united by football, stronger together! they are mass killing ukrainian civilians. they kidnap and torture ukrainian patriots, activists, politicians, and volunteers. they are forcibly deporting and russifying tens of thousands of ukrainian children. when the russians retreated after a month-long occupation, they left behind evidence of war crimes that shocked the world. for eight months , the russians ruled in kherson, torture, murders and disappearances took place there. discovered

another terrible discovery: russia is deporting thousands of children from ukraine, from the territories in which it is invaded and raises them as russians. against the background of mass murders, torture and abduction of children, their state propaganda and politicians repeat again and again: let's destroy the ukrainian nation, just dumb down these children, just dumb down. it seems that the russians are committing genocide in ukraine. politicians started saying this word in the spring of 2022. the exposure of what putin has done in ukraine seems to me quite close to genocide. yes, i called it genocide because it's becoming increasingly clear that putin is trying to erase the very idea of ​​possibility to be ukrainian. i think it is absolutely right that more and more people are talking and using. the word genocide in relation to what

russia is doing. let me remind you that we have to call a spade a spade, and what is happening in ukraine is genocide. but is genocide really the right name for the crimes committed by russia in ukraine? under the political surface there is a sharp dispute between the most famous scientists and lawyers. these political statements are just that, political statements, but genocide has a very clear legal definition. i'm just i don't think we have any. enough evidence to seriously say that this is what is happening. i firmly believe that this is undoubtedly a case of genocide. i have concluded that he meets the criteria for genocide under the un convention. we can definitely say that it is quite realistic for the military leadership and political leadership of the russian federation to be charged with the crime of genocide by the highest international standards. why opinions are divided, who

is right, what evidence of genocide did the russians leave and what is missing, is ukraine even worth it trying to prove this crime, is it really important? with the help of exclusive testimonies of a number of victims of russian war crimes in ukraine, in-depth interviews with the best experts, documents and chronicles of russian war crimes, we sought an answer to one of the main russian-ukrainian questions. is russia really committing genocide in ukraine? william schabas, one of the world's foremost authorities on genocide. in the fall of 2022. more

than six months after the start of russia's full-scale invasion of ukraine, he published an article in which he claimed: there are no sufficient grounds to talk about genocide in ukraine. i thought that many of the accusations were not sufficiently supported by evidence to start talking about the term genocide. and since then, i've actually grown more confident in that opinion. ukrainian scientist dmytro koval, co-author of the declaration of the ukrainian parliament that genocide is taking place in ukraine, he also wrote an article about it together with three other ukrainian colleagues. in her text, he directly takes over william shabas. on in your opinion, what russia or the russian armed forces are doing in ukraine is genocide or not? yes, in my opinion, this is genocide. such

an opinion is supported not only by ukrainian scientists, johns hopkins university lecturer eugene finkel, who specializes in the topic of mass violence. in april 2022 , he published a column in the washington post under the title "what is happening in ukraine is genocide." the first thing that convinced me that genocide was taking place was bucha and the killing of civilians in bucha. and since then, i think, that we see in ukraine, only strengthened these conclusions. mass killings of civilians in the kyiv region were discovered in the spring of 2022, after russian troops retreated from there. they took place in different cities and towns, but their main symbol was the butch. then the first serious statements about the genocide were made. once it was a quiet suburb

of the ukrainian capital. nowadays, the town of bucha is synonymous with death. and devastation. hundreds of ukrainians died here, many apparently executed by the russian military. bodies with signs of torture, rape and execution are exhumed. some, it seems, were killed with their hands tied. russian soldiers did not care about age or gender. one of those killed by the russians in buch was 41-year-old welder oleg abramov. russian soldiers killed him practically next to his wife irina. i had a very good husband. on my birthday, which

was in the 21st year, just before the war, he wished me what he said. faith in you is everything, everything will be, you have me, the russians came to their house on march 5, there were four of them with machine guns, oleg went outside with them, alone from the military stayed with iryna in the house, asked where the natsiks are here, i say, i don't know when there are no natsiks here. "here you are, you have a nazi government, we are forced to come and arrange for you such a life as the people in the donbass are suffering, you must all be destroyed here, the intentions to destroy all of you

