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1. 1 team member makes a copy of this document.
2. Rename the document: Your Case Study Designing A Memorial (Putin's War in Ukraine Designing A Memorial)
3. Share with team members.
4. Share with Ms. Johnston
5. Start the process.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Directions:
1) Take a copy of this document.
2) Write your name on the document.
3) Read the document, out loud, with a partner.
4) Highlight any sections you think are important.
5) Define any terms you don't know in your Genocide Glossary (Station 2).
6) Jot down notes in the web you created for Station 4.

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Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [Genocide]

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A Brief Overview of the Design Thinking Process

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A Brief Overview of the Design Thinking Process

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A brief overview of the 5 phase Design Thinking process.
0. Design Thinking & Doing  https://youtu.be/bpVzgW8TUQ0
1. Empathize  https://youtu.be/q654-kmF3Pc
2. Define  https://youtu.be/TNAdanuvwtc
3. Ideate  https://youtu.be/zbLxs6te5to
4. Prototype  https://youtu.be/Q4MzT2MEDHA
5. Test  https://youtu.be/UVEQCNM6X-A

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We will be going through all these stages in order to best design our memorials. Bookmark these videos.

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A step-by-step guide through the design thinking process - from empathy to define to brainstorming to prototyping and testing. Brought to you by the Academy ...

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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1) Open your Insert Learning dashboard.
2) Follow the prompts.
3) Fill out the Case Study handout.

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"We have to call this what it is," Volodymyr Zelensky said, late last month, a few days after Vladimir Putin had ordered the invasion and conquest of Ukraine. "Russia's criminal actions against Ukraine show signs of genocide." President Zelensky, who lost family members during the Holocaust, and who also happens to have a law degree, sounded suitably cautious about invoking genocide, and he called for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to send war-crimes investigators as a first step. But such investigations take years, and rarely result in convictions. (Since the I.C.C. was established in 1998, it has indicted only Africans; and Russia, like the United States, refuses its jurisdiction.) The only court that Zelensky can make his case in for now is the court of global public opinion, where his instincts, drawing on deep wells of courage and conviction, have been unerring. And by the end of the invasion's second week-with Putin's indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets intensifying, and the death toll mounting rapidly; with more than two and a half million Ukrainians having fled the country, and millions more under relentless attack in besieged cities and towns; and with no end in sight-Zelensky no longer deferred to outside experts to describe what Ukrainians face in the most absolute terms. "I will appeal directly to the nations of the world if the leaders of the world do not make every effort to stop this war," he said in a video message on Tuesday. He paused, and looking directly into the camera, added, "This genocide."

Genocide, the word and the idea, is colloquially understood to describe an effort to exterminate members of a definable identity group through targeted killings. Because the best-known cases involve staggering death tolls-the extirpation of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada, of Armenians under the Ottomans, of European Jews in the Holocaust, of Rwandan Tutsis at the hands of Hutu Power in 1994-genocide is often assumed to mean mass slaughter, and to have drastic demographic consequences. But, in international law, genocide has nothing explicitly to do with the enormity of criminal acts. Rather, according to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, it is defined by the enormity of criminal intent:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

By this standard, Putin's war of obliteration comes readily into focus as genocidal, if not-to date, anyway-as comprehensive genocide. His apparent objective is to extinguish Ukraine as an independent nation, and to subsume it and its surviving population into Russia, where he claims it naturally belongs. As he prepared to attack, massing his forces on Ukraine's borders, and pretending to engage in diplomatic brinkmanship, he seemed to imagine that the threat of overwhelming force might inspire Ukraine's leaders to capitulate and surrender preëmptively to his diktat. In early February, after President Emmanuel Macron, of France, flew to Moscow to try to reason with him, they held a joint press conference in which Putin said, as if addressing Ukraine directly, "Like it or not, take it, my beauty." The line was immediately recognized as a reference to a luridly menacing song about necrophiliac rape by the punk band Red Mold. The Kremlin and its press organs airbrushed the taunt out of the official transcripts. But Putin had made himself clear: he viewed Ukraine as a corpse, and would have his way with it.

In announcing the start of the war, Putin spoke dismissively of Ukraine as a historical fiction, denying its sovereign existence, and portrayed his invasion, absurdly, as a sort of humanitarian mission to "de-Nazify" the place, to protect its people from humiliation and genocide at the hands of their own popularly elected leaders, and to bring those leaders to trial. Putin's world-upside-down framing treated questions of genocide and war crimes, as well as of democracy and accountability, as make-believe, and therefore ridiculous; and it gave off a strong whiff of the propaganda tactic known as " accusation in a mirror," in which a speaker accuses his prospective victims of plotting to do to him what he is plotting to do them. As Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, recently tweeted, "Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating." Zelensky put it more succinctly: "If you want to know what Russia is planning, look at what Russia is accusing others of planning."

Putin evidently anticipated that his military juggernaut would meet little resistance, swiftly take Kyiv, and replace Zelensky's government with an obliging puppet regime. On the third day of the war, even as his forces began to show their weakness, and Ukraine's began to show their strength, an essay prematurely hailing Putin's victory in Kyiv, and the dawn of a new world order, appeared on a Kremlin-controlled news platform. It was promptly taken down, but not before being preserved, and, while it cannot be regarded as direct evidence of Putin's intent, its rhetoric, which reads in parts as if it were repurposed from the archives of the Third Reich, suggests the attitude among his propagandists:

Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukranian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia. . . . Now this problem is gone-Ukraine has returned to Russia. . . . Russia has not only challenged the West, it has shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over.

Meanwhile, in reality, the prospect of Russian glory looks as diminished as the exchange rate of the ruble. That increases the risk of genocidal atrocities. Putin has no apparent exit strategy; and the worse the war has gone for him, the worse he has made it for Ukraine, raining hellfire on its civilian infrastructure, in what appears to be a determination to reduce it, as his forces previously did in parts of Chechnya and Syria, to lifeless rubble. By his own account, Putin's fight is, above all, against humiliation, and that is a fight he's losing badly. The war is only in its third week, and he has repeatedly signalled that he is prepared to use his nuclear arsenal, a threat so grave from a man so given to the use of annihilating force that it would be a folly to assume that he's bluffing.

Zelensky has spent his days under attack convincingly presenting himself and Ukraine to the rest of the world as standing the ground for the collective interests and future of sovereign self-determination against despotism. He has been received with an immediate and extraordinary unanimity of solidarity and commitment: arms, intelligence-sharing, aid, and crushing economic sanctions against Russia. But that has not been enough to spare the Ukrainians, and Zelensky has now taken to using his Kyiv bunker as a bully pulpit to try and shame the world into joining his fight by imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Russia, he says, is alone to blame for the war and its horrors, but he insists that the rest of the world-and here, he singles out the NATO powers-shares responsibility.

"If the world stands aloof, it will lose itself. Forever," Zelensky said, on Tuesday. "Because there are unconditional values. The same for everyone. First of all, this is life. The right to life for everyone." Then, on Wednesday, after Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, he asked, "How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now!" Last week, the mayor and deputy mayor of Kharkiv and Mariupol also described Putin's campaign as genocide, and Zelensky said that the hospital attack was "the final proof-proof that genocide of Ukrainians is taking place." He called out Europeans collectively, and said: "You saw. You know."

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Is It Time to Call Putin's War in Ukraine Genocide?

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"We have to call this what it is," Volodymyr Zelensky said, late last month, a few days after Vladimir Putin had ordered the invasion and conquest of Ukraine. "Russia's criminal actions against Ukraine show signs of genocide."

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Materials Needed:
-Notebook/pencil
-Headphones
-Laptop

Directions:
1) In your notebook, make a new entry titled, "Station 4: United Nations Resolution 260
2) Make a Bubble Map OR a Brace Map in your notebook (see photo above).
3) Leave space (or make a new page) for questions and reflections.

Thinking Maps: https://kern.org/alted/staff-resources-2/thinking-maps/

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1) Open your Insert Learning Dashboard
2) Find Assignments
3) Open the assignment titled, "What's the Difference Between Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide?"
4) Read and annotate the article.
5) Answer the questions.
6) Submit (turn in) assignment.

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What are crimes against humanity?

Crimes against humanity refer to specific crimes committed in the context of a large-scale attack targeting civilians, regardless of their nationality. These crimes include murder, torture, sexual violence, enslavement, persecution, enforced disappearance, etc.

Crimes against humanity have often been committed as part of State policies, but they can also be perpetrated by non-State armed groups or paramilitary forces. Unlike war crimes, crime against humanity can also be committed in peacetime, and contrary to genocide, they are not necessarily committed against a specific national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Crimes against humanity under international law

Crimes against humanity appeared for the first time in a treaty in the 1945 Nuremberg Charter at the end of the Second World War, albeit with a different definition than today.

Since the 1990s, crimes against humanity have been codified in different international treaties such as the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1993), the Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda (1994) and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998). The Rome Statute provides the most recent and most expansive list of specific criminal acts that may constitute crimes against humanity.

Unlike other human rights violations, war crimes do not engage State responsibility but individual criminal responsibility. This means that individuals can be tried and found personally responsible for these crimes.

Prohibited acts include:

Murder

Extermination

Enslavement
Deportation or forcible transfer of population

Imprisonment

Torture

Sexual violence

Persecution against an identifiable group

Enforced disappearance of persons

The crime of apartheid

Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 7

TRIAL International tackles crimes against humanity

Governments around the world often deny that crimes against humanity have occurred on their territory, thus ignoring the suffering of their people. Thousands of desperate victims are still struggling to get long-waited justice, reparation and recognition.
Helping the victims
TRIAL International helps victims to get their voice heard by bringing their cases before domestic courts, as well as before regional and international human rights mechanism like the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights. The organization provides free legal support to victims, from the preparation and submission of their case, to the proceedings and the implementation of the decisions on the ground.
Prosecuting the perpetrators
TRIAL International fights impunity by filing criminal and compensation claims against perpetrators of crimes against humanity. These complaints are brought before international bodies, and before national courts thanks to the principle of universal jurisdiction. TRIAL also pushes national justice systems to investigate situations and prosecute the perpetrators of mass atrocities.

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Crimes Against Humanity - TRIAL International

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Crimes against humanity refer to specific crimes committed in the context of a large-scale attack targeting civilians, regardless of their nationality. These crimes include murder, torture, sexual violence, enslavement, persecution, enforced disappearance, etc. Crimes against humanity have often been committed as part of State policies, but they can also be perpetrated by non-State armed groups or paramilitary forces.

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Monitor Ukraine: Sources from Around the World

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Monitor Ukraine: Sources from Around the World

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USA The New York Times

UKRAINE Kyiv Post

RUSSIA Sputnik News

GERMANY Deutsche Welle (DW)

INDIA Times of India

MIDDLE EAST Al Jazeera

CANADA Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)

GREAT BRITAIN British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

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Materials Needed:
-notebook/pencil
-headphones
-laptop

Directions:
1) In your notebook, create a system for notes (Thinking Maps). Include these sections:
name, age, country of origin, summary of their experience, etc.
2) Leave space for questions & reflection
3) Leave a page to paste in the handout

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1) Watch the video with closed captions.
2) Create a Cause + Effect Thinking Map that shows your knowledge and understanding of the content in the video.

