From time to time here on the naked scientist we showcase some of the other programs that we make as part of our naked scientist family.

And this week we're bringing you an episode of naked reflections.

This is particularly important at the moment with Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Welcome to Naked Reflections, brought to you from the Wolf Institute.

I'm Ed Kessler and each week I'll be taking an in-depth look at the stories reported by our friends over at the Naked Scientists.

What does the latest scientific stuff mean for the rest of us?

Stay with us and find out.

Hello and welcome to Naked reflections. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the mass

suffering of its citizens have sent shock waves across Europe and the rest of the world. One of the Kremlin's pretext for the war

was to prevent what they characterized as a Kiev plan genocide of Russian-speaking

Ukrainians in the eastern provinces of Dunyets and Nuhansk.

To weaponise the threat of such a heinous crime shows breathtaking political cynicism.

As for the claim that Russia wants to de-Nacify Ukraine,

slyly referencing the Holocaust and the 6 million Jews who perished, is a bizarre thought in the extreme since President

Zelensky is Jewish. His great grandfather died in the Holocaust and I'd imagine he'd be familiar with Primo Levi's

account of what genocide really means in its masterpiece if this is a man. You who live safe in your warm houses, you who find warm food

and friendly faces when you return home, consider if this is a man who works in mud, who knows no peace, who

fights for a crust of bread, who dies by a yes or a no. Further comment seems superfluous, but spalled back 20 years from the holocaust and a genocide of about

one million Armenians was getting started in Ottoman Turkey. The Turkish state still denies that it happened.

Jump forward to the 1970s and Paul Pot was leading a genocide of Cambodians conducted by Cambodians. In 1990 it was Hutu's

massacring Tutsis in Rwanda and in 1995 during the Bosnian civil war over 8,000 Bos Bosnia Muslims from Shebrenica were slaughtered.

Nizjad Avitch, who was 13 years old at the time, survived the roundup and lived to tell

his extraordinary tale.

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