Benjamin Strick
This research examines the use of hate speech and national slurs to dehumanise, call for violence against, and celebrate the death of Ukrainians. The data analysed indicates widespread hate speech targeting Ukrainians primarily on Twitter and Telegram. Further examination of these accounts indicates the content was further spread to YouTube and Facebook.
The research was accomplished by analysing data collected from Twitter and Telegram based on national slurs referencing Ukrainians in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The dataset collected and analysed in the research resulted in 1585 accounts with more than 2500 interactions from Twitter, and 15655 results from more than 480 channels on Telegram.
This analysis shows that in comparison to prior years, February 2022 saw a surge in the use of national slurs and hate speech against Ukrainians on both Twitter and Telegram.
Twitter accounts that were found to be using hate speech against Ukrainians include accounts that are verified with a blue tick. Many of those accounts also post content heavily supportive of Russia, stoking divide within US audiences, targeting the LGBTQI+ community and sharing memes and messages related to conspiracy theories such as biolabs in Ukraine, QANON and issues related to Donald Trump.
The accounts analysed on Telegram include channels that took videos of Ukrainian funerals, or from Ukrainians who had visited graves, and reposted them with degrading and dehumanising comments. Other channels specifically focus on looking for dead or captured Ukrainians and celebrating the circumstances around that imagery. The content circulated in these channels was reposted on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Further research indicates the increase and gravity in the use of hate speech language by Russian politicians, Russian state-linked media and pro-Russian propagandists calling for (further) violence and celebrating the death of Ukrainians.
The phrasing and language seen in the content uncovered in this research can be compared to similarities in language used in other scenarios where hate speech has incited and/or fuelled violence. Historically, hate speech has been used to justify, incite and fuel violence against groups, minorities and ethnicities such as in the Holocaust, by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, in Rwanda against the Tutsi people and in Myanmar against the Rohingya.
The systematic and widespread use of dehumanising language and national slurs against Ukrainians seen in this research is further fuelled through the spread of major social media platforms, who each have their own policies in place to combat this type of widespread activity.
The findings of this research help to make more informed opinions at a policy level for social media platforms in dealing with hate speech targeting Ukrainians, understanding of the terminology used on a systematic level, and outlines the clear widespread level of dehumanising language that supports Russia’s war in Ukraine.
This research on the use of hate speech and dehumanising language in reference to Ukrainians should be taken in context with the evidence of Russian forces committing acts against Ukrainians such as beheadings, castrations, ethnic cleansing, torture and the overwhelming use of military forces through the bombing of schools, hospitals, energy sites and other infrastructure as seen on the EyesonRussia.org map.
1. Keywords examined
Keywords used in this research are: Khokhol (хохол) Khokhols (хохлы), Hohol, Hohols.
The main terminology used in this research on the rise of anti-Ukrainian national slurs references khokhol, which has deep cultural roots in Ukraine and has been used increasingly by Russians since 2014.
Slurs like khokhol do not directly dehumanise Ukrainians, but the context it is used in with calls for violence and justifying violence and atrocities against Ukrainians make the terminology a part of this justification for further violence and atrocities.
Technically, khokhol refers to the characteristic hairstyle worn by Ukrainian Cossacks in the 16th and 17th centuries. Hohol is an iteration of the term. This derogatory term has been used as “a national slur used by Russians to describe Ukrainians”. In a 2017 report from Facebook, the use of slurs by Russians and Ukrainians towards each other was found to have escalated since tensions significantly increased between the countries in 2014, causing Facebook to start removing content using the terminology.
The specific terminology Facebook identified as increasing was the reference to Russians by Ukrainians as “moskal” which meant “Muscovites” and the use of “khokhol” by Russians in reference to Ukrainians.
2. Introduction
In February 2022, after Russia commenced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequently targeted Ukraine’s people, communities and infrastructure, social media became the dominant place to watch the invasion and the atrocities that were left behind evolve.
Amidst the social media coverage of what has unfolded in Ukraine, so too has the weaponisation of social media platforms. According to OECD, Russian information operations have significantly increased since the 2022 full-scale invasion. In April 2022, Meta reported a surge in social media disinformation, including content linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The surge of disinformation online has also been met with the increase in searching, viewing and use of hate speech by Russians, as well as Ukrainians.