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Genocide Prevention – young people say never again (9 December - Genocide Prevention Day)

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Sample Interview with Mr. Titterington (20 minutes) 

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Sample Interview with Mr. Titterington (20 minutes) 

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Directions:

1. Watch/read three of these survivor stories: https://vimeo.com/showcase/4747185 (If you want to read the transcript as you listen, you can find them on PSL)

2. Choose one to evaluate.

3. In your notebook, create an infographic/chart/visual representation of your chosen survivor. (see example above)

4. Include all of the following information:

Name of survivor

Country of origin

Age at the time (if specified)

Summarize their experience. What did they do? What did they see? How did they feel?

What was the tone of the story? What words or phrases did the survivor use to show that tone? (fear, regret, pride, anger, etc…)

What aspect (piece) of the story stood out to you? Why?

If you could interview this person further, what questions would you ask?

How does this person’s experience help you understand the concept of “dehuminzation” in the 8 stages of genocide?

How can we tell what was happening politically based on this person’s story?

How can we tell what was going on with social issues  based on this person’s story?

How can we tell what was happening with business, trade, jobs, etc. based on this person’s story?

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Survivor s Voices: Experiences of Genocide on Vimeo

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Join the web's most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD with no ads.

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Materials Needed:
- Notebook/pencil
-Headphones
-Laptop

Directions:
1) In your notebook, make a new entry titled, "Station 1: What is Genocide?"
2) Make a KWL chart (see sample).
3) Leave room at the bottom of the page for reflections and questions.

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What is genocide?
1) In the Know column, jot down everything you think you already know about genocide. This can include definitions, examples, stories, etc.
2) Jot down at least 3 questions you have about genocide.
3) Move to Watch and Learn #1 and #2 below.

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Directions:
1) Watch the video.
2) Take notes in your notebook in the LEARNED column.

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Directions:
1) Watch the video with closed captions.
2)Take notes in your notebook in the LEARNED column.
3) In the space below your KWL chart, please write a reflection:
- What are you still wondering?
- What do you think about genocide?

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Directions:
1) Watch the video with closed captions.
2) Do some lateral reading and answer the following questions in your notebook.
- Who is this speaker?
- Is she an expert on this topic? How do you know? (specific evidence, quotes, cite sources, examples, etc.)
- What does she say the problem is with the UN's current definition of genocide?
- Find at least two other sources that confirm her claim about the current definition of genocide.

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Materials Needed:
-Notebook/pencil
-Headphones
-Laptop
-Glue
-Pencil

Directions:
1) In your notebook, make a new entry titled, "Station 2: Genocide Vocabulary"
2) Sort the words in the envelopes into at least 5 different categories. (Words can go into more than one category.)
3) Make "buckets" (see sample) for each of your categories.
4) Label each bucket with your categories.
5) Write or glue your words into your categories.
6) Highlight the words:
Green- I know this word and can use it properly in a sentence.
Yellow- I've seen this word before, but am not confident I can        use it in a sentence.
Red-I don't know it, I cannot use it.
7) Make a circle map or a Frayer Model for each of your RED words.
- Define the word.  (Use Learner's Dictionary online)
- Facts/Characteristics of the term.
- At least 3 examples.
- At least 3 non-examples.
8) Log into Quizlet and practice your terms.

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1) Practice learning the flash cards.

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Start studying Genocide. Learn vocabulary, terms and more with flashcards, games and other study tools.

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Materials Needed:
-Notebook/pencil
-Headphones
-Laptop

Directions:
1) In your notebook, make a new entry titled, "Station 3: 10 Stages of Genocide"
2) Make the flow chart pictured above.
3) Make a box for 3 questions.

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1) Watch this 10 video series (each video is around 00:01:30).
2) Fill in the flow chart with terms and relevant details.
3) Ask 3 questions you have about what you learned.

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Stage 1 - Classification | The Ten Stages of Genocide by Dr. Gregory Stanton | Genocide Watch

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Materials Needed:
-Notebook/pencil
-Headphones
-Laptop

Directions:
1) In your notebook, make a two new entries titled, "Station 5: Examples of Genocide"
2) Entry #1-  Make an EVIDENCE-RULE-CONCLUSION three column chart.
4) Entry #2- Make a Cornell Notes chart in your notebook (see sample in photo)

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Directions:
1) Study this map.
2) In your notebook, jot down what you SEE (evidence), what you THINK (rule), and your ANALYSIS (conclusion).

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Directions:
1) Read through each slide.
2) Consult other sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
https://genocideeducation.org/resources/modern-era-genocides/
http://www.borgenmagazine.com/worlds-worst-genocides/
3) Jot notes in your Cornell notes for each example (see sample).
4) Write a summary of what you learned about these genocides.

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Materials Needed:
Computer
Insert Learning dashboard

Directions:
1) Open your Insert Learning Dashboard
2) Find Assignments
3) Open the assignment titled, "What's the Difference Between Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide?"
4) Read and annotate the article.
5) Answer the questions.
6) Submit (turn in) assignment.

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What are the differences between the legal terms "crimes against humanity" and "genocide"? And are both equally useful in punishing mass crimes and facilitating closure?

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Robert Coalson spoke with British lawyer Philippe Sands about his forthcoming book, which explores this issue. Sands is a professor of international law at University College London who frequently works on cases before international tribunals.

He is the author of "Lawless World," which argues that the 2003 invasion of Iraq occurred in violation of international law. He is currently representing Macedonia in a case against Greece in the International Court of Justice regarding the use of the name "Macedonia."
Tell us in a nutshell, if you can, what are the legal concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide?
Crimes against humanity and genocide are two distinct concepts. They became part of international law in the mid-1940s, after the end of World War II, and really around the time of the Nuremburg trials. They were new concepts -- they are relatively recent in that sense. And what I have been doing in a new book that I am working on is tracing their origins.

The basic difference between crimes against humanity and genocide is as follows: Crimes against humanity focuses on the killing of large numbers of individuals. The systematic, mass killing of a very large number of individuals will constitute a crime against humanity. Genocide has a different focus. Genocide focuses not on the killing of individuals, but on the destruction of groups. In other words, a large number of individuals who form part of a single group. And the two concepts in this way have different objectives. One aims at protecting the individual; the other aims at protecting the group.
Your research traces both concepts back to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, is that right?
The two issues really hit the headlines in international-law terms in 1945 and 1946, around the time the Allies were preparing the Nuremburg trials and they were deciding what they would charge leading Nazi defendants with at those trials. And there was a big debate about whether to deal with the issue of crimes against humanity or genocide. And in fact, they went with crimes against humanity.

What I'm doing right now in my book is tracing the origins of these two concepts and I have taken them back to two men who were responsible and both studied in the same town. It was called Lemberg and Lwow, and is now called Lviv.

Today it is in Ukraine, on the western outskirts of Ukraine near the Polish border. It is a remarkable city -- it has a remarkable university that is older than Harvard University. It was very famous for mathematics. It was also very famous for law and at that law school between 1915 and 1925, two men studied. Hersch Lauterpach, who became after that a professor of international law at Cambridge University -- he was really the man responsible for putting crimes against humanity into the Nuremburg Charter. And then a couple of years after him, another man came along, Raphael Lemkin -- he's in fact much more famous. And he is the man who invented in 1943 the word "genocide," meaning the killing of groups. And what struck me as remarkable was that both men studied at the same law school.
Would it be fair to say that you have criticisms or at least concerns about the legal concept of genocide?
It's not that I've got concerns or criticisms about one or the other. Frankly, I'm trying to work out in my own mind which of the two ideas I'm most attracted to. I can see both arguments. Basically, Lemkin's view, promoting the idea of genocide, is that people are not killed as individuals. They are killed or harmed because they are members of a group -- a national group or an ethnic group or a religious group. And he says that's the reality and the law has to reflect that reality. No, says Lauterpach. People are individual human beings and they should be protected as individual human beings, not because they happen to be a member of a group. And the danger for Lauterpach was that Lemkin's idea of protecting groups would create the very conditions that Lemkin was trying to protect us all from -- namely, it would pit one group against another group. It would set in concrete terms the idea that groups have an identity in law and they should be protected as groups.

So, it is a sort of a major intellectual battle between the two. They don't disagree on what the objective is -- they want to avoid mass killing. What they disagree with is what's the best way to deal with that. And one, in a sense, is more realist -- Lemkin -- and the other is more utopian. And I'm just trying to work out which of the two that I agree with. Of course, what's happened in the meantime, since these ideas came up in 1945, 1946 -- if you fast-forward to the summer of 1998 and imagine yourself in Rome in July 1998 when the governments of the world came together and drafted the document that was the statute of the International Criminal Court, what they did in that document was they put both genocide and crimes against humanity in. So what has happened subsequently is that both ideas have been given resonance.
It seems to me that one difference between crimes against humanity and genocide is that the charge of crimes against humanity seems to attach just to the individual who is charged, while a genocide charge attaches not only to that person but to his or her ethnic group as well.
I think that is exactly right. I think that what the concept of genocide does -- and I can absolutely see why Lemkin came up with it -- but what it does is it requires the person claiming that a genocide has taken place to show that the person who did the act intended to destroy a group. Since the person proving this is often from the group that is the victim group, what it tends to do, I think, is create the sort of condition in which you associate with the alleged perpetrator a sort of bad intent toward another group and it tends to pit the victim group against the perpetrator group.

I think the danger is it tends to reinforce the very conditions that it seeks to prevent. It reinforces the sense that one group is against another group. And that was what Lauterpach was concerned about. He was very concerned that it would do exactly that and I think that is a critique of the concept of genocide. On the other hand, Lemkin is right: people are not killed because they are only individuals
In your opinion, is there something that needs to be done? Would it be better to strike off genocide as a legal concept and leave it to historians and sociologists?
I think that is a huge question, and I'm definitely struggling with it. I'm trying to work out how the law can best assist in these difficult situations. I'm not starry-eyed about the law. I don't somehow think that magically you can come with some sort of a law one way or the other that will stop terrible things from happening. But what the law can do is it can help describe the narrative of what has happened in the past and hopefully -- but the jury's out on this -- also prevent future things from happening.

These are really complex questions that go to the issue of identity. Going into the research for all this, I came across all of the material from the mid-1940s that showed, for example, that in the United States there was very strong opposition to the concept of genocide particularly among southern senators. They didn't like Lemkin's idea because they were worried it was going to be used to deal with issues of discrimination in the southern states in the United States, and in particular that between whites and blacks it would cause further tensions, further difficulties, and that the negroes -- as they were then called -- would use the concept of genocide to attack discriminatory laws in the United States.

