Latvian and Estonian parliaments have declared that Russia committed genocide in Ukraine

During Russia's invasion of Ukraine, bodies waiting to be identified by their families are seen outside a morgue in Bucha, Kyiv area, Ukraine. April 20, 2022. Image Credit: Reuters

Reuters: According to statements posted on the websites of the two parliaments, lawmakers in Latvia and Estonia voted unanimously on Thursday to declare the killings of civilians in areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces to be acts of genocide.

Russian troops who withdrew from Ukraine's north a few weeks after Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion left towns littered with civilian bodies - evidence of what US President Joe Biden called genocide last week.

The Kremlin categorically rejected that position and accused Washington of hypocrisy. Moscow has denied that civilians were targeted in the war, claiming, without providing evidence, that the incidents in question were staged to tarnish its military.

Under international law, genocide is defined as the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. Since it was enshrined in humanitarian law following the Nazi Holocaust, the ultimate war crime has a strict legal definition and has rarely been proven in court.

"Evidence of major horrible crimes committed by the Russian Federation's army, including the murder, torture, sexual abuse, and degradation of Ukrainian people, including women and children, in Bucha, Irpin, Mariup ol, and elsewhere," the Latvian parliament said in a statement.

"Murders, enforced disappearances, deportations, imprisonment, torture, rape, and mutilation of bodies," according to Estonia's parliament.

Karim Khan, the head prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced on Feb. 28. Four days after the invasion he had begun a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. He asked countries to support his investigation a month later, and on April 14, he said he would keep trying to convince Russia to cooperate with the investigation.

According to the US ambassador to the OSCE, an early assessment by an OSCE expert delegation shows a "history of inhumanity" by Russian troops in Ukraine.

"Direct targeting of civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting, and forcible deportation of residents to Russia," Ambassador Michael Carpenter said.

Using the phrase "genocide" would be a linguistic escalation, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, complicating his efforts to bring peace to Ukraine.

The goal of Moscow's "special military operation" in Ukraine, according to Moscow, is to disarm Ukraine's neighbor, destroy nationalists, and protect rebels in the southeast. That is a false excuse for an unlawful campaign of aggression, which Kyiv and its Western partners reject.