An American researcher on political violence has explained why crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine fit the classification of genocide.
What Russia has done in Ukraine is , of course, genocide and nothing else. This conclusion was made by Eugene Finkel, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
“As a researcher of genocide, I am an empiricist and always reject such rhetoric. I am always skeptical of accusations of genocide, because activists are now abusing that word. But not this time. There were actions and there was intent. This is genocide by definition. Frank, simple and obvious to everyone, “Finkel wrote on Twitter, commenting on the events in Bucha.
Business Insider recalls that the bodies of about 300 killed civilians were found in a town near Kyiv after the retreat of the Russian army. Many of them were buried in mass graves. The bodies also lay on the streets of Bucha. Finkel argues that Russia's actions in Ukraine can be described as genocide for two reasons.
“The first reason: the evidence obtained over the weekend shows that Bucha is not the only case. And it was done on purpose. The second reason is the rhetoric in Russia itself, as well as in the state media. It denies Ukraine's right to exist as a separate national entity. And that ordinary people should also be punished, “the expert explained.
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He noted that the Russian invasion “did not begin with a clear intention to commit genocide, but it did.” The intention to overthrow the regime in Kyiv, despite all the colonial claims, is not genocide. Finkel acknowledged that he refused to apply the term to Russia's actions until Monday, when it became known what had happened in Bucha.
rhetoric “, – the expert explained his position.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reiterated that Ukraine is a so-called “fake country.” In particular, he spoke about this in his pseudo-historical speech a few days before the full-scale invasion. He also justified the unprovoked Russian aggression by the fact that Ukraine allegedly came under the rule of “neo-Nazis”. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is of Jewish descent and lost family members during the Holocaust. This only emphasizes that Putin's statement is a farce. Russia has repeatedly fired on civilian targets during the war, using the same brutal tactics it used in Chechnya and Syria. More than a thousand peaceful Ukrainians have been killed, according to UN estimates. However, the actual number is likely to be much higher.
Human Rights Watch said it had reported a number of cases in which the Russian military committed war crimes against civilians in the occupied parts of Chernihiv, Kyiv and Kharkiv oblasts. Among the crimes of rape, mass executions and other forms of illegal violence against civilians.
Read also: Tortured but not conquered: what Bucha looks like after the racist occupation (photo, video)
Genocide is a politically tense term whose definitions and interpretations vary widely. Lawyer of Polish-European origin Rafal Lemkin formulated this term. He argued that genocide was “a coordinated plan of action aimed at destroying the foundations of national groups in order to annihilate them as such.” He also wrote that it “does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation except in the case of mass killings of members of the nation.”
ethnic, racial or religious group. ” Finkel said on Twitter that the legal definition or the UN definition is “problematic” because it does not set clear boundaries when a crime can be considered genocide. However, the expert emphasizes that Russian atrocities in Ukraine fit exactly into each of the definitions of genocide.
It will be recalled that after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Kyiv region, the first photos of the bodies of dead civilians lying on the streets of Bucha – some with their hands tied, some with gunshot wounds to the head – were denied by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russia has said the images are “another fake” and has tried to convene an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on what it called “provocations by Ukrainian radicals” in Bucha.
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