were voiced by the russian military in many telephone conversations intercepted by the ukrainian special services. we must all be killed , и детей, и женщин, всех. one of the victims of this intention. going outside, iryna saw his body next to four russian soldiers. you know, you stand like this and have such thoughts, well, what can't be, he's already, it can't be. on the one

hand, he understands that he is dead, because his head was almost gone. and on the other hand, what can't be. it is not true. started screaming and then started asking them to kill me. iryna does not know why the russian military decided not to kill her, just as she does not know why and for what they killed her husband. she can only guess. they are his sections, they led him down the street, they he... was interrogated, maybe he was ukrainian-speaking, maybe there was some tip-off, i don’t know, what happened in buch and other places was a targeted attack on people

whom we consider ukrainians, not on the basis of ethnicity, but on the basis of national, activists, statesmen, veterans and even just people. who spoke ukrainian or were considered patriots. the tone of the discussion in the russian media changed from: we are liberating ukraine, ukrainians must be destroyed. and it happened almost immediately after bucha. almost immediately after the discovery of the mass murders in buch, russian state media ria novosti publishes an article by political technologist timofey sergeytsev. what russia should do with ukraine. it explains one of the goals of the war against ukraine announced by vladimir putin. i decided to conduct a special military operation. we will. strive for the demilitarization and denazification of ukraine. in an article by a russian

political technologist, being a nazi simply means being ukrainian. denazification will inevitably be de-ukrainization. the name ukraine cannot be saved for a completely de-nazified country state formation. a significant mass of the population of ukraine, accomplices of nazism, must be punished. historian timothy snyder called this text a russian textbook on genocide. one of the most frankly genocidal documents he had ever seen. eugene finkel agrees with this assessment. it talked about the destruction of ukrainian identity and the transformation of people into russians. the mere fact that a person has a ukrainian identity or is a ukrainian would be enough to become a target. according to this column, this an article which, i will remind you, was published in the state newspaper. and such things cannot be published without the direct approval of the state, approval from

the leadership of the kremlin. the scientist reminds that the direct voice of the state was also heard a few days later. dmitry medvedev, the former president of russia and now the leader of putin's united russia party and deputy chairman of the security council of the russian federation , wrote in his telegram: deep ukrainianism. which is fueled by anti-russian venom and blanket lies about its identity, it is one big fake. this phenomenon never did not exist in history and does not exist now. it is an important goal to change the bloody consciousness of modern ukrainians full of false myths. it sounded like an echo of the article by timofy sergeytsev. soon, a member of the russian state duma openly spoke on russian state television about the guilt.

to be de-nazified, that is, to be destroyed, either to leave ukraine or to be russian propaganda began not only to justify, but also to encourage violence against civilians. the killing of civilians is one of the key criteria for detection. of genocide - believes william shabas, and it is this criterion that convinces shabas that war crimes are taking place in ukraine, but not genocide. the larger the scale of the murders, the more reasonable is the conclusion that it is done with the aim of destroying the group. and i think that in practice, the worst months in terms of civilian casualties were the first months of the conflict, and then it went down. so, the evolution of the crisis did not... strengthen the argument that genocide is taking place. is it really so?

opponents of william shabas do not agree with this conclusion. i'm not sure what violence became less. we know about the cases of izyum, buchi, bordianka, irpen, kherson, because these cities were liberated. i am deeply convinced that when the ukrainian army reaches such places as, for example, melitopol, we... we will see mass burials and evidence of mass killings, it's just that we don't have access to these cities now, no one but the russians do. with each deoccupation, as we have seen, new confirmations appear, we will be faced with more and more horrific statistics and confirmations of what is truly genocidal the campaign was unfolding there, so we can agree with mr. shabes that we don't have that much information collected today. about this growing dynamics of murders, but at the same time we must also understand that

we simply do not have access to the territories where these dynamics will be demonstrated. from the territories occupied by russia, we really receive only fragments of information. yaskadovsk in southern ukraine is one of the cities occupied by russian troops after february 24, 2022. in the fall of the same year, the occupiers killed 56-year-old nurse tetiana mudrenko there. natalia is a twin sister. tatyana, she receives us in her sister's apartment in the city of dnipro, remembers, tells us that in their youth they were very different in character, but outwardly very similar, somehow even tatyana's boyfriend confused them, he was in the army, he came for the army, but she was not it was in the garden, i came, well, i visit , i know him too, i used to come, oh tanichka, so