I think there is probably not a society in the world that can escape the consequences of these kinds of debates. It just touches all of us and goes to the heart of the human condition, really.
You are working all this out in a book now. Can you tell us about a little about that?
The book will be published next year. It is going to be published by Knopf in America and hopefully will come out elsewhere. It is a very personal book for me because it focuses on the city of Lemberg/ Lwow/ Lviv, the remarkable city that all of your listeners really ought to try to visit. But I got into this book by accident because my grandfather had been born in that city at exactly the same time that Lemkin and Lauterpach lived in the city and I was curious about how it was that I had become involved in cases about crimes against humanity and genocide.

I was astonished to discover that my own roots were connected to that same city -- so I wondered what it was that was in the water or in the air of Lemberg/ Lwow/ Lviv, that had caused different people with different backgrounds to get involved in these same issues. The book will come out next year and I'll be happy to talk in more detail, if I've reached a conclusion as to which side of the debate I come out on.

This post appears courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

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What's the Difference Between 'Crimes Against Humanity' and 'Genocide?'

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What are the differences between the legal terms "crimes against humanity" and "genocide"? And are both equally useful in punishing mass crimes and facilitating closure? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Robert Coalson spoke with British lawyer Philippe Sands about his forthcoming book, which explores this issue.

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Get to know the case studies:
Trail of Tears (USA) 1830-1850
Conquest of the Desert (Argentina) 1880-1904
King Leopold and the Congo (Congo) 1885-1908
Ukrainan Famine (Ukraine) 1932-1935
Nanking Massacre (China) 1937
Annexation of Tibet (Tibet/China) 1950-present
Uyghur Crisis (China) 2018-present
Putin's War in Ukraine 2022-present

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Materials Needed:
-Notebook/pencil
-Compare & Contrast Handout

Directions:
1) Look over your notes on the survivor story you chose to evaluate.
2) Draw a Triple Bubble Map in your notebook. Compare your survivor story to two different survivor's stories. You will need to collaborate with peers to do this activity.
3) In your notebook, write a reflection:
- How did these stories make you feel?
-If you could talk to your survivor, what would you ask them about their experience?
-What are some things you can do to help people reflect on this tragedy?

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Check your email.
Fill out the form.

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Follow this model for your own case study.
This case, the current war in Ukraine, is being conducted by Ms. Johnston, Ms. Schuette, and Mr. Titterington.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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If you are interested, here is another source that talks about the concept, "We Are Less Than Human." This source also includes a map of genocides of the 20th century.

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"Memories of death do not just disappear. If it is not what one went through, it's about the loss of the loved ones. It is about dehumanisation, discrimination, torture and emptiness. Survivors remember times they hated who they were because their rights were denied, including their most precious right: Life. To survive genocide is to live with a perpetual wound, suffering and trauma."

The above are the words of Tom Ndahiro, who 20 years after still shivers at the memories of 1994, the year when the genocide happened, becoming a major turning point in Rwanda's history. The genocide, a hate crime of absurd proportions, was unprecedented in both the scale and the cruelty with which it was carried out: over one million people butchered in a space of only 100 days.

Hate Crimes, as old as Humanity itself

Hate crimes are criminal acts --such as vandalism, arson, assault, or murder-- committed against someone because of his or her race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, age, or gender. In a hate crime, the person is selected because of a characteristic that he or she cannot change.

The origin of hate crimes dates back to ancient civilizations. One of the earliest examples is from the Roman Empire, which was well known for persecuting various religious groups.

Some examples of hate crime have been so tremendous that they have affected the entire world. One of the most notable is the Nazi's persecution of the Jewish people, better known as the Holocaust. In more recent years, the act of genocide, or attempting to obliterate an entire ethnic, racial or religious group, has occurred in both Bosnia and Rwanda.

How does genocide happen?

Simply put, almost any human society can perpetrate "a genocide"-even those that value human life. But in order for the genocide to occur, perpetrators need to dehumanize and make excuses for why a single group of people might be worth of being exterminated. It may seem surprising that an otherwise seemingly healthy society might be able to foster hate on such a level that it would lead to murder. But time and time again these atrocities have occurred in our world.

Genocide does not occur in a vacuum, it requires a backdrop of growing hostility and heightened civil unrest. When specific archetypes and myths are used to fuel hatred, violence inevitably begins to occur. In short, there is a communication of hate that precedes instances of genocide. While you might ordinarily think of the 'communication' of hate in terms of speeches, texts, and video materials, communication runs deeper.

Says Ndahiro, "The propaganda of hate immunizes the killer of feeling guilty, both during and after the genocide. Once an ordinary citizen is persuaded by civil and religious authorities that a particular group is intrinsically malevolent and is the enemy, it becomes guilt-free to get involved in the mass murder. The feeling becomes that of self-defense (individual) and a patriotic responsibility."

Kennedy Ndahiro, Executive Editor of The New Times in Rwanda adds: "In the years leading up to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the government used all its propaganda machinery to spread bigotry and hatred of the Tutsi, who were called 'inyenzi' (cockroach). The term became ingrained in the public sphere as hate radio RTLM and outspoken politicians claiming to defend Hutu power referred to human beings as cockroaches."

Back in 1959 Joseph Gitera, a Hutu politician, declared the first ten Hutu Commandments, a Decalogue of hate apparently inspired in Hitler's Mein Kempf. Gitera compared the cohabitation between Hutus and Tutsis to "an incurable wound, a leech in the body and a stomach cancer or pneumonia."

In 1993, a "Hutu Power" ideology re-emerged. Its ideologues prepared the general Hutu population for a revolution. What they galvanized was that Tutsis were an alien race and not Rwandans. They wanted power in the hands of the Hutu, not as a "majority" ethnic group, but because the Hutus were the nation. The 8th commandment was decisive: "Hutus must stop having pity for Tutsis".

In the years before the genocide, dehumanizing stereotypes against the Tutsi multiplied to include "cockroaches", the "filthy" etc. In 1995, a Rwandan Catholic Bishop, Focus Nikwigize, said Tutsis were "evil by nature".

And, in the end, from politician to the ordinary farmer, Hutus united to get rid of the 'cockroaches,' working together to exterminate their Tutsi friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members. 800.000 Tutsis were killed in the lapse of 100 days. Every second in the hundred days saw the death of at least one Tutsi, thanks to active participation of several ordinary people and indifference or general apathy from a huge section of the population.

Impact of bias crimes

Victims of hate crimes often feel degraded, frightened, vulnerable and suspicious. This may be one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives. Community members who share with victims the characteristics that made them targets of hate (race, religion, ethnic/national origin, gender, or disability) may also feel vulnerable, fearful, and powerless. In this emotional atmosphere, a swift and strong law enforcement response can help stabilize and calm the community, while aiding the victim's recovery.

As for the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, scholars and survivors say the process of healing is not easy.

Donald Miller, who directs the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, has collected stories of those orphaned and widowed by the Rwanda massacre. He notes several themes emerge from the interviews, most recently in Rwanda. "One thing is that forgiveness is extremely difficult. And in our experience of doing 100 interviews, that is the exceptional case. In fact, what we found is that some individuals are so traumatized that they may say that they have forgiven the perpetrators of this genocide, but they say so almost with a spirit of resignation in their voice, as if, 'we have no other choice,'" said Miller.

The future ahead

When asked about the possibility of a fall back into the patterns that led to the genocide, Tom Ndahiro explains "Genocide is a crime committed by government. There is no possibility to see another genocide when we have a government that is inclusive of all the Rwandans. The "never again" resolve will cease to be mere rhetoric when the international community, in general, understands that genocide prevention starts with monitoring hate speech targeting specific groups of people. Early warning signs of genocide are words and not bullets or machetes. Failure to acknowledge that fact has led to abysmal failure of many international organizations. Tackling head-on the genocide denial and the underlying hate ideology, is the beginning and continuation of fighting the most heinous crime. G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E.

I believe that people who cherish extermination ideologies, must not be allowed to govern. What happened before and during the Third Reich, and in Rwanda from 1959 to 1994, should stand as lessons to warn everybody. It is not the responsibility of Rwandans alone, but of Humanity."

Modern technology, including the use of mass media to motivate the killers, made the 20th century a century of genocides, from Armenia and the Nazi Holocaust to Rwanda -said Donald Miller from Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. The mass killings in Cambodia, Darfur and Southern Sudan have added other atrocities to the tragic list.
Read more

By Claudia Schalkx in cooperation with Tom Ndahiro

Tom Ndahiro is a genocide survivor and scholar, journalist , human rights activist and blogger. He has published several articles nationally and internationally and is also the author of the book "The Friends of Evil" which is available through his two blogs friendsofevil.wordpress.com, and umuvugizi.wordpress.com

Claudia is a multilingual consultant fluent in Spanish, English, Italian, and Dutch with over 25 years international experience in communications, public relations & marketing. She was born in Venezuela from Dutch parents, has lived and worked in Venezuela, Colombia, Curacao, St. Maarten, USA, Italy and The Netherlands where she resides. She is Colors Chief Editor. Her duties include content selection, revision & editing, finding and attracting collaborators, and identifying new business opportunities for Liberty Publications. More info

Sources: Tom Ndahiro, Friends of Evil, kwibuka.rw umuvugizi.wordpress.com, friendsofevil.wordpress.com, historyplace.co, history.com, genocidewatch.org

Pictures with permission of kwibuka / all rights reserved / Filmagen

More Main Stories /Do you wish to write for Colors?

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"Memories of death do not just disappear. If it is not what one went through, it's about the loss of the loved ones. It is about dehumanisation, discrimination, torture and emptiness. Survivors remember times they hated who they were because their rights were denied, including their most precious right: Life.

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Challenge assumptions and create ideas. Start to create solutions.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Weighing the evidence: What sources do I have and what kind of sources are they?

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What sources do we need to round out our collection of data?

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Make a bank of resources.

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Using the sources and data you've collected, develop a claim and write an argument answering this question: "To what extent can (case study) be considered a genocide?"

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BBC News: How the war is shown on Russian TV

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BBC News: How the war is shown on Russian TV

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Russia ramps up propaganda battle with brazen video claiming Ukraine war ‘misinformation’

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's direct appeal to Russian soldiers goes viral

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NPR- Here is how propaganda is clouding Russians' understanding of the war in Ukraine

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NPR- Here is how propaganda is clouding Russians' understanding of the war in Ukraine

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Here’s how propaganda is clouding Russians’ understanding of the war in Ukraine

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The truth about the war is hard to find in Russia and is mostly discovered only by people who already distrust the Kremlin and its state-sponsored media, says Russian-born journalist Julia Ioffe.

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What the Ukraine War Looks Like From Russia

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What the Ukraine War Looks Like From Russia

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An extraordinary event unfolded on Russian television late Monday: Mid-newscast on main state TV outlet Channel One, a woman rushed in behind the anchor and unfurled a handwritten poster.

