Understanding Russian destruction: Colonialism, subjugation and emerging genocide

As Ukraine moves painfully but with gritty determination towards the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale and illegal invasion of Ukraine, we expect, despite the diminishing attention, that there will undoubtedly be many leaders around the world making grandiose statements condemning Russia’s crimes and promising to stand with Ukraine for "as long it takes". But who, if not Ukrainians, know the value of these statements? As long as what takes? As long as it takes for Ukraine to resist Russia’s colonial goals – war crimes and crimes against humanity? Or as long as it takes to prevent Russia from implementing a genocidal plan? Or from manifesting genocidal intent? What is the world waiting for? How shall we know the end of colonial plan and the beginning of a genocidal plan? Or is Ukraine already enduring all of these crimes? Let's try to raise this difficult conversation.

As genocide enters the mainstream of international discourse, its complexity is masked by the apparent simplicity of its defining terms. Even those not schooled in international law or legal practice know that the same definition has endured from the 1948 Genocide Convention to the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court to the domestic laws of most countries today. There are four protected groups ("a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"). There are five prohibited acts (killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children). And there is a requirement for one of these acts to be committed with the special intention to "destroy in whole or in part" one of those groups.

But behind these seductively straightforward terms lies difficult legal and factual assessments that have not been helped by a variety of veiled intentions woven into the Genocide Convention, poorly reasoned and contradictory judgements from modern international tribunals attempting to breathe life into the law, and ever-growing attempts to politicise its nature and scope.

What remains certain is genocide is not one dimensional or monolithic. Contrary to growing opinion within and outside international legal practice, it does not demand the large-scale systematic slaughter of most of the group’s members. It is true that the concept of genocide was developed with situations involving millions of deaths in mind – such as the Armenian Genocide, the Ukrainian Holodomor, and the Holocaust. But the legal logic behind its definition and development does not, and did not intend to, restrict it so. After all, genocide requires (one or more of the) acts committed with the intent to destroy, physically or biologically a group, or part of it, and not a certain amount of immediate killing, let alone the actual destruction of every member.

What exactly qualifies as a sufficient part of the group remains only partially explained to this day, with courts having concluded that it must be a "substantial" part by virtue of being a quantitively large number of victims or a qualitatively prominent portion that is "essential to the survival" or "emblematic" of the broader group. The rulings have confirmed that leaders who bear important roles in protecting or organising a society could reach this threshold. For national groups such as Ukrainians, where political, religious and cultural leaders remain critical to the survival of the group, especially for the preservation of the solidarity and societal ties that bind the nation together, destruction of them would seem to be highly relevant and probative of genocide, but to what extent remains judicially unexplored.

Accordingly, whilst we should be wary of commingling genocide with war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocious conduct, we should also be wary of attempts by would be-genocidaires to obscure their intent by pointing to the lack of sufficient mass killings or barely plausible counterclaims of legitimate warfare gone awry. In this fog of law, many an intent may be conveniently hidden.

Despite their crude nature, the Russian leadership, as with all similar regimes, are more than aware of the benefits of legal and factual misinformation and disinformation. Crimes are routinely accompanied by improbable denial or obfuscation. The graver the crime, the more determined the disguise and the obscener the explanation. Fill the zone with lies, and then "nothing is true and everything is possible" – and so, maybe it is not true that Russia attacked Ukraine (again) on 24 February 2022, or that their military campaign systematically targets civilians for destruction to subjugate the remainder? Maybe, just maybe, it is possible that the Kremlin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine was designed to liberate?

Russian crimes in Ukraine today echo centuries of attempted subjugation with destruction reminiscent, or demonstrable, of genocide. Nothing is abstract here, as clear generational forces of colonial supremacy refract into the heinous actions of today. Russian discourse, past and present, is replete with the systematic "othering" of Ukrainians and their relegation to something less than human, with an obvious potential to turn into something worse. From the 17th to the early 20th century, the Russian Empire (formerly Muscovy) exerted increasingly dominating and oppressive rule over the Ukrainian people. As the Soviet Union rose from its ashes, the Kremlin came afresh as colonisers wearing new clothes. The starvation of millions during the Holodomor in 1932-33 and sustained violent persecution of those deemed ‘nationalists’ is a testament to that latent genocidal intent.

Unsurprisingly, when the so-called modern Russian state emerged after the Cold War, it also inherited its precursors’ appetite for discrimination, conquest and destruction. Indeed, Putin himself has framed Ukraine’s resistance to colonisation as a selfish denial of Russia’s attempts to keep it in its coercive orbit. From 2014 to present day, the Kremlin has sought to control Ukraine by any means – by seizing territory, generating armed conflict, masquerading as impartial peace negotiators in Minsk negotiations and so on and so forth – all of which has failed.

