Putin attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure is genocide

The word “genocide” is often used to describe the deliberate and systemic destruction of a particular group of people, but this doesn’t seem to have been Russia’s goal.

Millions of people in Ukraine are facing power cuts as the result of sustained Russian attacks, which come at a time when the country is experiencing freezing temperatures.

Efforts are ongoing to reconnect homes cut off from electricity. Officials say Kherson has now been fully resupplied, following the recapture of the city by Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian presidential Volodymyr Zelensky announced earlier this week that he will uphold the usage restrictions in 14 Ukrainian regions and the capital Kyiv.

Genocide is defined as the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” According to this UN definition, we can see that genocide occurs when there’s an intent to destroy individual groups.

The UN Genocide Convention recognizes the following as genocidal acts: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of that group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Kostin said in his BBC interview that besides attacking the energy grid, Russia had been forcefully deporting 11,000 Ukrainian kids every year.

Mr. Kostin has said that his office is investigating reports of more than 49,000 war crimes and crimes of aggression between the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24th to now.

The same pattern of conduct was being seen in every Ukrainian settlement occupied by Russian forces, he observed.

War crimes are violations of the so-called “rules” of war. War crimes are typically classified as violations of international treaties like the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions state that civilians must be protected. Russia has been repeatedly accused of breaking these rules.

Reports say that 22 people were injured over the weekend in an artillery strike on a residential building; one person died.

Meanwhile, police said that since Russian troops withdrew from the southern city of Kherson, 32 civilians have been killed by strikes.

On Saturday, Ukraine marked the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor – a man-made famine that killed millions of people during Soviet rule.

There have not been many sentences handed out to those accused of war crimes so far, but of the 260 people indicted by Ukrainian courts, 13 verdicts have been issued.

In this situation, we would need an “international ad-hoc tribunal” supported by countries of “the whole civilised world” who oppose the invasion in order to bring Russia to account.

Meanwhile, the head of the Ukrainian state nuclear company says that there are signals that Russian soldiers could be on their way out of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.