Guilt and Responsibility of Russian Citizens for Aggression Against Ukraine: Modern Reading of Karl Jaspers

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to analyse the problems of guilt and substantiate the expediency of establishing the collective responsibility of Russian citizens for aggression against Ukraine. Using the theoretical legacy of the German scientist K. Jaspers, the authors justify their own approach to the interpretation of the concept of guilt and responsibility of both the individual and the public community as a whole in the context of the war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine. The urgency of the problem lies in incriminating moral and political guilt to Russian citizens for military aggression against Ukraine and in the expediency of them realising their personal share of guilt and responsibility for the crimes committed by the political leadership and military personnel of the Russian Federation. The paper highlights the dialectic of the relationship between personal guilt and the so-called collective culpability of the Russian public, which should bear the main responsibility for the politics and criminal actions of its state. It is noted that the solution of this problem is largely connected with ensuring that all citizens of the aggressor state realise their involvement in criminal actions and atone for their guilt. Based on the theoretical legacy of K. Jaspers, theses regarding the phenomenon of guilt, its varieties in relation to the period of fascism in Germany were developed and these approaches were applied to the analysis of Russia's aggressive policy. The study focuses on the moral and existential methodological paradigm of guilt as a determining factor in its awareness. Techniques and methods of comparative analysis of the behaviour of Germans during the Second World War and Russians in modern conditions, extrapolation of the experience of denazification of the German people to the Russian public are also used. The conclusion about the need for the perpetrators to bear not only personal criminal responsibility, but also the consolidated political and moral responsibility of the Russian nation, the community, and the public in general for the war against Ukraine, and to feel the need to change the totalitarian political regime in Russia as dangerous for all mankind, is substantiated. This paper would be useful for anyone interested in the problems of the modern political and legal continuum generated by the Russian-Ukrainian war.