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

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.

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

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