Demographic engineering. To “protect” the “Russian speaking” people later on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Just send Poles, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars to Siberia, now everyone is a settler! Don’t mind the ethnic minorities already living in the north and east that never asked to be part of the empire. They’ll cope.

It wasnt targeted at ukraine tho, more kazakhs and significant amount of russians died too