"No War," read the sign. "Don't believe propaganda. They're lying to you here."

The cameras quickly cut away, and the protester - Channel One employee Marina Ovsyannikova - was later detained.

Amid the Kremlin's campaign to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, the scene was a rare off-message moment in an otherwise heavily scripted effort to shape Russians' perceptions of events on the ground.

For years, state TV has remained Russians' top source of news, balanced only by a handful of independent and often digital outlets. But now, a range of Kremlin-backed media - including Channel One, Rossiya 1, energy giant Gazprom's NTV and cable news channel Rossiya 24 - is increasingly the only word of record, as critical media shutter en masse thanks to a new law that criminalizes the very term "war" itself.

Whereas global reporting has largely focused on the suffering of Ukrainian civilians, Russians are offered a starkly different story at home. Their screens present accounts of a humanitarian Kremlin mission - one in which "surgical" airstrikes target Ukrainian nationalists and spare civilians, where American agents seek to deploy anti-Russian bioweapons and where Ukraine's leaders are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons to attack the Russian homeland.

New Russian laws muzzle journalists

The shaping of the Russian narrative begins with words - both chosen and left unsaid.

The new law, passed this month, forbids journalists who are covering Ukraine from using the words "war" or "invasion," in favor of "special military operation" - the term used by President Vladimir Putin when he announced Russian forces would enter Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers in Donbas "republics" recognized by Moscow just hours prior.

An additional law penalizes any coverage of the military that contradicts the government's accounts or is deemed as denigrating the armed forces. This has led to an exodus of journalists, foreign and domestic, over threats of 15 years' imprisonment for sharing what the state deems "fake news."

The venerable Echo of Moscow radio station - a symbol of press freedoms that emerged in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union - was unceremoniously taken off the airwaves and replaced by government programming.

"It is Orwell 1984," said Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats, who hosted a political talk show on Echo of Moscow for nearly two decades before its closure. "In this world ... lies are truth and war is peace."

The independent Dozhd TV also suspended its operations amid government pressure. The station went off air with an eerie vintage Soviet broadcast of Swan Lake - the classic Tchaikovsky ballet that Russians have come to view as a broadcast harbinger of repression and political turmoil.

Platforms for free expression were winnowed further still with Russia's blockage of social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter. Nearly all of Russia's independent journalism has now retreated into the Telegram messaging app -a lifeline for news, but also for rumor and disinformation.

Meanwhile, state media propagandists - many under sanctions by the West - have rushed in to fill the information void.

State media stoke fears

The worldview painted by Russian state outlets is a Kremlin alternative to Western narratives. In it, virtually all global events are framed through Russian interests: Putin is a political heavyweight unmatched in the global arena. And the world's nations routinely look to Moscow for solutions to the most protracted international crises.

Here, unconfirmed guesswork is equal to facts, while facts are inherently subjective.

Across all networks, Ukraine's fighters are "terrorists" and "rebels," NATO is Ukraine's "overseas master" and Russian rockets strike only military targets, while Ukrainian troops use hospitals and residential buildings for cover.

"All the experts say we're using our aircraft with great accuracy and our artillery with precision," said pro-Kremlin pundit Vladimir Solovyov on one of his recent talk shows. He saturates the radio and TV airwaves so thoroughly that he once broke the world record for most live hours broadcast in a week.

Vesti Nedeli - the flagship Week's News Sunday program hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov on Rossiya 1 - led this week's broadcast by repeating Putin's debunked claims of Ukrainian "Nazis" conducting a campaign of "genocide" in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.

"It's clear by now," began Kiselyov, "that if our troops hadn't gone in, the Donbas would have been wiped from the face of the Earth."

Kiselyov claimed a journalistic scoop: documents that he said showed the West sought NATO membership for Ukraine in a bid to place nuclear weapons on its soil. A nuclear-empowered regime in Kyiv, Kiselyov warned, would try to retake the Crimean Peninsula, sparking a massive war.

Another key daily talk show, 60 Minutes, hosted by Olga Skabeyeva, also recently honed in on Donetsk, showing repeated footage of a missile that Russian authorities claim was launched by Ukrainian forces and killed two dozen people. Over and over, the program alerted viewers to breaking news of a rising death toll from this incident, punctuated by shouting, outraged studio guests.

President Biden, too, looms large in Russia's state media coverage. Talk show hosts air anti-Biden remarks by former President Donald Trump and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. They cite Biden's "plunging" ratings, impending U.S. "gas riots" and "increasing calls" for Biden's impeachment, saying he blames Russia for his domestic troubles.

Truth-seeking is fraught

While state media audiences skew older, surveys have shown that 64% of Russians still get their news from TV. State-run polls show that a majority of Russians - over 70% - support the Kremlin's "special military operation."

It's a reflection, analysts say, of the broader public's inability to parse the barrage of propaganda.

"Most people are not truth-seekers. ... They will not go in pursuit of facts or truth. They go on about their daily life," says Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. "So they are subconsciously looking for some kind of excuses, and they buy into this narrative that is on offer for them."

Fear, too, is widely believed to skew polling numbers. Over 15,000 protesters have been detained in anti-war protests since the Russian campaign began in Ukraine.

Ovsyannikova, the Channel One employee who charged onto the set Monday with her anti-war message, published a video in advance expressing "shame" for taking part in the Kremlin's propaganda machine. Her mother is Russian but her father is Ukrainian, Ovsyannikova explained.

"Go out and protest," she said in the recording. "Don't be afraid. They can't imprison us all."

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What Ukraine war news looks like from Russia

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An extraordinary event unfolded on Russian television late Monday: Mid-newscast on main state TV outlet Channel One, a woman rushed in behind the anchor and unfurled a handwritten poster. "No War," read the sign. "Don't believe propaganda. They're lying to you here."

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What's being done to thwart Russian misinformation? 

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What's being done to thwart Russian misinformation? 

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🇷🇺 What is being done to thwart Russian disinformation on Ukraine? | The Stream

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Телеканал 1+1

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Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov talks about Russia's war against Ukraine

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Last month, Dmytro Kuzubov put on his headphones and walked around Kharkiv for hours. He felt that the war would start soon and he wanted to visit some of his favorite places. Kharkiv is his hometown: a vibrant, youthful city of nearly 1.5 million people steeped in academia, art and literature.

The attacks started a few days later. Unable to take control of the city, Russia has resorted to destroying it. As in Syria and Chechnya, Russia aims to demoralize the city's inhabitants with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower. It is following a similar plan in other Ukrainian cities, such as Mariupol and Mykolaiv.

"The most horrible thing was the whistle of jets. I will remember them all my life," said Mr. Kuzubov, who has since fled Kharkiv, along with hundreds of thousands of others.

This was a kindergarten classroom.

This was somebody's living room.

And this was the site of the Old Hem, a popular pub in the building's basement, where a statue of Ernest Hemingway greeted patrons out front.

"It was one of my favorite places. A lot of stuff happened there - screaming, fights, drinking, funny songs," said Alex Sedov, a third-generation Kharkivite. "It was a great place, and I'm very sad it's gone."

Russia has attacked Kharkiv with artillery, rockets, cluster munitions and guided missiles on at least 13 different days, a relentless barrage, lately targeting the city at night. Most Kharkiv residents are Russian speakers, and many are ethnic Russians.

At least 500 civilians have been killed, according to the city's emergency services agency. The true number is likely higher, and rescue workers continue to dig through the rubble.

"Kharkiv is not yet completely destroyed, but we hear constant shelling, constant bombing," said Natalka Zubar, a 57-year-old I.T. professional who has remained in the city. "It's a place of constant airborne terror."

The city is full of historic monuments, home to 24 universities and some 200,000 students and professors, Ms. Zubar said. The main Kharkiv National University building still stands but has been damaged from nearby explosions.

Windows of one of the main university buildings were blown out.

The economics department was hit directly.

And the university gym was destroyed.

"You would see so many young people on the streets; it gave the city this kind of energetic, vibrant feeling because of the youth," said Maria Avdeeva, a disinformation and security expert. "Imagine tomorrow, life goes back to normal in Kharkiv. Where will they live? Where will they go to university?"

For Ms. Avdeeva and other lifelong residents, the annihilation of the city is incomprehensible. She remains in Kharkiv, documenting its destruction. Last weekend she walked around in search of stores still selling food.

"It was Saturday, usually you would think: Go to a shop, go to a cafe. What a Saturday should be like," she said. "It's nothing of that kind now."

On March 1, a rocket struck directly in front of the Kharkiv regional administration building, an imposing structure in the city's main square that flew the Ukrainian flag from its roof. The education department, the finance department - "almost everything which is connected to the functioning of the Kharkiv region" - had offices in this building, Ms. Avdeeva said.

The building is not only important, it is meaningful, too.

"It is the symbol of Kharkiv, and everyone who is coming to Kharkiv takes pictures here. There is no way you can come to Kharkiv and not notice this building," said Ms. Avdeeva.

The adjacent square was also heavily damaged in the strike. Originally named after the founder of the Soviet secret police, the square was renamed Freedom Square after Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

"They are destroying our historical heritage and our architectural heritage. They want to destroy it all, they want to demoralize people," Mr. Kuzubov said.

A week before the invasion, Mr. Kuzubov and his friends went to see the movie "Rhino" by Oleh Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker, at the newly opened Nikolsky Mall.

At around 10:30 p.m. on March 9, a rocket crashed through the roof, leaving shattered glass and debris everywhere inside.

This is the mall now.

This was a tram depot.

This was a school.

Some of Russia's strikes in the opening days of the invasion were aimed at military targets. Since then, they have been indiscriminate. Hundreds of apartment buildings have been hit, including this one in Saltivka, a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Kharkiv.

"They are maximizing the terror. They are shelling or bombing random objects now," said Ms. Zubar. "But we would rather die fighting for the city than leave."

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Last month, Dmytro Kuzubov put on his headphones and walked around Kharkiv for hours. He felt that the war would start soon and he wanted to visit some of his favorite places. Kharkiv is his hometown: a vibrant, youthful city of nearly 1.5 million people steeped in academia, art and literature.

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NYTimes: Russian Soldiers Took Their City, Then Their Homes

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NYTimes: Russian Soldiers Took Their City, Then Their Homes

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As Russian forces pushed toward Kyiv, they stormed an apartment complex in a nearby suburb and held residents hostage. Some of it was caught on camera.

Video

KYIV, Ukraine - For days, Roman Naumenko and his neighbors at the Pokrovsky apartment complex outside Kyiv had been watching from a few short miles away as Russian forces tried to take over a nearby airport.

"I saw helicopters that were firing, coming one after the other," he said. "It was a huge shock. I couldn't believe it was real."

Residents would stand outside their buildings filming the destruction with their cellphones.

Video

Each day, Russian forces drew closer and closer to the apartment complex. On March 3, one of the buildings was directly hit by a missile. More than 150 families were still in the 14-building residential complex at the time, a building manager told The New York Times.

