The flywheel of cognitive warfare launched by Russia aims to ensure the consolidation of historical and psychological attitudes imposed on its own population and actively promoted to the West.
At the same time, the Russian authorities unexpectedly demonstrated that they feel a real threat in the event of the spread of objective scientific refutation of Russian official dogmas and narratives.
A new legal mechanism has even been launched to ban certain scientific research and the application of special measures, which our Association’s expert Eduard Pleshko will talk about.
It should be noted that from September 1, 2026, Federal Law No. 43-FZ and Government Resolution No. 750 will come into force in Russia, which regulate the transfer of human genetic data outside the country.
The thesis is planted in the minds of Russians that the study of their genes poses a threat to national security and can allegedly be used to create new biological (genetic) weapons aimed specifically at Russians.
However, the truth is completely different, in the reluctance to allow the spread of knowledge that scientifically contradicts Russian dogmas and narratives, the overcoming of which is extremely necessary for the general processes of cognitive resistance in Ukraine and the cognitive de-occupation of Crimea.
Our Association clearly sees that the ideological dogmas of the Russian authorities are wrapped in the protection of national “genetic sovereignty”, among other things, and perhaps, first of all, are a concealment of the historical truth regarding the formation of the national composition of the country, which destroys some Russian stereotypes about Slavic peoples and their encroachment on a special role.
The fact is that modern population genetics has received a new analytical method TRACE (TRacking Archaic Contributions via ARG Estimation) based on Ancestral Recombination Graphs (ARG).
The method allows you to detect DNA fragments of long-extinct archaic human species (the so-called “ghost populations”) in the genomes of modern people without the need to have fossil remains or sequenced ancient DNA of these extinct species.
As reported by the “Daily Mail”, “Science” and “Berkeley News”, thanks to this tool, scientists from the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University found traces of a super-archaic lineage about 1.8 million years old, which passed part of its heredity through Denisovans to the inhabitants of Eurasia and Oceania.
It has also been found that from 0.5% to 1.1% of the genome of each living representative of humanity originates from a common stem, from which about 830 thousand years ago the group of hominids (Hominidae, a human-like taxonomic family of primates) separated, which interbred with the ancestors of Homo sapiens in Africa for more than 50 thousand years, before mass migration to other continents.
Thus, even in deeply bred lines, the participants in the interbreeding leave specific traces in the graph, such as extremely long branches of the pedigree and preserved haplotypes (a set of gene variants at loci on one chromosome, inherited together from one parent).
If we simplify to associations that Russian authors also use, then we have established phrases of the text (haplotype) on a specific page (locus) of the book (DNA)
Furthermore, we will deliberately limit ourselves to the basics of knowledge about DNA and genes, which are laid down in high school.
Even this knowledge is enough to understand that if human development can be traced back 1.8 million years, then the much shorter period of the last 1.5 thousand years, and additionally confirmed by archaeological data, is unlikely to cause fundamental disputes in assessments.
Therefore, let’s first try to objectively look at the genealogy and history of the Slavs, first of all, to find out what the peculiarities of the Russian view are.
The question of ethnogenesis, that is, the process of creating and developing a people, which includes the combination of different tribes, a common language, life on one land and a common culture of the Slavs, was for a long time built mainly on written sources and archaeological cultures, which left room for disputes.
However, modern population genetics, in particular the study of ancient DNA – aDNA, in combination with the concept of autochthonism and migrations, has significantly clarified the picture of the formation of the Slavic massif.
Anthropological and genetic studies indicate that the localized area of the formation of proto-Slavic communities arose in the basin of the Upper and Middle Dnieper, Pripyat, Vistula and Western Bug rivers.
It is worth noting that written sources are known from the 6th century, namely the third book of the “Gothic War” by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, as well as the historical work “On the Origin and Activities of the Goths” by the Gothic and Roman historian Jordan, which contain detailed information about the life, beliefs and social structure of the two main branches of Slavic groups, namely the Sclavini and the Antes.
The Sclavini inhabited the territory from the Danube to the Dniester and the Vistula. The Antes occupied the space from the Dniester to the Dnieper, as well as the steppe and forest-steppe Podniverskaya.
Population genetic studies confirm that modern Eastern and Western Slavs are characterized by a high frequency of the Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1a (in particular, the subclades R1a-M458 and R1a-Z280), which spread during the demographic explosion of the Slavs in the 5th-7th centuries.
In particular, the further settlement of the Slavs in the 6th-8th centuries covered vast territories of Eastern, Central and South-Eastern Europe.
