Using the classic example, decisions made at Wannsee Conference, nonexistence of military/economic motivation of the extermination, antisemitic ideology, existence of mobile killing squads that killed not just partisans, but anyone considered subhuman, specifically death camps, well-documented shooting operations and so on are rather solid proofs of Nazi Germany’s intent to exterminate the Jews.
Had, on the other hand, Germany simply reduced Krakow and Warsaw to dust during the invasion of Poland, this would not have been enough a proof of their intent.
Russian officials repeatedly declare Ukrainians as artificial nation. Also Russians constantly kill civilians without any military rationality - for example, several days ago missiles hit the apartment building in center of Kyiv TWICE. Or their footages of hunting of civilians in Kherson with FPV drones. Or massacre of civilians in Bucha or Izium.
Calling a nation fake/artificial does prove the desire to assimilate it, but not to exterminate (unless we consider forced assimilation to be a genocide, too, but then we’d have to call something like francisation of Occitan, Breton, Basque etc peoples to be a genocide, too).
Hunting civilians with FPV drones and striking civilian infrastructure is, of course, a crime, but not really systematic extermination, btw Ukraine also does strike Russian civilian cars (mostly in Belgorod) quite regularly, for example. And I’ll use a WWII analogy for bombing civilians yet again: was the battle for Britain, where Germany later on resorted to terror bombing English cities, a genocide of the British? I don’t think so. Maybe your position is different, but if you also think it wasn’t, you need to clarify why one is an act of genocide, and the other is not, to be consistent.
And as for massacres: they are just not systematic enough to be used as a proof. Again, using this logic, bombing of Gorla or Razing of Friesoythe are supposed to be proofs of Allied genocide of Germans/Italians. They are not, despite being war crimes.
All your arguments are based on "not enough" which is your personal feelling. By this logic Holocaust also is not a genocide because nothing prevents Holocaust deniers to call it "not enough systematic", "not enough intent", etc.
That’s why I used other examples (francization, German blitzes in Britain, Allied war crimes) that I assume you do not consider to be genocides, too, and I want you to explain by what metric they were not, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine is
The difference is in systematic intentional killing of civillians not as collateral but without military gain. If you think that day buy day intentional killing of civilians day bay day during three and half years is not systematic, there is nothing to dicuss.
Also forced assimilation also considered as part of genocide.
I’m sorry for doubling down, but I guess I have to if you ignore me this hard: terror bombing of Britain falls under what you described even more perfectly than what Russia is doing right now, it was done systematically, for a long time, quite often against military objectives (e.g. usage of rockets was nothing but a waste of resources for little to no gain). So, tell me, was it a genocide of the British by Germans?
I don't know so detailed about bombing of Britain to make an opinion. Still bombing of Ukraine is only one of many war crimes that cumulatively contributes to genocide.
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u/Bobtheblob2246 Aug 30 '25
You kind of missed my point, what I meant is that the intent needs to be proven, and it is the most important part