Genocide

Russia denies atrocities and accuses Kyiv of staging images of dead civilians.

“We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight. Mr Filatov has declined an invitation to attend Mr Zelenskiy’s virtual address to the joint Houses of the Oireachtas on Wednesday. A cross-party effort was to be made in the Dáil on Tuesday to withdraw Mr Filatov’s invitation to attend. Mr Putin “is a war criminal”, Mr Biden told reporters. Lithuania announced it was expelling its Russian ambassador, while Germany was expelling multiple members of the Russian embassy in Berlin in response to the apparent atrocities. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for killings by Russian soldiers to be recognised as a genocide as he walked streets of the town of Bucha left in ruins when the invading troops withdrew. Evidence of apparent atrocities found in the wake of a Russian pullback caused international rage and stoked momentum for further sanctions, as locals told journalists of interrogations and the execution of civilians.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will address the UN Security Council on Tuesday, where he is expected to demand tough new sanctions on Moscow over ...

he asked in the video posted to Telegram. "I buried six people," another resident, Volodymyr Nahornyi, said. "But you could have helped." We need some time," German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said. A visibly distressed Zelensky spent half an hour in Bucha, where he blamed Russian troops for the killings A visibly distressed Zelensky spent half an hour in Bucha, where he blamed Russian troops for the killings

“The things we're seeing in Bucha and other places, with the targeting of civilians and mass graves, that could be labelled war crimes, or crimes against ...

Ukraine has said that more than 50 bodies found in Bucha, to the northwest of Kyiv, had been victims of extra-judicial killings by Russian troops. I think that is enough evidence.” The Kremlin has categorically denied any accusations related to the murder of civilians in the town and said the graves and corpses had been staged by Ukraine to tarnish its image. He says those actions must be set in the context of the rhetoric from the Russian state, of its attempt to destroy and take over Ukraine, and kill its people. He has written a book about the Holocaust, and has previously published an article warning commentators and the media to be careful about casually using terms such as genocide, which was legally codified by the UN in 1948. Eugene Finkel was born in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine, and left when his family moved to Israel when he was aged 13.

Bloc urgently working on new round of sanctions against Moscow after claims of mass civilian killings.

Speaking in Bucharest on Monday, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said: “Russia’s participation on the human rights council is a farce. Other European officials, including the Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said the EU “must respond strongly”. A two-thirds majority vote by the 193-member assembly in New York can suspend a state from the council for persistently committing gross and systematic violations of human rights. Scholz said Putin and his supporters “will feel the consequences” and new sanctions would be agreed in the coming days. “These scum tortured, slaughtered and killed the whole family. “We know that thousands of people have been killed and tortured.”

But do the atrocities — uncovered amid Russian forces' retreat from northern Ukraine — constitute genocide? It depends on who you ask. Ukrainian President ...

“The Senate must consider and pass this legislation before breaking for recess at the end of the week.” Sen. JOHN CORNYN (R-Texas) is pushing for a lend-lease provision to be added to the legislation, pointing to broad bipartisan support and a recognition by lawmakers in both parties that the U. S. will need to be in the Ukraine fight for the long-haul. The stepped-up efforts prompted YURII SHCHYHOL, the chair of the Ukrainian cyber agency, to declare last week that “cyberwar is underway” during a press briefing. But more importantly, he continued, “genocide is a powerful word,” and a declaration of genocide “places upon a nation greater duties” than a declaration of war crimes or crimes against humanity. [Russian forces are] also retreating in Chernihiv and Sumy regions to regroup forces and change the direction of strikes.” (Ukrainian Ministry of Defense) The product, which was read to POLITICO, is titled, “BOLO - ISIS Terrorists Possible Attempt to Enter the United States.” It’s dated April 1, and says the two men are traveling from Cancún to Ciudad Juárez. From there, they plan to enter the U. S. through El Paso. The bulletin did not detail the nature of the intelligence nor specify how they may plan to enter the U.S. A fusion center headquartered in El Paso distributed the intelligence product to its law enforcement partners. Because of that change, the Department of Homeland Security says it is bracing for “a potential increase in the number of border encounters.” In this case, he said, the invading Russian forces “have the intent to destroy, in part, a national group, and that’s the Ukrainian group.” The legal definition of genocide is the intent to destroy one of four types of protected groups — ethnic, national, racial or religious — “because of who they are,” Hinton said. In interviews Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” however, both Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN and NATO Secretary General JENS STOLTENBERG declined to use that term. ALEXANDER HINTON, director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, has a different view. The semantic debate between Ukraine and the West is reminiscent of other dust-ups in recent months over what kind of language to use with regard to Russia’s aggression.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of New York praised Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-NY-12th district) most recent initiative promoting broader ...