This caused the disintegration of the single Proto-Slavic massif into three main branches: western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Sorbs), southern (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes) and eastern.
At the same time, the genetic profile of the Antes and Sclavini demonstrates significant continuity with the population of the forest and forest-steppe zone of Eastern Europe of the Bronze Age.
Without turning our research into a purely scientific one, we note that the oldest monuments of early Slavic cultures (Prague, Penkiv, Kolochyn) are located on the territory of Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, but not in central or northern Russia.
The territory of the modern Volga-Oka interfluve (the core of the future Moscow principality) in the 1st millennium AD was completely inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes (Merya, Murom, Meshchera, Ves).
This is where the dog is buried, because it is precisely modern anthropology and genetics that prove that the population of Rus has significant regional differences. Kyiv region, Chernihiv region, Galicia had a constant demographic continuity from local Antic Sclaveni groups, while the northeastern territories were formed through gradual Slavic colonization and assimilation of the Finno-Ugric substrate.
Thanks to population genetics, it has been found that Ukrainians demonstrate stable genetic continuity with the populations of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, possessing a significant Neolithic and Early Bronze Age component of steppe populations (pit culture, corded ceramics).
And regarding the current settlements of Russia, an open international DNA analysis has shown that the formation of the genotype of Russians occurred through the assimilation of large Asian, Finno-Ugric and Turkic layers, which erodes the canonical myth of the “three single Slavic brothers”.
However, that’s not all.
Studies of Y-chromosomal and autosomal markers, in particular, in the international projects HGDP, 1000 Genomes, have shown that the population of Russia, which identifies itself as Russian, as one of the branches of the Eastern Slavs, actually has a heterogenetic gap between the conventional “northern” and “southwestern” Russians.
If it is a little more complicated, scientifically, the northern groups of Russians (Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Kostroma regions) are genetically much closer to the Finno-Ugric peoples (Finns, Karelians, Vepsians, Mordovians) by haplogroup N1a1 (N1c) than to the East Slavic populations.
In turn, the southern and western groups of Russians by Y-chromosome markers (mainly haplogroup R1a) are indeed closer to Ukrainians and Belarusians, but at the autosomal level, the numerous waves of substrate mixing demonstrate a clear influence of the local autochthonous (Baltic and Finno-Ugric) population.
If it is simpler, it turns out that according to scientific research, one can even speak of “two types of modern Russians”, of which only one has a closer previous common history with Ukrainians before they moved away from them.
Summarizing the above, we have grounds for concluding that all East Slavic peoples in prehistoric times had a hominid ancestor. A simple comparison of the number of widely used words in Ukrainian and Russian gives a ratio of 240 thousand to 180 thousand words, that is, 4 to 3.
We deliberately simplified the approach, because based on data from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the modern Ukrainian language has about 256 thousand words, and official academic dictionaries of the Russian literary language contain from 130 to 195 thousand words. By the way, academic dictionaries of the Belarusian language, which was under even greater pressure, cover approximately 65-150 thousand words.
Another interesting thing is that large-scale studies of lexical distances (in particular, the works of Professor Konstantin Tyshchenko and the analysis according to the list of Morris Swadesh) debunk the myth of the “almost identity” of the Ukrainian and Russian languages. The common vocabulary between Ukrainian and other languages is distributed as follows: Belarusian – 84%, Polish – 70%, Slovak – 68%, Russian – 62% of the common vocabulary.
That is, in terms of the level of lexical divergence (38%), the distance between Ukrainian and Russian is approximately the same as between English and Dutch.
If we compare the content composition, we will see that the Russian language has much richer borrowings from the Turkic group. The striking difference irrefutably shows which language is older, more developed and under whose influence it developed.
Thus, the concept of a “monolithic triune ancient Russian people” formed in Russia in the 19th century does not withstand scientific scrutiny and is essentially an ideology laid down as the basis for the desired cognitive influence.
It is worth noting that even the central idea of ensuring the protection of the Slavs was not generated by the Russians. It simply uses the cultural and political movement of Pan-Slavism that arose in the first half of the 19th century among the West and South Slavic peoples (mainly Czechs, Slovaks, Croats and Serbs – Jan Kollar, Pavel Šafárik).
Pan-Slavism was aimed at preserving Slavic languages and cultures under the domination of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, for the sake of mutual assistance and awareness of the cultural community. This is how it was seen at the Slavic Congress of 1848 in Prague.