Video

And then, later that same day, troops were literally at Mr. Naumenko's doorstep.

"We saw the Russian infantry on the security camera of our building," he said. "From that moment, the Russians stayed."

They made around 200 residents stay too, holding many of them hostage in the basements of their own buildings, forcing them to hand over their phones and taking over their apartments. Others were able to avoid detection but still were essentially prisoners in their own homes as Russian forces moved into the buildings, which had housed 560 families, and took up sniping positions.

The Times interviewed seven residents of the Pokrovsky apartment complex in the town of Hostomel, about 10 miles northwest of Kyiv. All experienced the assault and the captivity firsthand before finding ways to flee. Using their accounts, along with footage from security cameras and cellphones, The Times was able to piece together what it looked and felt like as Russian forces closed in.

"It was really scary," said Lesya Borodyuk, a 49-year-old resident, tearing up at one point as she spoke. "I wrote to my daughter. I was saying goodbye to her. I told her that probably we will be bombed now."

Outside in the parking lot, security cameras showed at least a dozen Russian troops and infantry fighting vehicles. Soldiers shuttled heavy machine guns and forced a man inside a building at gunpoint.

Video

Ksenia, who asked to be identified only by her first name, watched with her husband and children from their second-floor window as Russian forces arrived at their building.

"We didn't know what could happen to us," she said. "It was just a total state of fear."

One group of soldiers used rifles to smash open the front door of an apartment building. Once inside, they entered the elevator and destroyed its security cameras. In some buildings, soldiers went floor by floor tearing doors off hinges and raiding apartments, residents said.

Video

Within a few hours, according to the seven residents The Times spoke to, Russian soldiers had seized the entire complex and trapped close to 200 civilians inside various buildings.

"People were kicked out of the apartments," said Elena Anishchenko, who was planning to celebrate her 33th birthday with neighbors the day the soldiers arrived. "They didn't ask anyone anything, they would just tell them to go to the basement."

Many of the residents had their phones and laptops confiscated or destroyed.

"They told us - 'Don't be mad at us, but if we find your phone, you will be shot on the spot,'" Ms. Anishchenko said.

Video

Cut off from the outside world, Ms. Anishchenko said she couldn't read the news or speak to her family.

Some residents like Ksenia were able to remain in their homes - perhaps because she had an infant.

Others went unnoticed. Mr. Naumenko and his wife hid on the seventh floor of their building. He still had his phone, which he would turn on once a day to text his family that he was still alive.

Friends and relatives of those trapped in Pokrovsky were in agony. In chat groups and via text messages, they had seen clips and screen shots of Russian soldiers as they seized the complex. Then the messages from their loved ones just stopped.

Iryna Khomyakova, a resident's daughter, saw the closed-circuit television footage of the soldiers entering the elevator. Worried, she called her mother, who said that Russian soldiers had just entered the building and that she was forced with others into the basement.

"My mom's phone died," she said on March 9, and she hadn't heard from her in days.

Hanna Yaremchuk told The Times via text message that she was out of touch with her father for days, adding that he was also being held in a basement. She wondered: "Is he alive at all? !!! I do not know!"

For those being detained, the ability to move around depended on the guards.

Ms. Borodyuk and others in her basement were permitted to go to their apartments to get food and warm clothes to help withstand the cold of the brick basement. Neighbors were permitted to cook together and intermingle.

The Russians guarding Ms. Anishchenko's basement were more strict. They allowed the residents only short, supervised visits to their apartments to get food and supplies for everyone.

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Infantry fighting vehicles outside the Pokrovsky complex. Credit... The New York Times

"People were panicking," Ms. Anishchenko said, "Everyone was past their breaking point."

Eventually, a hundred or more soldiers were patrolling outside the buildings, and some were even living in the apartments.

On the seventh floor, Mr. Naumenko and his wife continued to evade detection. Recent shelling in the area had blown out their windows and the temperature had dropped below freezing. With no electricity, they improvised ways to cook, lighting oil in a saucer to warm up food and using a candle to heat a can of water. Without heat in the building, they slept fully dressed and wearing jackets.

In Ksenia's apartment, each day involved securing enough food to feed her children and surviving to the next morning. Her new life was a far cry from what she envisioned.

"We were waiting for this apartment for four years," Ksenia said. "We invested in the renovation. But even this doesn't matter now."

Outside, the fighting was relentless.

"We got used to the sounds of shooting and we learned to tell one from the other," Mr. Naumenko said. "Whether it was far or close. Whether it was going into our building or above the building. We could hear that."

Inside the apartment complex, the soldiers were telling their prisoners that Ukraine was about to be liberated, Ms. Anishchenko said.

Ms. Borodyuk recalled a more senior Russian officer attempting to comfort a girl in the basement where they were detained. "He said: 'My daughter is 8 years old too. I love her very much. I miss her. Don't be afraid, little girl, we will liberate you from Nazis.'"

Ms. Borodyuk said some of the younger Russian troops didn't even know why they were in Ukraine. When captives asked one soldier why he was here, he replied, weeping: "Where am I? What should I do?"

On March 9, Russia and Ukraine agreed to briefly establish several humanitarian corridors to allow civilians safe passage out of conflict areas. But the Russian soldiers at Pokrovsky failed to inform their prisoners.

Ms. Anishchenko heard by chance. During a supervised food visit to her apartment, she saw a convoy moving with white flags from the window and asked a Russian soldier what was happening. He told her there was a 72-hour no-strike corridor in place. She and some of her neighbors packed a bag and ran.

On their way out, the scene was grim. "We saw dead bodies laying on the ground," she said. "We saw crashed and burned cars with bodies inside."

Mr. Naumenko turned his phone on and saw information in a WhatsApp group about the humanitarian corridor evacuation. He and his wife quickly gathered their things.

While leaving the complex, a soldier warned them that he would not shoot him, but those patrolling elsewhere might.

They fled anyway and escaped unharmed - along with all the other residents The Times spoke with. Naumenko is now in Kyiv, where he plans to stay - and perhaps fight.

"The things I saw in Hostomel were a nightmare. I don't want this to come here," he said.

Videos edited by Dmitriy Khavin.

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Russian Soldiers Took Their City, Then Their Homes

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As Russian forces pushed toward Kyiv, they stormed an apartment complex in a nearby suburb and held residents hostage. Some of it was caught on camera. KYIV, Ukraine - For days, Roman Naumenko and his neighbors at the Pokrovsky apartment complex outside Kyiv had been watching from a few short miles away as Russian forces tried to take over a nearby airport.

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Update on the War in Ukraine: New York Times

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Update on the War in Ukraine: New York Times

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Ukraine Dispatch

Simple rituals, like having coffee in a cafe in Lviv, Ukraine, take on a new and sometimes surreal meaning in a radically altered context.

Visual Investigations

Ukraine's capital is the biggest prize of all for the Russian military. If Russia tries to take control, it could lead to one of the biggest urban conflicts since World War II.

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Simple rituals, like having coffee in a cafe in Lviv, Ukraine, take on a new and sometimes surreal meaning in a radically altered context. Visual Investigations Ukraine's capital is the biggest prize of all for the Russian military. If Russia tries to take control, it could lead to one of the biggest urban conflicts since World War II.

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The autocrat has been trying for decades to end what he sees as a prolonged period of Russian humiliation.

The Biden Administration is determined to do something rare in the history of U.S. foreign policy. By trying to expose Vladimir Putin's military tactics in Ukraine ahead of their execution, by making every attempt to declare U.S. readiness to avert war through negotiation and, at the same time, to make clear the consequences of an invasion, Biden is being shrewd and deliberative. But will he be effective?

War is not what it used to be. War no longer need be a matter of bombing raids and blitzkriegs. Putin could certainly flatten much of Kyiv and other Ukraine cities in days, but he can render them helpless through other means: cyberattacks, false-flag operations, assaults on the electrical grid, the water supply, the banking system. Targeted information--or, better, propaganda--is often as effective in modern warfare as a surging body count. As the historian Stephen Kotkin, the author of a multivolume biography of Stalin, put it recently, "You turn a country off." Like a light switch. And, in that sudden darkness, panic and instability ensue. This, according to the Biden Administration, is the hideous scenario, in one form or another, that confronts Ukraine.

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In recent years, as Putin has modernized Russia's armed forces and announced his intention to re-litigate the post-Soviet security arrangements of Europe, his top generals and intelligence chiefs have studied and practiced the modern art that is hybrid warfare. They displayed at least some of their new tactics, in 2014, when Russian special-forces soldiers wearing uniforms without insignia--the so-called little green men--led the occupation of Crimea. Soon afterward, in the eastern rust belt of Ukraine, they employed and armed local separatist proxies to try to hive off the regions around Donetsk and Luhansk from the writ of the government in Kyiv.

In any larger-scale operation against Ukraine, Putin could use an escalating set of hybrid tactics. Russian-backed forces are already shelling targets in the east, as Moscow's propaganda organs blame the violence on the Ukrainian government. There are already reports of cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks and ministries. Proxies or Russian troops could seize swathes of Ukraine in stages. Russian operations could stretch over weeks and months.

In a personalized regime, it is senseless to try to divine what is in the head of the autocrat. Will Putin invade or attend a summit meeting with Biden? (The American President has agreed to such a meeting so long as Putin holds fire.) What few confidantes Putin does have do not betray confidences. Biden and his aides are trying to defuse Putin's capacity for surprise by announcing his potential moves in advance, but that tactic, so far, has not proved to be a brake on the Russian leader's bloody-minded determination.

Putin's calculations are immune to the pressures of normal politics, which do not exist in Russia. He is willing to pay a high price, it seems, even a potentially ruinous economic price, to reassert Russian power in Europe. Who dares to counsel against it? There are no political encumbrances on him, no Russian opposition that demands hearing. He has made sure of that.

At the same time, Putin appears to believe that the West is exhausted after its military follies of the past twenty years and lacks the cohesion and leverage to oppose him in his own neighborhood. Donald Trump's flagrant displays of contempt for NATO were, for Putin, a most pleasing and encouraging spectacle. And although the Biden Administration has acted in far greater concert with European allies, Putin has not relented. Perhaps the most powerful economic sanction the West could levy against Russia would be Europe, particularly Germany, stopping its purchase of Russia's gas. There is no guarantee of that. What's more, Putin seems to hope that a closer relationship with the Chinese will provide him a strategic and economic cushion.

Russians generally see Ukrainians as familial, as neighbors intimately linked by history, geography, language, and culture. But Putin has solved, at least in his mind, the contradiction of waging war on Russia's Ukrainian brothers and sisters. His official media outlets blame the United States, and unchecked propaganda translates into popular opinion. "The majority say that there will be sanctions anyway, no matter what Russia is doing, and the West is only looking for an excuse to impose new sanctions," Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, Russia's only major independent polling agency, recently said. "We see that the majority actually hold the United States accountable for what's going on. It's not even about Ukraine. It's about the United States and Russia."

