Previous Subchapter → 7.4 The Dehumanisation Factor
Of the genocide allegations that seem most likely on the surface to point to a kind of genocidal intent are the allegations of “forced transfers” of populations, which are one of the actions listed under the genocide convention, in September 2022 the Human Rights Watch NGO presented an extensive report on these claims which included witness testimonies, what was described was a series of restrictions on freedom of movement, alleging Russian authorities forced Ukrainian citizens to flee to Russia against their will.
In most of the examples, interviewees described usually having 4 choices, privately travelling to their place of choice, including to Ukrainian held areas, remaining in their current areas, travelling further into Russian annexed territory (to refugee centres in the Donetsk People’s Republic), or travelling to Russia itself, the “forced” element of the transfer was described as as the refusal of Russian authorities to organise transport to Ukrainian held areas, only offering transit to either the DPR or mainland Russia, rather than Russian forces physically forcing civilians to leave for Russia,
People who sought to flee the fighting and did not have the means to organize private transportation, including thousands of residents from the Mariupol area, were offered no other possibility by Russian forces, but to board buses traveling first to Russian-occupied areas and remain there or travel onward across the border into Russia.
The circumstances and context of these Russian organized mass transportations of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, specifically that most civilians had no effective choice but to agree to go, indicates that they constitute forced transfers
interviewees travelling privately described being able to leave for Ukrainian territory by Russian forces, despite pressure not to do so,
Andrii, the 46-year-old man who left Mariupol on April 10 and drove 40 kilometers through DNR-controlled territory, said that each of the six times Russian soldiers stopped and searched his car at checkpoints, they repeatedly asked about his destination and told him that he could only go to Russian-controlled territory. He was eventually able to drive to Zaporizhzhia.
When Tatiana and Yulia, the mother and daughter who left Mariupol on March 20, arrived by bus in Russian-occupied Nikolske, they were hoping to board another bus to Zaporizhzhia. “We started asking if we could get a bus to Zaporizhzhia because we knew we wanted to go to Ukraine. But we were told that there were no more buses to Zaporizhzhia; as of five days ago, they stopped, even for Red Cross buses. [Local officials] said the only options were Russian territories: DNR or Rostov-on-Don [in Russia] – any Russian area, but we could forget about Ukraine.”[127] As described above, they hired a car for Zaporizhzhia.
When Tatiana, the teacher who fled Mariupol in a minibus on April 11, arrived in Nikolske, people wearing “DNR volunteer” vests told her and her husband they would be able to continue on either to Donetsk in the DNR or to Rostov in Russia. “We asked about going to Berdyansk [where one could board buses for Zaporizhzhia] and they said no,” she said.[128] She and her husband hired a car for Berdyansk, and eventually for Zaporizhzhia.
Some transferred Ukrainians tried to leave Russia as soon as possible by making their way to border crossings and onwards to Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden, or back to Ukraine. A network of Russian activists, working closely with Ukrainian and European activists, has emerged to help new Ukrainian arrivals who want to leave. While Russian officials have not forcibly blocked Ukrainians from leaving Russia, many Ukrainians faced challenges doing so, including because they did not have the proper identity documents or because of a lack of information about what options were available to them. Some were interrogated at border crossings before being allowed to leave the country.
In this sense it appears that in some ways Russian authorities allowed more freedom of movement than Ukrainian authorities, as the Ukrainian government has entirely banned military age men from leaving the country, and the analysis from Human Rights Watch noted instances of Ukrainians from this demographic voluntarily choosing to leave for Russia in order to move on to other countries.
Some people told Human Rights Watch they went to Russia voluntarily, including men wanting to avoid the travel restrictions under Ukraine’s martial law, which with limited exceptions, does not allow men ages 18 to 60 to leave the country.
Not every Ukrainian civilian transported to Russia or Russian-occupied territory may be a victim of forced transfer, as some may have chosen to go to Russia for various reasons. For example, two of the men said that they chose to leave Ukraine via Russia so that they would have a chance to reach elsewhere in Europe while avoiding travel restrictions under Ukraine’s martial law. However, this does not change the fundamental nature of the planned mass transportations of Ukrainian citizens to Russia as forced transfers.
others said they chose to go to Russia because they wanted to travel onwards to Europe.[112] Two of them noted that they knew that if they crossed over to the Ukrainian side, they would not be allowed to leave the country because of martial law, which with limited exceptions, does not allow men ages 18 to 60 to leave the country
An allegation related to forced transfers much closer to what is described under the genocide convention is the claim by Ukrainian authorities of mass kidnappings of Ukrainian children by Russian and Pro-Russian forces, for the purpose of “de-ukrainianising” them, overseeing their placement with Russian foster families.