they hold the kisser’s hand, i’m not tanya, but then... well, the husbands calculated the forehead, and yes, and no, when the occupation began, natalia was with her sister in skadovsk, together they went to pro-ukrainian rallies, then natalia was able to leave, her sister stayed behind. in october, in a closed group on facebook, natalya read that tatyana was detained by security forces, together with her common-law husband anatoly. soon the man contacted her and informed her. tanya was buried, and one person wrote to my closed group that they strangled her and then hanged her in front of the court, and when tolik sent me a certificate, not a certificate, a death certificate, this mangibul

street was written there, i punched it on the map, it was true the courthouse, the information that... the patient authorities really hung tatyana's body in the middle of the city, it is impossible to confirm now, but later natalya received several more testimonies, first of all, the girls from the hospital said that she was filmed there, who filmed it, i don't know , here, and this guy wrote to me, he said, some acquaintance of his, let's not say anything, they say, they cordoned off this area when she was hanged, well, tell me that they were hanged for dead. and then one girl told me, to the correspondent, that they went to kherson with a lawyer, they said that they had such a chip in the attackers, they first suffocate, and then resuscitate, and it is obvious that they could not help her as a woman, what is it, the cause of death is indicated in the death certificate of tatiana, mechanical asphyxia, i.e.

strangulation, the grave of the woman, as well as authentic information about the circumstances of her death remains out. .. reach in the occupied territory of skadovsk. all natalya has is a photo of the place where tatiana is buried, and an assumption why her sister could have been killed. she switched to the ukrainian language, although we studied in russian, well, we know ukrainian, i mean, she was in a closed group. it just a pro-ukrainian group with ukraine in mind, it was a closed group. this story is typical of the currently occupied territories. from there comes only fragmentary information about the killing of ukrainians, but their circumstances are shrouded in the darkness of the russian occupation, as well as their number, it is known only to the russians, if they count at all, but is it really the killing of civilians that is the main criterion for talking about genocide. the definition of the crime

of genocide should be sought in international documents, the un convention on genocide and the rome convention. these definitions are the same: genocide - are acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. murder is the act of causing serious physical or psychological harm, creating conditions for the physical destruction of a group, preventing the birth of children, and forcibly transferring children from one group to another. so, there is not one, but five different ways of committing genocide. of the five ways described in the convention and in the rome statute of committing the crime of genocide, murder is only one of the ways, the other four with murder unrelated, that is, these methods are not forms of murder, of course, and therefore it is not entirely correct to focus, and it is not entirely correct from the point of view of how the convention and

the rome statute are formulated, to focus exclusively on murders. although murder is only one of the five punishable acts, it is obviously the most important. unless a large number of people were killed, it is very difficult to infer an intention to physically destroy the group. the terminology of the convention on genocide speaks of the destruction of a group, but judicial practice, that is, international the courts and tribunals that applied it, all held the opinion that it required physical'. indeed keislo inclines us to the fact that genocide should be aimed at physical destruction, but this kiislo was formed on the basis or on the basis of specific cases, these are the cases from rwanda and caseybryanitsa, in other contexts the courts can approach the assessment of the situation in a more nuanced way. for eugene finkel from

johns hopkins university, in the ukrainian case , the main evidence of genocide is not the murders. on the contrary, it is the most distant from the murders an act defined by the un convention. the displacement of children is much stronger evidence of genocide than the killing of civilians. persons, there is no military explanation, there is no strategic goal in taking thousands of ukrainians from their families and forcing them to become russians against their will. this is done only with the intention of forcing them to stop being ukrainians and become russians. russia is deporting thousands of children from ukraine, from the territories it invaded and raising them as russians. some of them are orphans, some became orphans. by war, while others have parents in ukraine who are impatiently waiting for their children to return. thousands of children from the occupied territories of ukraine are in repurposed

summer camps in russia. russification is taking place here, as can be seen from the enthusiasm with which children talk about russia. russian lessons, studying the russian national anthem, daily performance of the russian national anthem. this is indoctrination. and there is a revised story that they are forced to tell. to sum up the un says that what the russians call an evacuation should be considered an act of genocide. as of the beginning in 2024, the ukrainian authorities announced that almost 20,000 ukrainian children were deported to russia. the russian authorities report as many as 700,000 . one of them was denis. he was 17 when he was taken from occupied kherson to a children's camp on the crimean peninsula, which russia has controlled since 2014. there were