The few remaining independent media outlets in Russia have been muted. "Journalists are scared. There is a conversation on Facebook, but people are very careful," Masha Lipman, a Moscow-based political analyst, told me. "Among the constituency of Russian liberals, there's a general sense of despondency and intimidation. Some are in jail, many more have been forced to emigrate, so the atmosphere is not that of vocal anger. There's a premonition of further crackdown and what it might amount to." In Russia, the figure-skating competition at the Winter Olympics, in Beijing, seems to arouse more conversation than the conflict with Ukraine. "Maybe this is a matter of psychological self-preservation," Lipman said. "You switch away from what might be a real war tomorrow to something that makes no sense whatsoever."

Putin's confrontation with the West over Ukraine follows a familiar cycle in Russian history of loss and reassertion. After the First World War, Russia's sphere of influence contracted significantly. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia became independent. Ukraine, too, declared independence in 1918; and, although that independence was short-lived, the experience lived long in the memories of Ukrainians. In the Gorbachev era, it would resurface and play a central role in the fall of the Soviet Union.

In early 1989, as a Moscow-based correspondent for the Washington Post, I travelled to western Ukraine, to the city of Lviv. Alienated by decades of Moscow rule and thoroughly disgusted by the Kremlin's indifference to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, small groups of pro-independence activists were taking their cue from the Popular Front movements in the Baltic states. "Right now we are not a strong movement, we don't have anything like the organization you see now in the Baltics," Vyacheslav Chornovil, a former political prisoner, told me at the time. Chornovil and his dissident allies calculated that no Soviet leader, even a relative liberal like Gorbachev, could tolerate dissent in Ukraine as readily as in the Baltic states or Georgia and Armenia. "The Soviet Empire knows that, in the end, it can always survive without the Baltics or the Transcaucasus-it's only a few million people here and there, after all," Stepan Khmara, a physician and a human-rights activist, told me. "Moscow could even do without Eastern Europe, because it turns out that this is a very expensive military buffer zone. But Lenin knew it from the start: The empire cannot survive without the Ukraine. There are just too many people, too many resources, here. It will inevitably be a fight. The question is: when?"

As it happened, Gorbachev declined to do real battle with the independence movement. The newly formed People's Movement of Ukraine, known as Rukh, flourished. In September, 1989, Adam Michnik, a Polish intellectual and a leader of the Solidarity movement, came to Ukraine to speak at Rukh's first congress. In his speech, Michnik cried out, " Khai zhyve Ukraina!" ("Long live Ukraine!"), and the crowd responded with cheers. The movement gained extraordinary momentum. A few months later, more than four hundred thousand Ukrainian men and women, imitating demonstrations in the Baltic states, formed a human chain stretching from Lviv to Kyiv.

On December 1, 1991, Ukraine held a referendum on independence; ninety per cent of the voters supported it. The center could not hold. The leaders of Russia (Boris Yeltsin), Belarus (Stanislav Shushkevich), and Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk) met alone at a hunting lodge in Belarus. The conclave was high-spirited-Yeltsin, especially, drank to startling excess-but it could not have been more consequential. The three leaders agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was infuriated, but he had no recourse. On the night of December 25, 1991, he resigned, and the Soviet flag came down from the Kremlin for the last time. Ukraine was a sovereign nation once more. By 2009, the image of Chornovil, who died in 1999, was on a Ukrainian postage stamp.

Putin regards these events not as a liberation from the burden of empire but, rather, as the "greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century." He has no nostalgia at all for Communist ideology; what he mourns instead is the loss of Russian power and centrality. And, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the diminishment of Russian territorial and imperial grandeur was far greater than it was following the First World War. The Kremlin, which had once held sway over Eastern and Central Europe and fourteen Soviet republics beyond Russia, was now distinctly less powerful.

Many Russians, not only Putin, saw this as a humiliation, especially so when, over the next twelve years, seven Eastern and Central European countries and the three Baltic states joined NATO. Yeltsin, who had succeeded Gorbachev in the Kremlin, would occasionally complain to Bill Clinton and European leaders about the growth of NATO, but he had no capacity to do much about it. Moreover, the leaders of those newly independent states, having experienced long decades of Soviet subjugation, wanted to join Western institutions as a matter of security and economic prosperity.

Twenty-two years ago, Putin, appointed by Yeltsin as his successor, took power, determined to end what he saw as a prolonged period of Russian weakness and humiliation. To do so, he showed scant interest in building stable, democratic institutions. What he set out to do instead was to construct a regime built around himself. With the help of rising oil prices and a modernizing energy sector, he enriched a cadre of loyal friends, oligarchs, and officials, and began to develop at least a modest-sized middle class in Moscow and other cities. Rule of law languished, the news media was kept under tight control, opposition politics and parties were repressed. His most vivid opponent, Alexey Navalny, is now in prison and facing an extended sentence.

Putin looked upon the popular uprisings and "color revolutions" around the world as examples of what can happen when authoritarians loosen the reins. In 2011, tens of thousands of demonstrators came out to Moscow's Bolotnaya Square, chanting "Russia Without Putin!" and insisting that the parliamentary elections had been a sham. Putin blamed the U.S. (including Hillary Clinton, who was then Secretary of State) for instigating the rallies. The crackdown that followed was severe and persists to this day.

Similarly, Putin's foreign policy is based on a reassertion of Russian power. In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, he lashed out at what he said was Washington's creation of a unipolar world in which "there is one master, one sovereign." More even than the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Putin resented NATO's bombing of Belgrade, in 1999, and criticized the alliance for installing "frontline forces on our borders." Talk of Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO only deepened his resolve. Since then, Putin has seized Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Crimea; he has moved on the Donbas and now, potentially, the whole of Ukraine.

The oft-heard assertion that Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet Union is excessive and incorrect. Even Belarus, whose leaders could not be more subservient to Moscow, is not a formal part of Russia. Empire is prohibitively expensive. Putin hardly wants to "own" a poor country like Ukraine. Rather, he wants to forestall any further movement there toward an unreliable and more democratic political system and integration with Western security alliances.

None of the fifteen republics that emerged as independent nations after the fall of the Soviet Union have faced a cloudless path. Ukraine's economy is dismal, one of the worst in Europe. For years, much of the political class was phenomenally corrupt. And Russia, particularly during Putin's reign, has ceaselessly interfered in Ukraine's politics, putting its weight behind pro-Moscow politicians and infiltrating Ukrainian institutions with spies. But, although Ukraine is hardly a unified nation, Russian interference has had the effect of pushing it toward the embrace of the West. As recently as 2013, according to most polling, less than thirty per cent of Ukrainians favored joining NATO; after the mass demonstrations in the center of Kyiv, called Euromaidan, and the annexation of Crimea, in 2014, support for joining NATO grew. It is now at around sixty per cent.

Serhii Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, told me that Putin's current strategy is reminiscent of both imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. "The strategy is not economic; it's geopolitical," Plokhy said. "It's based on a traditional Russian and Soviet understanding of security: you surround yourself with dependencies, with buffer states. What is new is that it's also an attempt to reëstablish control of the post-Soviet space. It's not the Soviet Union but a new form of control."

Through the years, Putin has made it plain that he does not consider Ukraine to be a real country. In July, a long essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" appeared under his name. Much of the language and scholastic discourse echo, in cartoonish form, the writings of nineteenth-century Russian nationalists such as Mikhail Katkov. At other times, Putin has praised the views of the dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who exposed the totalitarian structures of the Soviet regime but also, in his 1990 essay "Rebuilding Russia," mourned the potential loss of Ukraine. Yet, when Putin notes that his views are "largely in tune" with Solzhenitsyn's, he fails to mention that the Nobel laureate, who died in 2008, acknowledged Ukraine's right to self-determination.

Putin may exult in being in control of events, in having the world try to divine his intentions, but he can hardly know where an invasion will lead. "The chances are very high that Ukrainians will resist in different ways and forms," Plokhy, the Harvard historian, predicted. "They were awakened by the events of 2013-2014. There is a significant population that is loyal to the state created in 1991, to the political system, to the freedoms that came with it, to a degree that they would take up arms and risk their lives. Hundreds of thousands have been through military training. Those people now know how to use weapons." Russia is surely the stronger force, Plokhy said, but, if it comes to war, "I would be really surprised if there were no major resistance. . . . Partisan warfare is almost inevitable."

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The autocrat has been trying for decades to end what he sees as a prolonged period of Russian humiliation. The Biden Administration is determined to do something rare in the history of U.S. foreign policy. By trying to expose Vladimir Putin's military tactics in Ukraine ahead of their execution, by making every attempt to declare U.S.

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Among the world's many politicians to be regularly called a narcissist, Vladimir Putin may be given the label the most, and with the most serious intent, especially since the Sochi Olympics and the Russian invasion of Crimea. During a recent segment on the PBC NewsHour, for example, New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that U.S. attitudes toward Putin have "hardened to an amazing degree" and the current administration now views him as a "narcissistic autocrat." Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, has accused Putin of " narcissistic megalomania." The Financial Times referred to the Sochi Olympics as " Putin's narcissistic self-tribute."

Photos of the Russian president scuba-diving, piloting a plane, behind the wheel of a race car, demonstrating his skill in martial arts, and baring his chest on horseback only contribute to this view and evoke the predictably derisive response: Putin is a narcissist.

But is it accurate to describe Putin as a narcissist in the clinical sense of the word? Can an understanding of the psychological roots of narcissism help us to gain deeper insight into the man and how we should respond to his aggression, rather than using the label to deride him?

Maybe.

Narcissism is a severe psychological disorder that always takes root in childhood, where family life is marked by trauma and emotional chaos. When his earliest experiences drastically depart from what is normal or expectable, a child grows up with a painful feeling of internal defect. He comes to feel that there is something damaged and shameful about himself, an "ugliness" that must be concealed. He may grow up feeling that he is a "loser." And so he develops a defensive identity to hide his unconscious shame and to "prove" that he is a winner instead. The Russian leader comes from a background similar to what one might find in a narcissist's history.
"Post siege Leningrad was a mean, hungry, impoverished place that bred mean, hungry, ferocious children."
Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952, eight years after a siege that laid waste to the city, resulting in the death of more than a million people. The city bore physical and emotional scars for decades afterward. Putin's parents had survived the siege, but his father was severely disabled and disfigured by injuries sustained in a battle not far from Leningrad; his mother nearly died of starvation. The Putins had previously lost one son who died during infancy several years before the war began and their one surviving son died in an orphanage not long after it ended. Vladimir was born into this atmosphere of hunger, disability, and profound grief.