The Human Rights Watch report notes an incident where children living the Donetsk city of Mariupol, some from birth families and others from foster families, weren’t collected by their parents during the battle for the city, noting that when a volunteer attempted to take them to Ukrainian controlled territory to reunite them with their families they were blocked by Russian and Pro-Russian authorities, who claimed the city to be territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic, under DPR law the volunteer was not allowed to take the children out of the country into Ukraine, leading to family separation, according to the report some of these children later passed through to Russia and then onwards to Western Europe where they reunited with their parents, while the whereabouts of the others are unknown.
In mid-March, a Ukrainian volunteer tried to rescue the 17 children, between the ages of 2 and 17, from a residential healthcare facility in Mariupol, the Regional Children’s Bone and Tuberculosis Sanatorium. The volunteer told Human Rights Watch that he had been helping others from Mariupol evacuate as fighting intensified, and Ukrainian regional authorities had asked him to rescue any children whose families had not collected them from the healthcare facility.[130] On March 18, he said, he put the 17 children he found at the facility with him in an ambulance, along with two other families who wanted to escape the city, and began the journey with them out of the city.
When they were stopped at a Russian-controlled checkpoint in Manhush, the armed men at the checkpoint initially told him he was not allowed to take the ambulance out of the territory and prevented them from passing. The group spent the night in Manhush, at the home of one of the volunteers’ contacts. In the morning, they went to Manhush hospital, where the volunteer tried to secure permission to leave with the 17 children. While they were there, he said that the DNR “minister of social policy” arrived with some other officials and buses, as well as local media. The “minister” began distributing aid to the children in front of the local media. The “minister” told the volunteer that he had no legal right to remove the children from DNR territory. The volunteer said he tried to negotiate for the children’s families to come to the closest crossing point on the Ukrainian side to pick up the children, but the minister refused. The children were then put on a bus and apparently taken to the DNR.
In June, six of the children from one foster family were allowed to leave Donetsk for Russia and traveled from there onwards to France where they reunited with their foster parents.[132] At the time of writing, the exact whereabouts of the other eleven children remain unknown.
Looking at the behaviour described in the report, this does not appear to be a purposeful policy of family separation, but a consequence of attempts by Russian forces to create a border between Ukraine and Russian annexed regions, a similar issue to the separation of families caused by the division of Germany through the Inner-German border and the Berlin Wall, this does not appear to show a kind of genocidal intent or genocidal policy, especially when we consider the fact that, according to the interviewees, those who did transfer to Russia were able to leave, annexation is not extermination.
These allegations of a widespread genocidal policy are also undermined by a lack of evidence for practices on that scale, for example the Human Rights Watch report noted that the Ukrainian government had claimed over 200,000 children had been kidnapped by Russian forces, but they were not able to verify this number, and the number they were able to document, from the earlier mentioned incident, was only 17.
The report also noted that the Ukrainian government had claimed the total number of citizens forcibly transferred to Russia was 1.2 million, the report documented 18 transfers, and spoke to 21 who reported their relatives had been transferred. Of course, this is only one organisation trying to comprehend an overwhelming refugee crisis, but the fact remains that as things stand there is a wide gulf between the allegations and the evidence.
The number of 1.2 million Ukrainians transferred to Russia may actually be accurate, as the report cites Russian state media (TASS) claiming a total of 2.8 million, half of which held passports from the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, the other half would seemingly be Ukrainian passport holders or those without documents, but this is just the total transferred, with no detail on the circumstances behind these transfers, how many migrated because they felt pressured, and how many migrated because they were forced to do so.
Without a much much wider investigation, based on more than testimony, this claim of over 1 million kidnappings is unsubstantiated, the idea that it can be taken as proof of a policy of genocide even more so, making these kinds of claims and utilising them for propaganda purposes without sufficient evidence is extremely damaging for public trust.
In the English language, many words are used loosely and hyperbolically, and for the most part this is a fine and normal thing, it’s good to have a lot of leeway on how you express yourself, some linguistic breathing room to get a point across.
But there are some words that shouldn’t be given this breathing room, and “genocide” is one of them, genocide is one of the worst accusations you could ever level at a person or group, it’s a word that represents some of the most barbaric, savage elements of humanity, the lowest of the low, it’s a term that should be used sparingly, not as a propaganda tool.
Think about some other examples, words that used to be very specific, very powerful terms, “Fascist”, “Racist” and even “Nazi”, these kinds of things used to be serious accusations and now they’re treated by some like generic buzzwords, things that can be tossed around as just another word for “something I don’t like”, I don’t want to see genocide, a word that represents one of the worst crimes against humanity imaginable, used in the same way, that would be a spit in the face of those who fell victim to these very real atrocities, genocide is always an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
That’s why countering bogus, unproven or sensationalistic genocide claims is so important, because this is a term that should maintain its integrity, integrity that other words like it have lost.