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Notes -
Sigh.
This is where I note that I did not use the word genocide, but national destruction, precisely to avoid this semantic debate.
Which is a shame, since it was as a courtesy and non-insinuation towards you, because the Russian war crimes both in execution and occupation do amount to criteria of genocide by the standards of international law, as codified by Article II of the Genocide Convention, which was established precisely to set such a criteria.
The current definition of Genocide is set out in Article II of the Genocide Convention: Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This is, indeed, arguably broad, which is why genocide charges will generally follow after statements denying the existence, humanity, or legitimacy of a group being targeted by the targetter. Which Putin helpfully provided with the Russian pre-war narrative buildup denying the existence of a Ukrainian nation, pre-emptive victory articles asserting common Russian identity, and the subsequent execution of the war.
Which has included, among other things- A- Easy check, bombardment of civilian population centers with indiscriminate fires when more precise measures exist as an alternative munition, and massacres of detained civilians B- Also easy check, given not only bombardment of refugee evacuation corridors but establishment of torture centers and target lists to go after Ukrainian nationalists C- Another easy check, as there was an entire winter campaign about targeting civilian power infrastructure to the neglect of military targetting with the only appreciable target of mass denial of power required for civilian services such as winter heating E- A matter of record at this point, as the forced evacuation and subsequent processing of Ukrainian children for adoption in Russia is precisely what this category covers
We... have seen tens of thousands of Ukrainian casualties in the war so far.
That the Russians did not establish Nazi-style concentration camps for industrialized slaughter during the midst of their first campaign season does not change that, nor is it a standard or prerequisite for genocide to categorically meet the definition of genocide.
Moreover, this would go back to you not understanding the logistics involved again. The Nazi concentration camps were so horrendous in large part because of how much industrial capacity and investment they took for that one purpose, which was outside the norm for genocidal campaigns. It was a massive function of logistics... which have been a noted weakness of the Russians over last year, even if it were their intended style, which is not the allegation or the requirement.
What's more important, however, is that you are rather unsubtly shifting the frame of debate to try and joust with strawman. The point was not that they were prepared to kill any pro-Western person in Ukraine. The point was that the plan- as in, the thing they had before they went in based on what they thought they knew- was built on what they thought the allocation of sentiment was like. Which goes to the critical mistake of Putin believing his own propaganda and believing that there was a pro-Russian majority eager to side with a Russian intervention against a despised Ukrainian government, and thus that pro-westerners were a minority to be suppressed and filtrated.
In other words- the Russians vastly underestimated the number of anti-Russian/pro-Westerners they'd be dealing with, because they were incompetent, and didn't prepare the logistics of scale needed despite the intent for what they were planning.
In this, you and Macron would be wrong, precisely because words do have meaning. The legal definition of genocide has been quite a bit broader than just 'Nazi-style concentration camps' for longer than you've been alive.
Macron, of course, has the excuse for motivated disinterest in the truth because he is a national leader who in late April 22 was still hoping to salvage some sort of cease fire and return to status quo ante rather than face the economic and political setbacks that would be more likely if he called Putin and Russia particularly unflattering but true things.
The Bucha massacre and then-ongoing bombardment of residential zones with occasional refugee columns kind of undermined his position, and that of the European 'peace' movement that was sharing in the pro-Russian denial mode of the early months precisely because acknowledging Russian crimes against humanity undermined appeals for immediate cease fires and peace talks.
I think it's worth noting that while the camps are the most well-publicized part of the Holocaust, a decent fraction of the deaths, especially early in the war were attributable to death squads with guns rounding up "undesirables."
There have definitely been recorded mass graves in places like Bucha that at least seem to resemble this sort of policy of wanton death.
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