Due to the advanced age of his parents (both turned 41 in the year of his birth) and the fact that no one seems to remember him before he began attending school, there has been a persistent but unproven rumor that Putin was actually adopted at the age of 9 or 10-which might have been a cause of further childhood trauma. But Putin's childhood was almost certainly marked by trauma in any case. In her recent biography of Putin, Masha Gessen paints a grim picture of the Leningrad complex in which the family lived, typical of the city during the post-war period. Crumbling stairwells and courtyards strewn with trash. Cramped, filthy, and crowded rooms. Families piled one on top of the other, sharing and fighting over a communal kitchen in the hallway. Post-siege Leningrad was "a mean, hungry, impoverished place that bred mean, hungry, ferocious children."

Another important detail from Gessen's biography that captures the emotional chaos of Putin's childhood environment: He spent a great deal of time with an elderly Jewish couple who lived across the hall and told his official biographers that he "did not differentiate between his parents and the old Jews." His father worked at a train car factory and his mother took a series of "backbreaking" jobs: night watchman, cleaning woman, truck loader. Though they doted on their child, the parents were desperately trying to survive, childcare was virtually non-existent, and Putin passed an increasingly large part of his time in the communal courtyard below, a space dominated by drunken thugs, cursing, and fistfights. In the personal mythology he has created, Putin takes special pride in having become one of those thugs. According to Oleg Blotsky's Vladimir Putin: The Road to Power, childhood friends support this view.

In exploring the past of prominent figures who seem to display features of narcissistic personality disorder, I have found that many of them were childhood bullies who may also have been bullied by others. The bully is a special type of narcissist who offloads or projects his sense of defect into the victims he persecutes. I'm not a loser, you are. I don't feel vulnerable and afraid, you do. Though younger and smaller than many of them, Putin fought back against the courtyard thugs and became something of a bully himself. With an explosive temper and thin skin, Putin regularly took offense, instantly lashing out with violence. According to Gessen, one childhood friend recalls that if anyone dared to insult Putin, he "would immediately jump on the guy, scratch him, bite him, rip his hair out by the clump-do anything at all never to allow anyone to humiliate him in any way."

The bullying narcissist is in flight from himself. His entire personality expresses an ongoing, relentless battle to ward off unconscious shame and a sense of internal defect, which accounts for his inability to take criticism or tolerate the smallest of slights. To deny the unconscious sense of being small, defective, and vulnerable, he projects a self-image that conveys his superiority. He establishes his own power and prestige by humiliating other people and filling them with the shame he has disavowed. For the bully, social interaction is all about proving himself a winner by making other people feel that they are the losers.

Though his history suggests, certainly, the possibility for narcissism to take root, it's impossible actually to diagnose the man at a distance. But while a courtyard thug may inspire fear, the notion of a narcissistic bully with a large army and an arsenal of nuclear weapons is terrifying. Is that what we're looking at? Some of Putin's behavior might support the narcissism theory-but there's always competing explanations:

Putin's apparent desire to reunite former Soviet republics could suggest he harbors fantasies of unlimited power. But it's also at least in part clearly a political response to the dispersal of ethnic Russians in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He shows difficulty tolerating criticism, which could be because his pride is easily injured. But it's also clearly a method of maintaining control of his government that has strong precedents in Soviet and Russian history.

His invasion of Ukraine could be seen as the move of a man who feels he's entitled to have what he wants. But it could be a cool-headed political strategy aimed at ensuring Russia's regional dominance and ability to challenge the West.

All those action man photos could be a symptom of a grandiose self-image. But maybe he just took his shirt off because it was hot that day.

A lot of Putin's seemingly narcissistic behavior, meanwhile, gives expression to attitudes shared by many of his fellow citizens. A large percentage of Russians look back with nostalgia on the Soviet era; they feel humiliated by the loss of power and prestige that came with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and admire their president for standing up to the West. According to official polls, a large majority of Russians approve of Putin's handling of the crisis in Ukraine as well as the annexation of Crimea. His current approval rating stands at an astonishing 80 percent. As the voice of his people, Vladimir Putin offers to avenge their injuries and restore their feelings of pride.
President Obama may want to project self-confidence in the face of Putin's aggression, but it could be heard as Obama telling Putin he is a loser.
Still, applying a deeper understanding of narcissism to our understanding of Putin could be useful. Diplomacy, after all, always take place in a context of uncertainty, and assuming Putin is a narcissist may help the United States' foreign-policy establishment mitigate risk in the ways it deals with him.

For example, to the extent it's plausible that we are dealing with a narcissist, it may make sense to avoid inducing shame, so as to avoid provoking a defensive response in retaliation. In which case, President Obama's remarks during his March 25th press conference at The Hague might not have been the best approach. Whatever impression of power and confidence he intended to convey, Obama's reference to Russia as a "regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors-not out of strength, but out of weakness" is the sort of remark that a narcissist would experience as humiliating. President Obama may want to project a sort of indifferent self-confidence in the face of Putin's aggression, but it could be heard as Obama telling Putin he is a loser. The risk, in that case, is that Putin could then take drastic steps, supported by a country also longing for glory and an escape from shame, to prove Obama wrong.

Putin may or may not be a clinical narcissist, but it may be wise just to treat him like one either way.

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Among the world's many politicians to be regularly called a narcissist, Vladimir Putin may be given the label the most, and with the most serious intent, especially since the Sochi Olympics and the Russian invasion of Crimea. During a recent segment on the PBC NewsHour, for example, New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that U.S.

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Cars stop at a temporary camp apparently for people fleeing the area of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 22. The southeastern port city is now largely controlled by Russian forces. (Maxar Technologies)

Satellite images and videos verified by The Washington Post show that in recent weeks, Russian-backed forces began building a camp just east of the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine.

Within two days, a line of cars was leaving Mariupol and stopping near the camp by the M14 highway in Russian-controlled territory. The apparent exodus came amid allegations from the Mariupol City Council that Russian forces were forcibly taking residents to "filtration camps."

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A British news outlet, I, reported on the camp on Sunday, citing satellite imagery released by Planet Labs. The images of Bezimenne, a town under Russian control less than an hour's drive from Mariupol, were taken Tuesday and were provided to The Post by Maxar Technologies.

Leaders of a breakaway area in the Donetsk region announced through their Telegram channel on Wednesday that together with Russian authorities, they had set up a "tent city of 30 tents" for Mariupol residents, with the capacity to hold up to 450 people.

Accompanying video geolocated by The Post shows the structures.

Interviewees in the video say they had recently arrived from Mariupol.

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said the tent city in Bezimenne was a "life-supporting" one for refugees from Mariupol. Russia is operating "as a convoy of humanitarian aid," Sergey Golova, a ministry official, said in the video released Wednesday. Russian forces were providing residents with "all necessities," such as cellphones and medical aid, he said.

Ukrainian leaders accused Russian forces last week of forcibly moving hundreds of thousands of civilians to Russia against their will. Moscow said the refugees have voluntarily fled east during the war. Ukraine has objected to any route evacuating civilians to Russia or its ally Belarus.

What is happening in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city under Russian siege?

The Russian Defense Ministry has shared posts almost daily on its selected evacuation routes for Ukrainian civilians trapped in cities. Mariupol - which Russian forces have attacked for more than three weeks - was among the first cities given a proposed route, taking residents east through territory controlled by separatists to Rostov-on-Don in Russia.

The 100-mile journey followed a highway parallel to the Sea of Azov's coast, passing by Bezimenne and the Russian city of Taganrog, where Russian authorities said other camps for Mariupol residents had been established.

The U.N. refugee agency estimates that about 270,000 Ukrainians have gone to Russia in the month since the Kremlin began its invasion of Ukraine. Leaders in Ukraine and Russia last week gave totals closer to 400,000, while differing on the reason for the migration.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry and parliament say the Russian army has forcibly "deported" Ukrainian citizens, including thousands of residents of Mariupol, the devastated port city. The ministry has warned of Russia confiscating people's passports and suggested the Kremlin wants hostages for political leverage.

Inside the terror at Mariupol's bombed theater: 'I heard screams constantly'

In a statement Sunday, the Ukrainian parliament's committee on human rights said Mariupol residents have been taken to "filtration camps" for inspection of their phones and personal documents. Then, the committee said, "some Mariupol residents were redirected to some remote cities in Russia, while the fate of the others remains unknown."

Russian officials have criticized Ukraine's refusal to support evacuations toward Russia and say they are helping a wave of refugees - many of them from the eastern Donbas region, where pro-Russian separatists controlled some territory before the invasion began.

Just before the invasion last month, U.S. officials told the United Nations that they had credible information the Kremlin was compiling lists of Ukrainians "to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation," an assertion Russia has denied.

Sarah Cahlan and Arkady Dolina contributed to this report.

UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT

HAND CURATED

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Satellite images show Russian 'tent city' built for Ukrainians

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Satellite images and videos verified by The Washington Post show that in recent weeks, Russian-backed forces began building a camp just east of the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine. Within two days, a line of cars was leaving Mariupol and stopping near the camp by the M14 highway in Russian-controlled territory.

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Memorial Pitch Day
May 23- B, C, D
May 24- E, H

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Pope Francis also promised to visit Canada as part of a process of healing and reconciliation over the church's involvement in an abusive system of residential schools.

A memorial for the children whose remains were discovered in May near the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Credit... Amber Bracken for The New York Times

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis apologized on Friday for the Roman Catholic Church's involvement in a system of Canadian boarding schools that abused Indigenous children for 100 years, an announcement that comes after the discovery last year of signs of unmarked graves with the remains of dozens of children.

"I feel shame and pain," for the "deplorable" abuses, the pope said. "I ask forgiveness of God, and I join the Canadian bishops in apologizing."

Francis also promised he would travel to Canada, where he would be better able to show "my closeness" as part of a process of healing and reconciliation.

Francis spoke during an audience at the Apostolic Palace with 62 delegates from Canada's three largest Indigenous groups, who had traveled to the Vatican seeking his apology. This was the first apology to the Indigenous people of Canada from a pope and was a reversal of Francis's earlier position.

From the 1880s to the 1990s, the Canadian government ran a system of compulsory boarding schools that a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission called a form of "cultural genocide." The Catholic Church operated about 70 percent of the schools in the system.

About 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and sent to these residential schools, where abuse, both physical and sexual, was widespread, along with neglect and disease. Murray Sinclair, the former judge who headed the commission, estimates that at least 6,000 children went missing.

Gerald Antoine, the Dene national chief, center, and delegates from Canada's Indigenous groups addressed the news media on Thursday at St. Peter's Square in the Vatican. Credit... Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Friday's audience, which began with prayers in the languages of various Indigenous groups, including the "Our Father" sung by members of the Inuit delegation, ended an emotional - and at times painful - weeklong encounter at the Vatican, part of a journey that began decades ago.

"For 40 years plus I've been on this walk to Rome," said Wilton Littlechild, the former grand chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, said at a media briefing on Thursday.

In private sessions earlier this week with Métis, Inuit and First Nations delegates, Francis heard story after painful story of the abuse suffered at the hands of Catholic educators at the schools. Delegates - including survivors, leaders, elders, youth and spiritual advisors from various nations - said that the pope had listened attentively and had expressed his sorrow. The delegates said this week that they believed the pope's commitment to healing open wounds was sincere.

