Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

State news agency publishes article decrying Ukrainianism' as an artificial anti-Russian construct with no civilisational substance'

Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country's lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end".

After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal purges and re-education" that western officials said could provoke further abuses on the ground.