However, as this report indicates, the hate speech terminology used against Ukrainians indicates an effort to incite violence by calling for Ukrainian deaths, celebrating events where civilians have been killed and the use of language to dehumanise Ukrainians.
According to the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, hate speech is described as:
“Any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor”.
International Association of Genocide Scholars research states:
“Hate speech regularly, if not inevitably, precedes and accompanies ethnic conflicts, and particularly genocidal violence. Without such incitement to hatred and the exacerbation of xenophobic, anti-Semitic, or racist tendencies, no genocide would be possible and persecutory campaigns would rarely meet with a sympathetic response in the general public.”
The type of language and wording used by the Russian politicians, its state-linked media outlets, and the accounts and posts seen in this research indicate a number of strategies: namely to dehumanise Ukrainians by referring to Ukrainians in derogatory slurs, to celebrate their deaths (as is evidenced in the data analysis of this research), to fuel further violence against Ukrainians and justify it.
This strategic effort has been stated clearly by the Deputy Chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, on 8 April 2023, in a tweet on “Why Ukraine will disappear” - the long tweet finished with the line: “Nobody on this planet needs such a Ukraine. That’s why it will disappear”. The tweet indicates the connection between this not just being violence against Ukrainians, but with a further goal of destroying Ukraine at a state level.
Figure: Screenshot from Twitter.
3. Looking back: how hate speech has fuelled genocide
Hate speech has been used in a number of contexts to incite violence. Historically there are numerous examples where hate speech fuelled or incited harm.
The United Nations outlines historical precedents showing how hate speech can be a precursor to atrocity crimes in cases such as:
In the Holocaust, independent media was replaced and state media disseminated hate speech, antisemitic remarks and disinformation to justify atrocities.
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge used propaganda to label minorities and dissenters as enemies.
In the Srebenicia genocide, nationalist propaganda illustrated Bosnian Muslim population and other groups as enemies against the Serbs.
In Myanmar, a campaign of hate and propaganda was waged by the Myanmar government against the Rohingya Muslim minority in the lead up to a scorched earth campaign against the Rohingya people.
Specific examples of the danger of hate speech against certain groups of people can also be seen in the case of Rwanda, where the Hutu ethnic majority hunted and killed Tutsi ethnic minorities.
Radio stations had incited Hutus against Tutsi minorities, referring to Tutsis in derogatory dehumanising terms. Radio broadcaster RTLM encouraged Hutus to “cut down tall trees” in reference to the Tutsis due to their taller appearance.
The founding members of the RTLM radio station were sentenced to life in prison for charges relating to genocide under the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This was for their role in helping the broadcast of information and propaganda that fuelled the killings and hatred towards Rwandans, specifically Tutsis.
The case in Rwanda primarily relied on Rwandan radio to broadcast hate speech dehumanising Tutsi ethnics. This was between 1993 and 1994 and is a stark contrast to the availability of messaging to broadcast since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The derogatory references targeting Ukrainians in this circumstance is far more widespread internationally, as seen in the findings of this research.
4. Use of hate speech targeting Ukrainians
This report primarily focuses on the use of online hate speech against Ukrainians by looking at the use of the words khokhol, hohol and its iterations and the increase in that activity largely since February 2022, but reaching as far back as 2014.
Indications of the increase in the prominence of this type of wording targeting Ukrainians can be seen in Google search statistics (seen below), which indicate a clear increase in searches for the topic khokhol since late-February 2022, around the same time the full-scale invasion of Ukraine commenced.
Figure: Google Trends statistics worldwide on the topic of Khokhol over the past five years. Specific peaks in the search results are seen at February 25, 2022 - March 5 2022.
Further indications are derived from the trends of Wikipedia page traffic and trends as assessed through the WikiShark research tool. In the image below, the tool was used to view traffic data to the English pages on the topics of Hohol, Khokhol and the Russian page хохол.
Figure: Wikipedia page traffic statistics on the terms Hohol, Khokhol and the Russian page хохол since May 2021. The largest spike, seen in black for the term khokhol, was on April 4 2022. Source: wikishark.com.
The trends show a clear correlation between the terminology and the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. However, they only show traffic data. This report’s main findings indicate a clear effort to use the terminology to target and call for violence against Ukrainians.
The wording has been well documented in its use by Russians as a slur referring to Ukrainians. And while platforms have previously attempted to mitigate its use, the data collected in this research shows that it still remains widespread.
