of Peter I’s Persian campaign, the government dispatched troops to the territories inhabited by Nokhchi communities. Historian Sh. B. Akhmadov records that "on July 23, 1722, a tsarist detachment led by General Veterani... approached the village of Enderi"^[10]. Because of the Highlanders’ resistance, a new strike followed: he points out that on August 4, 1722, by decree of Peter I, "a punitive expedition was carried out a second time against the insurgent Chechens and the Enderi people"^[10]. Military pressure was accompanied by the total destruction of infrastructure: the researcher states that one of the tsarist detachments "came to Enderi and completely ravaged and burned it, leaving nothing but ashes behind"^[10], while in the course of the August raid "3,000 houses were destroyed and the grain in the fields was burned"^[10]. The operation was carried out in collusion with a third party: Akhmadov adds that the forces included "an armed detachment of Kalmyks numbering 3,730 men, sent by Ayuka Khan at the tsar’s request"^[10]. The radical violence led to the legal subjugation of the borderland territories of the Nokhchi: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that after the defeat the local princes swore an oath, "‘including in it, for the first time, their Chechens as well’"^[11].

A merciless war waged by NKVD/MGB troops against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in western Ukraine. It was accompanied by punitive expeditions, brutal terror, mass killings of civilians, and the forced removal of insurgents' families to Siberia. Its finale was the use of collusion with a third party — an arrangement with the pro-Soviet government of Poland on the forcible resettlement of more than 140 thousand Ukrainians of Zakerzonnia (Operation "Vistula" in 1947) to deprive the UPA of its social base^[1][2].

The use of artificial famine as a weapon of mass destruction for the physical and psychological suppression of national resistance. The launch of a merciless grain-procurement machine, the confiscation of absolutely all food, the introduction of the "blackboard" regime (a total blockade of settlements), and a ban prohibiting peasants from leaving the starving districts. Physical extermination was accompanied by total psychological terror and show trials^[13][1].

The apogee of repressions under V. Shcherbytsky. Mass arrests of members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and of dissidents. To neutralize dissenters, punitive psychiatry was applied on a mass scale — declaring healthy people insane in order to isolate them indefinitely and subject them to torture by medication. Many human rights defenders, including V. Stus, never regained their freedom, perishing in special-regime camps^[1][71].

The decisive battle of the Great Northern War, in the course of which the military backbone of Ukrainian autonomy was finally eliminated. The defeat of the Swedish-Cossack alliance allowed Moscow to move from suppressing uprisings to the systematic dismantling of the Hetmanate's political agency^[15].

The establishment by Peter I of the First Little Russian Collegium to wrest governance away from the hetman administration. It was accompanied by the arrest of acting hetman Pavlo Polubotok and the Cossack starshyna for submitting petitions in defense of autonomy, which ended with the hetman's death in the Peter and Paul Fortress^[2].

A grave geopolitical war of the empire, accompanied by the mass mobilization of the Ukrainian peasantry. The refusal of the peasants of the Kyiv region to perform their obligations grew into a large-scale anti-serfdom uprising, which was harshly suppressed by regular troops^[72][73].

A unilateral imperial act imposed on Hetman Danylo Apostol in place of the traditional bilateral treaty. The document turned the autonomy into a governed province, severely restricting the hetman's power, prohibiting foreign policy, and placing finances under the control of the metropole^[74].

The complete displacement of the language from the cultural and literary sphere. The campaign included a ban on the import of books, on theatrical performances, and on texts printed under musical notation, as well as the imposition of Russian orthography on permitted dictionaries and censors' refusal to read Ukrainian manuscripts^[3].

The KGB's response to the emergence of a resistance movement among the new Ukrainian intelligentsia. It includes the suppression of the 1965 protests (the public statement by Stus, Dziuba, and Chornovil at the premiere of "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors") and the pressure on the signatories of the "Letter of 139" in 1968, in which prominent cultural figures spoke out against unlawful political trials. This also encompasses the persecution of the underground Ukrainian National Front^[75][76].

A prolonged period of direct rule over the Left Bank without the election of a hetman, exercised through a mixed collegium chaired by a Russian resident^[77]. At the same time, the empire formally regained control over Zaporizhzhia, imposing on the Cossacks a treaty obligating them to serve the interests of the Russian crown^[78].

A massive state propaganda operation initiated by N. Khrushchev. To mask Ukraine's colonial status, the empire celebrated the anniversary of the Pereiaslav Council with enormous pomp, constructing the myth of a "single people." As part of the same campaign, Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR to relieve the RSFSR of the economic burden of rebuilding the peninsula^[1][2].

