Category Genocide

Bucha massacre: Satellite evidence and timeline

The timeline of events in Bucha is critical to understanding events around the 2022 massacre. Many narratives about Bucha hinge entirely on the order of events, and on the dates of certain pieces of evidence. In this article, we lay out several viral claims about the Bucha massacre, and show how each is either debunked or strengthened by the timeline of documented events.

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Address by the President of Ukraine on the Massacre in Bucha

"Presidents do not usually record addresses like this. But today I have to say just that. After what was revealed in Bucha and our other cities the occupiers were expelled from. Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses on the streets. Mined area. Even the bodies of the dead were mined!"

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Before-and-after photos show Ukraine's swift restoration of Bucha, once a byword for the horrors of Russian occupation

Before-and-after photos show Ukraine’s swift restoration of Bucha, once a byword for the horrors of Russian occupation

More than a year has passed since Russian troops invaded the town of Bucha in Ukraine. Serhiy Nuzhnenko was one of the first photojournalists to enter Bucha in the midst of the invasion. His before-and-after images show its striking restoration and the resilience of its residents.

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Environmental conditions and bodily decomposition: Implications for long term management of war fatalities and the identification of the dead during the ongoing Ukrainian conflict

In this paper, the authors provide an overview of the deaths incurred during the early weeks of the war and will attempt to illustrate the range of variables which will inform the practical response to recover and identify those killed, before they receive their final burial. It will introduce some of the organisations which have provided forensic support and will also identify emerging ethical considerations which should be monitored for the remainder of the conflict.

Read MoreEnvironmental conditions and bodily decomposition: Implications for long term management of war fatalities and the identification of the dead during the ongoing Ukrainian conflict
UN report details summary executions of civilians by Russian troops in northern Ukraine

UN report details summary executions of civilians by Russian troops in northern Ukraine

KYIV (7 December 2022) – In the initial weeks of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian armed forces summarily executed or carried out attacks on individuals leading to the deaths of hundreds of civilians, the Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner said today. A UN Human Rights report based on the work of the Mission details how Russian troops killed civilians in Ukrainian towns and villages across the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions of Ukraine from 24 February until 6 April 2022.

Bogner said the summary executions examined in the report may constitute a war crime. “There are strong indications that the summary executions documented in this report may constitute the war crime of willful killing,” she said.

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Russia’s Eliminationist Rhetoric Against Ukraine: A Collection

Dating at least to 2008 or 2009, increasingly hostile language laid the groundwork for rejecting Ukraine’s existence as a state, a national group, and a culture.

What follows is a compilation of publicly available statements (readers are invited to submit by email any that we may have missed).

Experts such as Francine Hirsch, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg,” have pointed to such language as evidence of genocidal intent toward the Ukrainian people. Whether and how the concept of “genocide” applies to Russia’s campaign against Ukraine is the subject of debate, notwithstanding the reference in Article II of the Genocide Convention to “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.”

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Manipulation: Ukrainian Intelligence Chief Budanov Calls to Kill All Russians

The Ukrainian Intelligence Chief of the Defense Ministry did not call to kill all Russians. In his interviews, Kyrylo Budanov emphasized that anyone who committed war crimes in Ukraine will be found and liquidated in any part of the world. He never called for killing Russians on national grounds, as the Russian media reported. Such narratives are another Russian propagandist attempt to present Ukraine as a country of flourishing Nazism.

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Fake: Hungarians Living in Ukraine Report Experiencing Genocide

Instead of Hungarians, propagandist sources actually wrote about the Rusyns, one of the ethnic groups populating the Eastern Carpathians. However, no such statements were made by either Hungarians or Rusyns. The claims by Petro Getsko, who is wanted internationally for violating Ukrainian territorial integrity, do not represent the position of the Carpathian Rusyns. The 'Carpatho-Rusyn Nation' noted that they do not support any of Getko's appeals and condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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