She has always fostered close ties with her district’s Armenian American community, which includes St. Illuminator’s Armenian Church, the oldest Armenian church in New York City. As the co-chair of the Congressional Hellenic Caucus, she has led efforts to block US arms and aid to Turkey, condemned Turkey’s ongoing occupation of northern Cyprus and placed an international spotlight on Turkey’s human rights abuses. The bipartisan education measure, led by Rep. Maloney and Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), aims to provide the Library of Congress with $10 million over five years to work with partners to provide educational materials about the Armenian Genocide, the Ottoman Turkish government’s centrally planned and systematically executed campaign of extermination of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites and other Christians between 1915 and 1923. This legislation will also ensure that generations to come will learn about the Armenian Genocide – the first genocide of the modern century – one that has not received the exposure and awareness, which has led, no doubt, to the genocides that followed.

MEMBERS OF the Armenian diaspora rally in front of the Turkish Embassy in Washington last year, after US President Joe Biden recognized that the 1915 massacres ...

The linking of Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide to the recognition by the US on the same day, April 24, which is designated as the start of the Armenian Genocide, will also provide an additional layer of defense for Israel, since any retaliation against Israel will also take on a meaning of being an attack on the US, as well. One might say that it was the Turkish version of the American taboo of cussing the other guy’s mother – in the age when to say that to a good old American marine was an established one-way ticket for getting yourself slugged–in Turkey you went to jail if you talked of a genocide. HAPPILY, AUTHOR Berman nonetheless was of the opinion that Turkey likely would not take any steps against the US for its recognition, and that has proven to be the case. Is it so beyond our imagination as Israelis to be able to say to Turkey at this time, “We have every respect for you as an important country and are happy to work closely with you, but we owe our own culture the clear cut responsibility to identify with a people whose historical record – confirmed by an overwhelming number of scholars all over the world – shows that they were subject to governmental extermination. In Turkey, an easy one-way ticket to jail has been to bring up the subject of the Armenian Genocide prominently – although strangely there also grew a generation of brave intellectuals and artists who managed to get across the memory of the slaughter of the Armenian people and survived, though a good many of them had to go through painful legal trials of charges of insulting the government, and the ones who survived came at the expense of periods of being in jail. Clearly, our hearts and minds are deeply concerned with the murdering hells of war crimes or crimes against humanity – that in my professional language as a genocide scholar are one of the several subtypes of genocide – that Putin’s Russia is committing.

There is a real threat that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. As evidence of war crimes emerges, there is reason to believe it may already be taking ...

Russia seeks to seize and Russify Donbas and other parts of eastern Ukraine, where, if Putin is taken at his word, an “imaginary” Ukrainian identity will be erased. Proving genocidal intent is difficult, especially in a court of law. Genocide is justified by propaganda and language that devalues and demonises target populations. Russia has experienced a number of political upheavals, including a current economic crisis. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sort of armed conflict often associated with atrocity crimes. Perhaps most infamously, the Soviet Union enacted land policies that prompted a food shortage and a famine, killing millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. Given the scale of Russian violence in Ukraine, however, genocide warnings need to be taken seriously. Genocide and atrocity crimes are also strongly correlated with political upheaval, especially war. Other Soviet atrocities include forced deportation of national and ethnic groups and massive political purges. “Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on March 23. These tools, including one used by the UN, indicate Ukraine is indeed at considerable risk for genocide. Ukrainian officials claim genocide has already begun.

Early April 2022 has seen allegations of Putin committing genocide in Ukraine. These allegations, as expressed by President Zelensky, came after Russian ...

The people of Ukraine would fall within one of the protected groups, as a national group (International Tribunal for Rwanda, Akayesu, 512: “a national group is defined as a collection of people who are perceived to share a legal bond based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties”). The questions is then whether Ukrainians are targeted with the prohibited acts with the specific intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. Genocide is defined in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) as any of the prohibited acts, as listed, as perpetrated with the specific intent to destroy a protected group on whole or in part. Indeed, the legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in the case of Akayesu, suggests that in the absence of any clear expression of any such specific intent, the specific intent can be inferred from the patterns of the mass atrocities and their impact on the targeted group. Indeed, the specific intent to destroy could be inferred from the acts. Despite using the word genocide, Putin failed to disclose any evidence of the alleged atrocities nor did he take any steps to address the issue other than attacking Ukraine. Indeed, Putin could have issued proceedings before the ICJ, as Ukraine did, seeking clarification and provisional measures. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” He further added that: “We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us.”

