GENOCIDE        WATCH

Ukrainian history has several instances of genocide and mass killings. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin deliberately starved the Ukrainian people in a genocidal famine known as the Holodomor. During the Second World War, the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators killed an estimated 1.5 million Jews, with 33,000 killed at the Babi Yar ravine outside Kyiv. Joseph Stalin also deported the entire population of Crimean Tatars from their homes to deportations camps in Central Asia. Many Crimean Tatar's were not allowed to return to their homes until the 1990s and many of their homes and land have been since given to ethnic Ukrainians and Russians. The Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, illegally annexed the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and continues to support Russian separatists in the breakaway regions of Donbas and Lukhansk, frequently targeting ethnic Ukrainians. Groups such as Right-Sector, Azov,  Svoboda, and S-14; have openly expressed neo-nazi, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic ideology and have subsequently violently attacked minority communities.

On February 24th, 2022, Russia began a war of aggression against Ukraine. Since then, its invasion has been met with staunch resistance and Russian forces have been driven from the suburbs of Kyiv. However, the conflict has led to an increasing number of war crimes and attacks on civilian targets perpetrated by Russian soldiers. In Bucha and a number of other towns occupied by the Russian Army, investigators have uncovered mass graves. Reports of torture, forced deportation, and sexual violence are also common. As the conflict continues with no end in sight, more Ukrainians are falling victim to Russia’s genocidal campaign.