In 2015, Facebook blocked Russian bloggers for using the wording, but Russian Government representatives responded and urged Russians to migrate to other social media platforms. As an indication of the widespread use of the terminology, Ukrainian YouTuber Andrei Chekhmenok (Андрей Чехменок) ran a social experiment on online video chat website Chatroulette in 2016. In the experiment, there was a repeated use of the term khokhol and other forms of hate speech as a slur.
A similar instance was reportedly seen on VideochatRU where a Russian man encountered a Ukrainian on video chat and the man said to a girl sitting next to him: “Look, hohol. Shoot hohol, kill. Kill hohol... More... and a control shot in the head".
Post-full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the use of this hate-based wording has surged, especially in reference to aggressions against Ukraine and Ukrainians.
For example, former Komsomolskaya Pravda Russian propagandist Sergei Mardan (Сергей Мардан) has made numerous comments calling for the killing of Ukrainians and for Ukraine’s “liquidation”. This phrasing targets the state, in addition to the calls for violence against Ukrainians. In one specific segment of a video filmed in October 2022, he talks about drones deployed by Russia to “fly and land on the hohols heads”.
Figure: Russian propagandist Sergei Mardan making comments in relation to the use of Iranian drones in Ukraine. Translated by Francis Scarr.
On Russian state-funded media RT, former director of broadcasting Anton Krasovsky (Антон Красовский) used racial slurs in reference to Ukrainians while he suggested drowning Ukrainian children.
Figure: RT state-funded media broadcast of Anton Krasovsky using slurs to dehumanise Ukrainians and suggesting Ukrainian children to be drowned. Translated by Julia Davis.
The same resentments are echoed by members of the Russian forces. In one example, documented by The New York Times, an intercepted phone call reveals a Russian soldier’s wife asking for trophies of khokhols he has killed while in Ukraine, such as tunics, patches, names and boots.
Soldiers have also openly posted online using the similar devaluing wording in reference to Ukrainians. For example, Russian soldier Viktor Bulatov (Виктор Булатов) was reported to have written on social media that the Russian military should “arrange a Bucha in every khokhol city from Kharkiv to Lviv”. The reference to Bucha specifically refers to the activities during the Russian occupation of the area west of Kyiv in March 2022, when Russian forces tortured and executed numerous Ukrainian civilians.
The culture of the use of hate speech against Ukrainians is widespread. For example, a Ukrainian soldier that received racially abusive messages told the BBC“In the texts that I received, they called me a 'bloody khokhol' and threatened to find my mum and sister in Nova Kahovka [a town in occupied Kherson at the time] and rape them”. In other examples, YouTube channels use the term khokhol in video game simulations reenacting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine titled ‘Great Khokhol Slaughter of ‘22’ and brandishes Russian military and Z symbols. Another video shows captured Ukrainian soldiers, titled ‘Russian Soldiers Detained Another Ukrainian Khokhol Band’.
Figure: Left shows the video game simulator ARMA3 reenacting the war in Ukraine. Right: captured Ukrainian soldiers. Both images contain wording indicated to be hate speech against Ukrainians.
5. Platform policies on hate speech
Most large social media platforms have rules and policies governing the use of their platforms to curb illicit, inauthentic and harmful behaviour. Specifically, most of them contain clear guidelines put in place to combat incitement to violence and hate speech.
Twitter updated its policies on Hateful Conduct in February 2023. It reads: “you may not directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
Twitter further details violations of the Hateful Conduct policy to include hateful references, incitement, slurs and tropes, dehumanisation. It states that if an account is found to have violated the policy Twitter will “take action against behaviour that targets individuals or an entire protected category with hateful conduct”.
Meta has a hate speech policy stating they “don't allow hate speech on Facebook. It creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.”
Meta’s policy page defines its stance to hate speech as: “a direct attack against people – rather than concepts or institutions – on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. We define attacks as violent or dehumanising speech, harmful stereotypes, statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt, disgust or dismissal, cursing and calls for exclusion or segregation.”
Google also uses a very similar hate speech policy as Meta and Twitter. In reference to YouTube, it says they “remove content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups” and describe a list of attributes. Relevant to this research the attributes are: ethnicity, nationality, victims of a major violent event and their kin.
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