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Should the Ukrainian war be called a genocide?
“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner
Op-Ed Commentary
Genocide! It’s a word that triggers anger, fear and intense emotion.
When US President Joe Biden used it recently referring to the war in Ukraine it resulted in a storm of controversy with Biden rebuked by many including the talking heads of the media, other politicians and even members of his own administration. It also raised the ire of the Kremlin.
“We categorically disagree and consider unacceptable any attempt to distort the situation in this way,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. “This is hardly acceptable from a president of the United States, a country that has committed well-known crimes in recent times.”
Biden said he was “speaking from his heart” after seeing pictures of body bags piled up in a ditch in the battered city of Bucha after a Russian missile attack. However, he later walked back his comment that Russia was committing genocide. But the president made it clear that what he saw shocked him to the core. “Yes, I called it genocide — it’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
So, who’s right here? Biden for speaking from his heart or the Russians for saying the allegation comes from a country with dirty hands of its own? Or is the truth being lost in the fog of war?
The genocide law, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, decrees genocide to be “the deliberate destruction of any national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Sadly, many genocides have occurred in history from ancient times to modern including the 1.5 million Armenians killed by Turkey in 1915, six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis during the Second World War and the 800,000 Tutsi people who perished in 1994 in the Rwandan civil war.
Yet, with the exception of the Jewish Holocaust, it’s still difficult to say with legal certainty which of the horrific slaughters were genocides and which could be more accurately described as crimes against humanity or war crimes.
But in an ironic way do the actual numbers even matter? At what tragic point does mass killing become a genocide? A hundred? A thousand? A million? God only knows and the Russians don’t seem to care. Therefore, according to the letter of the law and the UN resolution, the war in Ukraine is not a genocide. At least, not yet. But don’t you think Putin’s barbaric assault on the Ukrainian people has the potential to become a genocide?
As for me, like Biden I’m going with my heart. Keep in mind Putin has said Ukrainians are “not a people.” That’s why mass grave sites are springing up in the wake of the fighting and women raped in the streets. Russian forces are firing on schools, hospitals, apartments, train stations. power plants, theatres and all the infrastructure that makes Ukraine a modern, civilized and tolerant country which Russia manifestly isn’t.
Nobody knows for sure how many Ukrainian civilians the merciless Russians have killed while hiding behind their big weapons. But estimates range as high as 3,000 or more including at least 300 traumatized children. But the Russian media and President Putin himself deny these figures calling them “fake news.” And once again Russian officials are making vague allusions to using tactical nuclear weapons in their new drive from the south to cut off Ukraine from the sea.
It’s a beastly business and no one knows how it’s going to end. Obviously, some Russians don’t support Putin and are abandoning the country in droves. Others are bravely demonstrating against the war in the street. They realize the war and the tsunami of international sanctions it has spawned will ultimately damage Russia as much as Ukraine. Maybe more? But Putin and the oligarchs don’t care. They are happy to live in a bandit autocracy where corruption has replaced the law and they can frolic in their gilded mansions, expensive yachts and private jets.
It’s a travesty, but at least Cranbrook is playing a positive role in this horrendous tragedy. The Key City is now home to nine new Ukrainian residents thanks to their relatives living here and the efforts of the newly-formed Shelter for Ukraine Society.
Society President, Bonnie Spence-Vinge says the residents “are settling in well and looking forward to getting out in the community to see the city and the schools.”
Meanwhile vigils for the Ukraine are held in Rotary Park every Sunday evening from 7 to 8 p.m. with delicious, home-made perogies for sale and donations taken. Why not drop by and show your support for the cause? Â Putin cannot be allowed to get away with this.
Lead image: A recent Shelter for Ukraine Society rally at Cranbrook’s Rotary Park. Gerry Warner photo
– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who is very apprehensive about the Ukrainian situation but hopeful that the world will rally behind the Ukrainian people.