hundreds of children from the kherson region aged eight to 17. he saw with his own eyes what russification looked like. after three weeks, they started playing the russian national anthem in the morning . we did not react to him in any way. completely, they just went, like, why, and then they started how to do it, they just took it, agreed with the group, only 30 people, that we would simply not get up in the morning to the russian national anthem, at all, the main person responsible for the ideological work with the children in the camp was the former an employee of ukrainian law enforcement agencies, a special unit of the ministry of internal affairs... berkut: he often said that russia is better than ukraine, that if you say something in the camp territory in favor of ukraine, then

you will go home on foot, often looked for ukrainian symbols or paraphernalia, if he found them, he tore them up, burned them, well, in front of everyone. could it be some sort of paraphernalia? what it is? well, the flag, coat of arms, anthem. older children in the camp. could resist russification, but valery stakhov had a great influence on the younger ones. the children, after talking with valery mastaho, they didn't shut down, they started saying that russia is better and will take kherson and all of ukraine, but at first they didn't say that, they said that ukraine is fine. after a month. they were able to return denys berezhny to the fight to ukraine to his parents, this is possible with a small part of the deported children, but tens of thousands of them remain in russia, where they

gradually lose their ukrainian identity. often they also resist russification. some russians are annoyed by this. in an intercepted conversation of a russian soldier, his wife calls ukrainian children nazis. and you know, these children tell our children that on may 9, at school, they asked to draw, in short, it was for the holiday, they said, it's not our holiday, it's children, our the children at school say that they know that they will grow up later, so it will be, these are natsiks, they will grow up, they will be the same, i would, on the contrary , work to inject drugs into their eyes, to look them in the eyes, i said, rest, suffer, i there, too, she used to cut pussies here and there, she would cut a star on the back, even on the ear... meanwhile, the president of the russian federation, vladimir putin, and his entourage do not hide the mass deportation of children, on the contrary, they do. made it

part of their public policy, children, holy cause, we were taking them out of the zone conflict, saving their lives and health, they surprisingly directly voice it, they are not ashamed of it, honestly, i don't understand why, maybe they don't understand what they are doing, i think they do, most likely they do not believe that it will have any consequences, but... there may be consequences. in march 2023 , the international criminal court issued a notice. the international criminal court has issued two arrest warrants in connection with the situation in ukraine. for vladimir putin, president of the russian federation and maria lvova bilova, authorized by the president of the russian federation on children's rights. on suspicion of committing war crimes related to the deportation of children from the occupied territories of ukraine to the russian

federation. the international criminal court qualified the actions of putin and lviv and bilova as a war crime, but not as a crime of genocide. why? presumably, because international courts and tribunals still traditionally tend to consider genocide through the prism of the physical destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. children are not exterminated. theory is that children who are moved from one group to another. lose the identity of the first group and take on the identity of the group to which they are moved, so it does not meet the requirement in a sense that the intention was to physically destroy the group, the courts have not yet made an exception for this, cases of forced displacement have never really been dealt with internationally court, but should

we rely only... on judicial practice, if the definition of genocide in the un convention is much broader. i repeat, from the five ways of committing of genocide, only one refers to direct physical destruction, all other four refer not directly. then when certain damage is done or conditions are created or deportation takes place, and this ultimately leads to physical destruction. for example, physical extermination is the ultimate goal, but first we want to deport the children so that the group cannot continue to exist, because in essence this is reproductive, the reproductive chain will be broken, but if the crime of genocide needs to be proven in court, then judicial practice is important, the court will first of all require not even murders or other actions described in the convention, it is necessary to prove the intention to commit genocide, that is, to destroy the ukrainian nation as such. the difficulty in

proving genocide is rarely to prove the elements of genocidal intent. we have them. we have them when we consider the behavior of russian forces and russian agents in ukraine and beyond. the difficulty of incriminating the crime of genocide is not to find the elements of genocidal intent, c because these are essentially conclusions that we... based on facts, based on behavior, they have to be so compelling that we can rule out any other possible explanation. in order to prove genocidal intent, other explanations for russia's actions in ukraine must be ruled out. how to do it? hope to find materials like.