When does atrocity rise to the level of genocide?
Ratko Mladic’s image is marked with a Z, a new symbol of the Russian military, in Belgrade, Serbia, May 10. Mr. Mladic is serving a life sentence for genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Darko Vojinovic/AP
Russia has claimed that its invasion of Ukraine was in part driven by the need to stop genocide in the Donbas. Ukrainians, in turn, accuse Moscow of committing genocide through war atrocities in towns like Bucha and statements by Russia’s president questioning the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity. But experts say the accuracy of either side’s claims depends on high legal and moral requirements that neither may be able to meet.
What constitutes “genocide”?
Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” as a means to describe the crime of the Holocaust, and crimes like it. But as a term of international law, “genocide” is narrowly defined.
As codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention, it means crimes committed with the intention to destroy a “national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” whether in whole or in part.
Why We Wrote This
Accusations of genocide have been made by both sides in the war in Ukraine. But the true threshold for the crime is high, perhaps more than Russia or Ukraine can meet even when passions cool.
The crimes that can be considered genocidal include killing members of the group, intentionally inflicting on the group conditions that bring about its destruction, measures to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. To count as genocide, such acts must be driven by the intention to destroy the group. “Genocide, as a technical matter of international criminal law, is very hard to prove because of the ‘intent’ requirement,” says Larry May, professor emeritus of philosophy at Vanderbilt University and author of books on international law.
Importantly, the statute leaves out several kinds of groups that could be considered victims of genocide, as the definition was a compromise between nation states that sought to reflect the experience of Jews killed by Adolf Hitler. The concept of cultural genocide did not survive treaty negotiations. Political and ideological groups were also left out at the request of the Soviet Union.
How many genocides have there been?
There is no legal or even scholarly consensus on this.
In the 20th century, experts only consider a few cases to be clear-cut from a legal perspective. These include the Holocaust (although genocide was not prosecuted at the Nuremberg trials), the 1994 Rwanda genocide carried out by Hutus against Tutsis, and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. More recently, the Islamic State group was deemed to have committed genocide against the Yazidi minority as a religious group.
Academics take a broader definition. Many consider violence by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia genocide, although it was primarily against political groups – a group category excluded from the convention. Some consider Guatemala’s decadeslong violent repression of the Maya community to be genocide, and indeed the South American nation was the first to try a former head of state on genocide charges.
The question of cultural genocide also fuels heated debates, anchored today in the present-day experience of China’s Uyghur minority and the history of Indigenous communities in North America and Australia.
Is there evidence for Russian and Ukrainian claims of genocide?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has played on the notion of genocide to justify his invasion of Ukraine. He claims that Ukraine is run by Nazis who are committing genocide against the Russian-speaking population of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas.
“There’s no evidence at all to support that claim,” says Jonathan Leader Maynard, lecturer in international politics at King’s College London. He forms part of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, whose executive board issued a statement stating that this was a fabricated manipulation and abuse of the concept of genocide by Mr. Putin. Professor May points out that linguistic groups are not mentioned in the 1948 convention.
Sergey Davidis, a member of the Human Rights Center Memorial in Russia, says the term genocide, like Nazism, is being used as a smear. “Ukraine doesn’t kill Russians, doesn’t limit birthrate; there are no other forms of eliminating population. It is one of the most serious accusations, and whether there is a case of genocide or not is only up to international courts to judge.”
“Russia destroys all [things] Ukrainian on the occupied territory, there are repressions against Ukrainian-speaking population, Ukrainian text books are destroyed, children are taken out of the country, and there are declarations that they will be de-Ukrainianized by force,” adds Mr. Davidis. “So there are signs that allow discussion whether this phenomenon might be termed genocide.”
As for the claim that Russia is committing genocide, “specialists are reserving judgment,” says Dr. Maynard, noting it takes time to establish intent and all the facts. “The evidence is a bit murky at this stage.”
“It’s not that the Ukrainians are fabricating any information in their accusations against Russia,” he adds. “They see what is genuinely quite genocidal rhetoric coming out from Russian political elites and they see the atrocities on the ground. And they’re basically saying, look, given this rhetoric by Russian elites, Russia is committing genocide.”
Others concur Ukrainians have a “plausible claim” of genocide. “The question is, do the Russians intend to destroy Ukrainian identity as a national group, which would qualify under genocide law?” says Ernesto Verdeja, who teaches political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “Or do they intend to dismantle and decapitate the entire political leadership of Ukraine, install their own people, and create a kind of a pro-Russian proxy? It’s hard to know.”
Complicating matters is that indiscriminate attacks and atrocities are part of the Russian military modus operandi. That makes it hard to establish genocidal intent in Ukraine. “This is how Russia fights its war,” adds Dr. Verdeja, who also conducts research on Ukraine. “We know this from Syria, or Chechnya. They just flattened everything. That doesn’t mean that it is not genocidal.”
“Genocide is often confused with ‘crimes against humanity,’ which merely require an attack against a population that is systematic and widespread,” says Professor May. “There is very good evidence that Russia is committing this international crime in Ukraine – especially since a special intent requirement is not part of the definition of this crime. But people push for the most awful term they can find, and popularly genocide is it insofar as it implies extreme evil.”
How does history shape the warring nations’ views on genocide?
Many historical mass atrocities play into the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Chief among them are the Nazi assaults on the Soviet Union in 1941 that involved the killing of not only Russian Jews but also Slavic peoples. Ukrainian nationalists held up as heroes today include problematic antisemitic figures like Stepan Bandera, who fought the Soviets alongside the Nazis, before the Nazis imprisoned him.
“There were, and still are, self-described Nazis in Ukraine, and Russia has used them to say they are trying to stop these Nazis from invading Russia,” says Professor May. “This has historical echoes to the fact that the German Nazis did try to invade and defeat Russia in WWII.”
Experts say the Nazi label today does not stick in contemporary Ukraine. Far-right groups are a small minority and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish. “From the Russian perspective, anyone who is a Nazi is by definition anti-Russian and a threat,” says Dr. Verdeja.
For Ukrainians, the experience of “genocide” has been central to shaping national identity. Ukrainian authorities and many scholars consider the Holodomor – the 1932-33 famine that killed millions of Soviet Ukrainians – a genocide. It is the shared catastrophe that elders still remember and children grew up hearing about.
“That story is complicated because in that story, who are the perpetrators? Is it the Soviets or is it the Russians?” says Dr. Verdeja. “Well, it’s complicated because the history of imperial Russia and Ukraine prior to that is also a fraught history.”
Editor's note: The original version mischaracterized the type of issuance by the International Association of Genocide Scholars which criticized Mr. Putin.