The right of peoples to determine their own national future is central to international law. It springs from the fundaments of state sovereignty and the right of peoples to self-determination in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire. As with any gross violation of this right, Russia’s attempt to subjugate Ukraine is colonial in nature and inherently criminal. The seizure of land, the infliction of horrific abuse on the indigenous population, and the systematic attempt to eradicate culture are not incidental to any colonial project. Success depends upon capitulation through, at least, systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is central to Russia’s aim when it invades a peaceful neighbour and claims its national status and right to exist is a fiction that is offensive to them as sovereign.

But equally central is the destructive logical endpoint for any colonial project that is curtailed by indigenous groups determined to resist. Destruction of at least part of the group, whether to quell resistance or merely for its own scornful sake, would appear to be the flip side of the imperial reverie. If for centuries one national group considers that its sacred destiny is to dominate another, but sees these attempts continuously thwarted by irrepressible independence and national pride, does the final grim calculus not demand destruction of the defiant group?

Whether the United States’ elimination of Indigenous communities through its Westward expansion known as ‘Manifest Destiny’ during the 19th century, England’s 16th and 17th century annihilation of the rebellious Irish, France’s conquest of Algeria between 1830 – 1875 (seeking, at least, ‘partial’ extermination of the indigenous Algerians), the German campaign against the Herrero and Nama people of modern-day Namibia from 1904 to 1908, or the British in Kenya in their treatment of the Kikuyu between 1951 – 1960, all contain a common thread. They all demonstrate imperial projects which take on a genocidal bent in moments where they are faced with uncompromising resistance. Colonial control requires violence, violence begets violence, and dying empires resort to more and more targeted destruction of the offending group.

Likewise, the evidence shows that at a minimum the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was premised on a colonial, persecutory plan, the nature and scale of which was determined by what human rights violations were deemed necessary to occupy and subjugate Ukrainians along national, political, and cultural grounds. Evidence gathered by Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG) and assessed by Global Rights Compliance’s Mobile Justice Teams shows that from the outset Russia’s criminal plan was intended to destroy the Ukrainian government and persecute those, whether military, security or civilian leaders, who might offer meaningful resistance to the colonial plan. This vicious assault on an entire nation’s right to self-determination had the express purpose of destroying Ukrainian identity. Whether elaborately articulated or planned or not, these were the seeds of a genocidal campaign: systematic acts designed to undermine the ability of Ukrainians to survive as a national group and to ensure their subjugation to the Russian empire. As with all such imperialistic and amoral campaigns, an intention to subjugate being a mere stepping stone from a genocidal campaign.

Of course, Putin’s plan was always going to fail. The belief that Ukrainians were a fabricated nation, an inferior people with no "stable traditions of real statehood" held hostage by an extremist elite "mindlessly emulating foreign models" of governance, unwilling or incapable of offering resistance, has been fully exposed. Putin’s hubris and the Kremlin’s inability to understand Ukrainians and the strength of their nation and national character is now evident for all but the most deluded to see.

Unfortunately, dying empires do not tend to go silently. Evidence of atrocity crimes collected by the OPG demonstrates that Russia’s failed colonial project and Ukrainian’s valiant resistance is accompanied by an ever-growing list of persons targeted for detention, torture, death, deportation or persecutory abuse. Over the last two years, those labelled "pro-Ukrainian" found themselves in the crosshairs of a destructive plan hellbent on imperial, persecutory violence towards people and property, leaning increasingly towards the genocidal. Anyone capable of resisting the colonial project – from public officials, law enforcement, military, activists, journalists, religious leaders, educators, civil society volunteers, to more – all became, not only desirable, but necessary targets. Children, erstwhile inheritors of Ukrainian’s future, are cruelly targeted, transferred to Russia as objects or for imperialistic indoctrination.

So there is no doubt that Russia’s goal was to destroy Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty – seeking to remove its existence as a nation with equal rights and to effectively turn it into a Western Russian colony. But we must also follow the evidence. Unquestionably, this colonial project was buttressed by a willingness to destroy what was required to achieve these manifest goals. The significance of such necessary destruction is found in the perceived goal it serves – to assimilate the ‘lesser’ nation next door. If not assimilate, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate and destroy what needs to be destroyed. The ‘Russian imperative’ by divine prescription.

Of course, even for perpetrators of evil there are lines that are best not crossed. Disinformation can fool some, but not all, of the people all the time. Mass slaughters, like Bucha and Mariupol, evoke commonly understood notions of genocide and attract unwelcome attention. Patience allows colonial plans and possible genocidal escalation to hide in plain sight, especially as the slow burning and incremental destruction of significant parts of a group often only becomes apparent in retrospect. Viewed through a colonial lens, we are left with less and less room for doubt as to Putin’s true ultimate goals. To deny a nation’s right to determine its future is to deny international law. To do so by destroying a significant part of the national group is to commit genocide.