New report accuses Russian forces of genocide in Ukraine

NEW YORK • The increasing carnage and destruction inflicted by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine - punctuated by the use of thermobaric explosives that set off huge, destructive shock waves - have led to fresh accusations that President Vladimir Putin of Russia is waging a genocidal campaign to wipe out a substantial part of the Ukrainian population.

A new report by international legal scholars and human rights experts said on Friday that mass killings, deliberate attacks on shelters and evacuation routes, and the indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas by Russian forces had established a "genocidal pattern" against Ukrainians, in violation of the United Nations Genocide Convention.

The report, which warned that Ukrainians were at "imminent" risk of genocide, came as Russian forces captured the eastern city of Lyman after intense artillery bombardment - including from one of the most fearsome weapons in Russia's conventional arsenal - a rocket artillery system firing thermobaric explosives.

Also known as fuel-air bombs, these explosives unleash blast waves of extreme pressure and heat, raising the likelihood of civilian casualties in the surrounding area.

Russia "already uses the heaviest non-nuclear weapons against" Ukraine, "burning people alive", Mr Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on Twitter on Friday about the thermobaric weapons system.

He shared a drone video of its purported use in Lyman that showed giant fireballs exploding on the ground in quick succession.

Mr Zelensky warned that Russian forces were trying to turn cities and towns in the country's east "to ashes", as he renewed accusations that the forced deportation and mass killing of civilians amounted to "an obvious policy of genocide pursued by Russia".

Lyman, with a pre-war population of about 20,000, is near a strategic highway and was the second mid-size Ukrainian city to fall into Russian hands last week as Moscow seeks to consolidate control over much of the Donbas region. If successful, that drive could give Mr Putin substantial leverage in any future peace talks.

Russian forces also appeared poised on Friday to capture Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city still under Ukrainian control.

The new report on possible genocide by Russia in Ukraine, released on Friday by the Washington-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, lent credence to the Ukrainian claims.

It said rhetoric from the highest levels of the Kremlin and Russian state media denying Ukrainian national identity and dehumanising its people amounted to "state-orchestrated" incitement of genocide.

"There is considerable evidence demonstrating that Russian soldiers have internalised state propaganda and either expressed genocidal intent or carried out atrocities in response to it," wrote the authors, who include former war crime prosecutors, former ambassadors and Canada's former justice minister.

The pattern of atrocities targeting civilians in Ukraine is comparable to the genocidal acts committed by Myanmar's military against the minority Rohingya group, the report said, quoting from the UN fact-finding mission there: "The vastness of the state's involvement is inescapable."

The report of possible genocide came after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced this month that his office had deployed a team of 42 investigators, forensic experts and support personnel to Ukraine to advance investigations into potential war crimes.

Whether the Russian military's actions in Ukraine are ultimately judged to be genocidal, any legal finding of culpability is unlikely to affect the outcome of the war.

NYTIMES