The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as the commission of acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Ukrainian government officials have accused Russia of engaging in genocide since the full-scale invasion launched on Feb. 24. Olha Stefanishyna, one of Ukraine’s five deputy prime ministers, said on March 21 that she believed “the massive murder of the Ukrainian people” constituted genocide.
Mariupol, a city with a population of more than 400,000 before the war, now lies in ruins following Russian bombardment. Bombs are reported to have fallen on a maternity clinic, an art school sheltering hundreds of residents, and a theater where hundreds of others had sought refuge. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the assault on Mariupol “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come.”
Russian officials have denied that civilians are being targeted. On the eve of the invasion, President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainian forces of committing “genocide” against Russian speakers in the eastern region of Donbas — a claim rejected by the U.S. State Department.
The U.N. human rights office said on March 20 that it had recorded 2,361 civilian casualties in Ukraine, with 902 people killed and 1,459 injured. It stressed that the actual figures were likely to be considerably higher.
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