The images from Bucha, Ukraine, have provoked outrage. President Biden called the Russian atrocities a war crime and called for a tribunal. Ukrainian President ...

On the one hand, more robust diplomacy is needed to help Russia and Ukraine reach a cease-fire agreement in the short term and peace in the long term. The U.S. and its allies already appear to be preparing to do this in the aftermath of the Bucha revelations. For now, war crimes and crimes against humanity are easier to identify. But we must not wait to see whether those efforts ultimately deem what’s happening in Ukraine a genocide to decide our actions. But NATO members could provide more of the weapons Zelensky has sought, including tanks, missile defense systems, drones and armored personnel vehicles. Gathering evidence to demonstrate a systematic genocide can also take time — even if it is clear that a place like Ukraine is at high risk for genocide. The international community has recognized that each state has a “ responsibility to protect” its populations from atrocity crimes. As Biden’s reluctance to call the atrocities in Ukraine genocide illustrates, there are a number of difficulties in making a determination of genocide. Beyond political hesitations, it is hard to determine the intent behind the acts, a requirement for declaring it genocide. War crimes encompass everything from killing or abusing prisoners of war to attacking civilian and nonmilitary targets such as hospitals and homes. In international law, what’s key to defining genocide is the perpetrator’s intention. Atrocity crimes may take place, as they are in Ukraine, in tandem.

When Russian soldiers and leaders discovered, to their astonishment, that Ukrainian citizens had no desire to be liberated from the Western yoke, ...

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. What are the practical implications of applying the genocide label? Though evidence of this shift is abundant, one of the most explicit examples is an article, titled “What should Russia do with Ukraine,” published on April 3 by the Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti. Echoing the arguments made earlier by Putin and other Russian leaders, the article outlines a clear plan to destroy Ukrainians and Ukraine itself. The threshold from war crimes to genocide has been crossed. The inflammatory rhetoric of Russian propaganda and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself rejecting the very idea of Ukrainian statehood do not on their own constitute proof of an intent to destroy a national group. Yet massacres alone are insufficient to meet the genocide criteria; an intent to destroy a protected group is required. An isolated local massacre might be labeled a war crime; a series of massacres reflect a campaign intended to destroy Ukrainians as a national group, if not in whole, then certainly “in part.” Bucha, near Kyiv, is just one town, but the horrifying murders there are a part of a broader pattern. The intent and logic of targeting are the key. Often called “ the crime of crimes,” genocide is considered the absolute nadir of human behavior. As a scholar of the Holocaust and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I am well aware of the need for caution, and in the past have criticized the governments of many post-Soviet states — including Ukraine, where I was born — for misusing the term. Activists and politicians tend to apply this label to anything they deplore, even to the vaccination of children against the coronavirus.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian troops of committing “the most terrible war crimes” since World War II in an address to the United Nations ...

A witness told Human Rights Watch that soldiers forced the five men to kneel on the side of the road, pulled their T-shirts over their heads, and shot one of the men in the back of the head. It has called the diplomatic expulsions “short-sighted”, and said “reciprocal steps” would follow. Differences of opinion on what constitutes genocide explains in part the reluctance of the international community to use the term frequently. The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague has already opened an investigation into possible war crimes by Russia. The investigation could in theory target even Putin. But it will be difficult to bring Russian defendants to trial or to prove intent. Satellite images from mid-March that are now available show streets strewn with corpses, and many of the bodies seen by journalists in the past couple of days appear to have lain in the open for weeks. More than 300 bodies have been found in the town that Zelenskyy visited on Monday, some with their hands bound, flesh burned, and shot in the back of the head.

At the end of his virtual address Tuesday to dignitaries at the U.N. Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky played a short video.

“And if there is a sense that we are losing the war, then I think there is a definite possibility of escalation.” The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. In an interview with the New Statesman, Sergey Karaganov, an influential Russian political theorist who is close to the Kremlin, offered a more direct insight into its thinking. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities.” Russian officials and state media deny the reports of atrocities, describing them as “fake” and staged by Ukraine for propaganda purposes. “That is, when the hypothesis ‘the people are good — the government is bad’ does not work.” In a careful explainer, my colleague Claire Parker laid out what we know and don’t know surrounding the charges of Russian war crimes. From his prison cell, prominent Russian dissident Alexei Navalny managed to get a Twitter thread published that denounced Russia’s state mouthpieces for fueling the violence. I think that is enough evidence.” At the end of his virtual address Tuesday to dignitaries at the U.N. Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky played a short video. Zelensky said the Security Council should dissolve itself “if there’s nothing you can do besides conversation.” “They killed entire families, adults and children, and they tried to burn the bodies,” Zelensky said.