An attempt by pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine to institutionalize the displacement of the state language from the public sphere, education, and administrative record-keeping by adopting a law that expanded the rights of so-called regional languages in the interests of the Russian Federation^[3].

A further curtailment of the Hetmanate's political agency and interference in the autonomy's internal affairs. The hetman was forbidden to remove the Cossack starshyna from office or punish them without the tsar's consent. This created reliable mechanisms for the empire's direct manual control over the elites^[79].

Mass investigation, torture, and public executions of Mazepa's supporters among the Cossack starshyna and the population, aimed at suppressing opposition and terrorizing the region^[15].

A treaty that became the point of no return in the political, economic, and military absorption of the autonomy. Under these articles, Muscovite voivodes with garrisons entered all major Ukrainian cities (Kyiv, Chernihiv, Pereiaslav, Nizhyn, and others), taxes from the local population began to be collected directly into the tsar's treasury, and the hetman was definitively forbidden to conduct independent diplomacy^[80].

The first systematic campaign to dismantle treaty-based subjecthood. Peter I unilaterally replaced the procedure of signing equal interstate treaties with the issuance of his own tsarist «resolutions», codifying administrative diktat^[81][15].

A state campaign to destroy the Ukrainian language and culture. It included the closure of Sunday schools, a ban on the national press, official denial of the language's existence (the Valuev Circular), the removal of historical archives to Moscow, and direct monetary bonuses paid to officials for the Russification of the local population^[3].

An agreement on the partition of the Hetmanate along the Dnipro between the Tsardom of Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth without the participation of Ukrainians ^[82]. The legal entrenchment of Ukraine's split and the transformation of Zaporizhzhia into a buffer zone: "under the treaty of 1667 it was under the joint rule of Moscow and Warsaw"^[15].

Separate peace negotiations between Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on ending the war and dividing spheres of influence, held in complete isolation of the Ukrainian side: "This is a genuine drama for Ukrainians: at the insistence of the Polish side, Ukrainians are not admitted to the negotiations"^[1].

The occupation administration of the metropole and forces loyal to it used the subjugated Nokhchi (Okochans) in armed conflicts and carried out military interventions into the mountain territories. Historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova states that in 1626, to support allied feudal lords, the voivodes sent «Terek uzdens and Cherkasy and newly baptized ones and Okochans, 252 men, as well as Terek atamans and Cossacks with the Terek mounted streltsy head Fadey Voloshenin and with sotniks, 500 men»^[25][35]. In 1628, after mountaineers killed five Cossacks, a retaliatory invasion followed: Tkhamokova indicates that during the armed campaign the Kabardian murza Konshov-murza Bitemryukov «went against these «mountain people» together with the «free» atamans and Cossacks and with the «Okochans»»^[25]. In parallel, the metropole coerced the mountain societies of the Nokhchi into legal subjugation and payment of tribute in kind. A dispatch from the Terek voivodes Ivan Andreevich Dashkov and Bogdan Gerasimovich Priklonsky to the Ambassadorial Prikaz records information about «the oath given by the Shibut men Lavarsan Yazyev and Zatyshka Lavarsanov on behalf of 20 households in 1627»^[18]. The document dryly states the administration's demand that the mountaineers «not fall away from the sovereign and remain under the sovereign's hand in direct kholopstvo (servitude)»^[18] and undertake to «pay yasak of one kul of honey per year»^[18].

In December 1831, General Velyaminov, without disbanding the detachment encamped near the fortress of Groznaya, switched to a tactic of raids on Chechen settlements. The imperial historian Volkonsky wrote: Velyaminov "decided to harass the enemy and divert his attention from our borders. Thus, on December 23, 1831, he sent on a raid the commander of the Mozdok Cossack Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Zass, who devastated several Chechen hamlets on the right side of the Sunzha, lying opposite the village of Chertugai, and delivered to the camp three captive women and up to 250 head of cattle. In this raid the enemy left 7 bodies on the spot"^[38]. In February 1832 the raiding tactic grew into an expedition through the villages standing along the Sunzha River above the fortress of Groznaya. The imperial review of military operations admits: "Lieutenant General Velyaminov in February 1832 undertook an expedition to punish the Chechen villages lying up the Sunzha from the fortress of Groznaya"^[26]. The historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov wrote of the same strike: "Another large expedition was directed against the Chechen auls located along the banks of the Sunzha"^[44].

A false promise by the authorities to restore the lost Cossack liberties to the Indigenous population in exchange for blood. This allowed the empire to form Cossack regiments and raise a militia, after which the peasants who attempted to protest were suppressed^[83].

The empire mobilizes Ukrainians en masse as cannon fodder in the world war, and in the course of its offensive occupies Galicia and launches there a policy of total destruction of Ukrainian institutions^[84][2].