Reply to Ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe - when will the United Nations declare this a genocide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ethnic cleansing and genocide are not the same thing.[/quote]

For legal purposes neither is the designation crimes against humanity.

It is interesting (in a grim horrific way)  that Zelensky refers to the Russian atrocities as [b]genocide - I don’t understand how that can be the right legal framework since Ukrainians have very similar ethnic backgrounds to the majority of Russians[/b]. The Russians are referring to their atrocities as ethnic cleansing of Nazis (so sick).

I don’t think Russia has ratified the international agreement on war crimes that gets prosecuted in Den Hague. Even if they issue an international arrest warrant for Putin as a war criminal, I am not sure how they would ever extract him from Russia.

The Kremlin clearly has no regard for UN agreements or basic human rights. However, I hope the world will find a good way to hold them accountable for all these barbaric war crimes.[/quote]

Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Ukrainians have, for at least a century, been trying to assert their national identity as Ukrainians and NOT as Russians. Ukrainian language and culture has been actively suppressed by Russia including as part of the former Soviet Union.  It is explicitly the "national" identity that Putin claims doesn't exist.  He has explicitly said that he wants to return Ukraine to its rightful place as "MaloRussia" or little Russia.  "DeNazification" in this case, extends to the extermination of all persons who promote the Ukrainian identity.  In the beginning of the invasion, many thought that Putin would confine himself to taking Kyiv and installing a puppet ruler and claiming to have deNazified Ukraine.  However, in recent weeks the language has shifted and become even more extreme -- indicating an intent to destroy Ukraine as a nation.  It is the destruction of the nation and/or national identity that is genocidal.

How is Putin accomplishing this?  By literally flattening cities, particularly those in the east and south that could give him a land bridge to Crimea and beyond to the Russian separatist area in Moldova.  Russian forces are deporting Ukrainian citizens to Russia from Mariupol, stripping them of identity papers and belongings (including phones) and shipping them to regions further east from which it is hard to return.  Many children have been transferred, without parents to Russia. They are detaining, disappearing or killing mayors and other pro-Ukrainian citizens.  They are targeting hospitals and schools, which are part of the perpetration of Ukrainian citizens and culture, and they appear to be engaging in rape and torture and wholesale destruction in order to get those who won't cooperate and be "Russian" to flee to the west.

Although Russia may not have signed the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, war crime, crimes against humanity and genocide, are all crimes of Universal Jurisdiction, meaning that the actions that comprise these crimes are so universally understood to be criminal that all nations may exert jurisdiction and try non-nationals for these crimes.  For example, France, Britain and Germany are all investigating crimes in Ukraine and may either prosecute them nationally, share info with Ukrainian prosecutors or turn information over to the ICC.

If Bosnia is any illustration, it may take a long time, but all of those who were indicted by the ICTY were eventually turned over or turned themselves in to stand trial - even Milosevic, who, much like Putin, was the ruler of a country and so no one thought he would ever be subject to arrest.

The thing is, the war crimes indictment serves as a powerful motivation for a state to remove an indictee.  Sanctions will never be lifted without turning over indicted persons.  No country wants to pay for the sins of its leader forever.  
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