However, Russia would not be Russia if it did not use a foreign cultural concept to justify its own geopolitical expansion. Starting from the second half of the 19th century, Pan-Slavism was intercepted and transformed by such ideologists of the Russian Empire as M. Danilevsky and M. Katkov.
Russian Pan-Slavism completely denied equality. Western culture and liberalism were considered “hostile”. All Slavic languages and cultures were to dissolve in the Russian language and Orthodox faith under the slogan “liberation of the Slavic brothers”.
However, the analysis of autosomal markers proves that the term “Russians” defines a linguistic, cultural and political community, and not a biologically unified ethnos.
After we have dealt with the genetic characteristics of modern Russians, let us turn our attention to Crimea, where, exercising a systematic cognitive influence, the Russian authorities still use other “developments” of official Russian and Soviet historiography after the annexation of 1783 and the deportation of 1944 and systematically promote the narrative that the Crimean Tatars are simply remnants of the conquerors of the Golden Horde or “aliens from Central Asia” who do not have deep roots on the peninsula.
But modern DNA studies (Y-chromosome, mtDNA, autosomal markers of Human Origins) indicate only the presence of a minimal Central Asian/Mongoloid trace.
Most of the gene pool of Crimean Tatars, especially the mountain and southern coastal ones, is made up of ancient autochthonous lines in which the East Asian or Mongolian component is insignificant.
For example, DNA analysis has shown that the Crimean Tatars and Volga Tatars have a radically different origin and were formed on completely different genetic substrates, despite the similarity of the ethnonym and language group.
Population genetic and anthropological studies of Crimea and its indigenous peoples, in particular the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, Krymchaks, as well as the Crimean Greeks-Urums, conducted both in Ukraine and by international scientific consortiums, have clearly decomposed the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars and other indigenous groups according to their subethnic areas.
Genetics has shown that the historical and biological continuity of the peninsula is connected with the Mediterranean, Anatolia and the Steppe, and not with the Russians or other peoples from their geographical range.
The key conclusion of population genetics is almost irrefutable – the Crimean Tatars, Krymchaks and Karaites are the indigenous (autochthonous) peoples of Crimea, their gene pool was formed as a result of centuries-old assimilation and consolidation of many peoples who lived on the peninsula for millennia (Tauri, Scythians, Sarmatians, Greeks, Goths, Alans, Khazars, Kipchaks).
The results of these studies completely refute the Soviet-Russian imperial myths about the alleged “natural belonging” of Crimea to the Russian range and refute the Kremlin’s claims to “originally Russian Crimea”.
It is very important that in fact we receive not only another scientific confirmation of the fact that the forced deportation of the Crimean Tatar people was an international crime of genocide of the previous totalitarian regime, but also reasons to think about the fact that the incentive migration from internal Russia organized by the authorities of modern Russia, through multiple overpopulation of resettled persons, may be aimed at turning the indigenous peoples of Crimea into a small population group, suppressing their revival, which began in Ukraine, and further development, which may be a continued new form (stage) of the same crime of genocide.
That is, the previous deportation of the people to another destructive society is replaced by supported external migration with the destruction of the society of the indigenous people without actual eviction.
And this process is supplemented by controlled political and criminal repressions and concealment of changes in the gene pool of the region’s population.
Finally, Russian bans on the exchange of genetic information and statements that such collection of biomaterials is carried out for “ethnically oriented bioweapons” are baseless conspiracies, scientifically impossible and refuted by international organizations.
Geneticists note that the creation of pathogens that would affect exclusively one ethnicity or nationality is biologically impossible due to the high genetic similarity of people around the world and intraspecific diversity.
In modern genomics, the standard of peer-review is the mandatory posting of raw data in publicly available international repositories (NCBI SRA, ENA, EGA). The ban on this effectively cuts off Russian population genetics from international peer-reviewed journals (such as “Nature”, “Science” or “Cell”).
By obtaining the exclusive right to process genetic arrays within the country, through the National Database of Genetic Information, Russian state institutes are able to publish only the “necessary” aggregated conclusions, blocking verification of the results by independent international groups.
Samples of biomaterials (blood, cells) are collected around the world for routine clinical research, the study of general human diseases, the musculoskeletal system or pharmacology, and not for military tasks.
Even UN officials have repeatedly stated that they have no evidence of the existence of biological weapons development programs, in the accusations of which Russia is systematically trying to involve neighboring countries, especially Ukraine, and the USA.
According to independent experts, which we also adhere to, such statements by Russian officials are a cognitive warfare operation and are used in internal and external propaganda to justify their own aggressive actions and create images of an “external enemy.”