Fred Kelly, an elder from the Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation in Ontario,said he had been honored to speak with Francis, who was not only "the head of the church" but above all "a human being with a heart and with compassion." He said he had brought Francis a pair of moccasins and that he had invited the pope to "walk with us."

Mr. Kelly, who was one of the spiritual advisers in the group, also gave Francis a spiritual name: "I told him in my language you are now known as white feather," he said, as he presented him with a white feather. "To commemorate the eagle that has joined and now flies with the white dove. The words peace and harmony lead into the words ultimate reconciliation and healing that we may be true brothers and sisters once again, as was intended by the creator of the Great Spirit, God, as each one of us understands."

"I feel shame and pain," for the "deplorable" abuses, Pope Francis said. "I ask forgiveness of God, and I join the Canadian bishops in apologizing." Credit... Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

In addition to asking Francis to come to Canada to apologize to survivors and their families, the delegates asked Francis to repatriate artifacts in the collections of Vatican Museums and open the Vatican archives so that researchers could comb through records and documents regarding the residential school system.

The delegates also asked Francis to revoke a 1493 papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI that had given Spain authority over the newly discovered lands of the Americas, allowing the Spanish to colonize and enslave the Indigenous peoples and convert them to Catholicism. The papal bull, which informed the " doctrine of discovery," was "used for centuries to expropriate Indigenous lands and facilitate their transfer to colonizing or dominating nations," according to the United Nations.

Indigenous groups in Canada say that while the theories of racial superiority that underlie the doctrine have long been discredited, it continued to surface in legal disputes over land until 2014. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that year, without naming the papal bull, that the idea that no one owned land until it was claimed by Europeans " never applied in Canada. "

When Taylor Behn-Tsakoza, a co-chair of the National Youth Council of the Assembly of First Nations, met with Francis on Thursday, she spoke "a lot about the doctrine of discovery," she said. She asked him to rescind the papal bull, she said, and replace it with a new formal document that valued Indigenous people and their culture.

"We didn't just come here to complain," she said. "We offered him solutions as well."

"My generation didn't go to the residential schools but we still suffered the effects," said Ms. Behn-Tsakoza. It had been difficult growing up and watching older generations "struggle every day to be proud of who they are," she said.

After his meeting with Francis on Thursday, Phil Fontaine, another delegate and former residential-school student who, as national chief of the Assembly of the First Nations, first traveled to the Vatican in 2009 to ask for an apology from Pope Benedict XVI, expressed hope. He said he felt "on the verge of finally turning the corner on this issue that has befuddled so many in the past." He added: "We heard the Holy Father say to us, 'The church is with you,' and that was an incredibly important statement."

The church softened its stance on apologizing last year, after three Indigenous groups announced that ground-penetrating radar had discovered of signs of many hundreds of unmarked graves containing human remains, mostly those of children.

The first announcement came in May when a First Nation in British Columbia reported that a geophysical survey indicated that the remains of 215 people lay across a river from the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The anthropologist who conducted the survey said that the size of many of the remains suggested that they were children, like among the missing.

"The eyes of the world have been upon us all week, in part because of what transpired in Kamloops," Mr. Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations said. "News of the discovery went worldwide and I am convinced at that point the church had nowhere else to go in terms of moving forward with us."

Gerald Antoine, the Dene national chief, said the Indigenous people of Canada were looking forward to "to fully host the Holy Father Holy Father, and we are hoping that this will open a measure of trust, dignity and respect to all those people that have been harmed."

Grand Chief Mandy Gull-Masty, of the Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee, said on Thursday that she had presented a pair of handmade snowshoes, "to remind the pope that we are still here and that Cree culture is still here." She and her people were waiting for the pope to visit Canada, meet with survivors and their families and leaders, and provide an admission of responsibility.

"We cannot ignore the power of an apology," she said, of "transforming anger and hurt into a healing process of peace and love."

Francis ended the visit with a blessing in English. "Pray for me, I pray for you. Bye-bye," he said.

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'I Feel Shame and Pain': Pope Apologizes to Indigenous People of Canada

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Pope Francis also promised to visit Canada as part of a process of healing and reconciliation over the church's involvement in an abusive system of residential schools.

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United States Official Apology for the Trail of Tears 

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United States Official Apology for the Trail of Tears 

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Over the years Japanese political leaders have issued a number of general apologies for the Imperial Army's conduct during World War II. Despite these apologies, the Chinese people and Sino-Japanese relations have yet to be fully normalized, and tensions remain. Often the criticisms revolve around the actual language used by Japanese public figures to acknowledge the destruction and terror waged on behalf of their nation during World War II. What weight do different terms carry under such important circumstances? Are there different levels of responsibility expressed in using terms such as remorse versus apology?

The first Japanese prime minister to issue a public statement in regard to Japanese responsibility for war crimes committed in China was the 1972 statement made by Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei to the people of the People's Republic of China. He said, "[We are] keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."

By the 1980s the frequency of public statements by Japanese political figures increased. In 1984 Emperor Hirohito said to President Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea during his visit to Tokyo, "It is indeed regrettable that there was an unfortunate past between us for a period in this century and I believe that it should not be repeated again." One year later at a speech given at the United Nations, Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro said, "Since the end of the war, Japan has profoundly regretted the unleashing of rampant ultra nationalism and militarism and the war that brought great devastation to the people of many countries around the world and to our country as well."

On the 50th anniversary of Japan's surrender on August 15, 1995, Japanese prime minister Murayama Tomiichi offered a far more extensive official statement on this important anniversary.

The world has seen fifty years elapse since the war came to an end. Now, when I remember the many people both at home and abroad who fell victim to war, my heart is overwhelmed by a flood of emotions. . . .

Now that Japan has come to enjoy peace and abundance, we tend to overlook the pricelessness and blessings of peace. Our task is to convey to younger generations the horrors of war, so that we never repeat the errors in our history. . . . I will continue in all sincerity to do my utmost in efforts being made on the issues arisen from the war, in order to further strengthen the relations of trust between Japan and those countries.

Now, upon this historic occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war's end, we should bear in mind that we must look into the past to learn from the lessons of history, and ensure that we do not stray from the path to the peace and prosperity of human society in the future.

During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.

Building from our deep remorse on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, Japan must eliminate self-righteous nationalism, promote international coordination as a responsible member of the international community and, thereby, advance the principles of peace and democracy. At the same time, as the only country to have experienced the devastation of atomic bombing, Japan, with a view to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons, must actively strive to further global disarmament in areas such as the strengthening of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It is my conviction that in this way alone can Japan atone for its past and lay to rest the spirits of those who perished.

Three years later in 1998, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo referenced two of these public statements in his declaration:

Both sides believe that squarely facing the past and correctly understanding history are the important foundation for further developing relations between Japan and China. The Japanese side observes the 1972 Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China and the August 15, 1995 Statement by former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious distress and damage that Japan caused to the Chinese people through its aggression against China during a certain period in the past and expressed deep remorse for this. The Chinese side hopes that the Japanese side will learn lessons from the history and adhere to the path of peace and development. Based on this, both sides will develop long-standing relations of friendship.

1. In recent years there has been a lot of discussion about the power of apologies for historical wrongs. What role can apologies play as a means toward achieving justice? What are the limits of apologies? What else needs to happen?

2. Compare the three public declarations included in this reading. Are there important differences between the statements issued by the Prime Ministers? How do they compare to the statement offered by Emperor Hirohito?

3. Is it important for political leaders to acknowledge past wrongs and apologize for what occurred even if it cannot be undone?

4. Think about an apology you have received and one that you have given. What did receiving an apology accomplish? What did offering an apology accomplish?

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Over the years Japanese political leaders have issued a number of general apologies for the Imperial Army's conduct during World War II. Despite these apologies, the Chinese people and Sino-Japanese relations have yet to be fully normalized, and tensions remain.

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Belgium Princess Demands Apology for Congo

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Belgium Princess Demands Apology for Congo

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Princess Esmeralda of Belgium is renewing a call for her country to apologize for its colonial past.

Historians estimate that more than 10 million Congolese people were killed during Belgian King Leopold II's colonial reign during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"Belgium must apologize," the princess said in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) that was published Thursday.

"As in a couple, apologies are important to restart a balanced relationship," she added.

Princess Esmeralda first called on her country to apologize in 2020. Her latest push comes as King Philippe of Belgium is slated to visit the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) next month.

In June 2020, on the 60th anniversary of the country's independence, King Philippe wrote a letter to the DRC's president, Félix Tshisekedi, expressing"deepest regrets" for the violence inflicted during the Belgian colonization, but that the letter "stopped short of an apology."

"During the time of the Congo Free State [1885-1908], acts of violence and brutality were committed that weigh still on our collective memory," the king wrote, according to The Guardian.

"The colonial period that followed also caused suffering and humiliations. I would like to express my deepest regrets for the wounds of the past, the pain of today, which is rekindled by the discrimination all too present in our society," he added.

AFP reported Wednesday that King Philippe's visit to the DRC will take place between March 6 and March 10, and marks the first Belgian royal visit to the country since 2010.

The outlet noted that the visit comes as Belgians have started planning for the return of cultural objects that belong to the DRC and were wrongly acquired by the Belgian government.

In her interview this week, Princess Esmeralda said she attracted a lot of criticism when she first called on her country to apologize.

"I was not attacking my current family. We are not responsible for our ancestors," she said. But "we have a responsibility to talk about it," she added, according to AFP.

In 2020, " Black Lives Matter" protesters demonstrated in Brussels, and more than 63,000 people signed a petition demanding that officials remove statues of King Leopold II, The Washington Post reported.

"Black lives matter. Congolese lives matter. Every human life matters," the civil rights group LUCHA stated at the time, according to the Post. "Belgium should be ashamed it continues to present Leopold as a 'civilizing' hero through history courses, statues, effigies, stamps, avenues and streets in his honor."

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Princess wants Belgium to apologize for its past as king heads to Congo

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Princess Esmeralda of Belgium is renewing a call for her country to apologize for its colonial past. Historians estimate that more than 10 million Congolese people were killed during Belgian King Leopold II's colonial reign during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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The first acknowledgment by the royal family of the European country's brutal actions in central Africa stopped short of an outright apology. It comes as Belgium begins to publicly reckon with the abuses.

Removing a portrait of King Baudouin of Belgium from an airport in what was called Leopoldville in 1960. The capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo is now called Kinshasa. Credit... Associated Press

BRUSSELS - King Philippe of Belgium on Tuesday expressed his "deepest regrets" for his country's brutal past in a letter to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first public acknowledgment from a member of the Belgian royal family of the devastating human and financial toll during eight decades of colonization.

The king's letter, issued on the 60th anniversary of Congo's independence, acknowledged the historical legacy and pointed out continuing issues of racism and discrimination, though it stopped short of the apology that some, including the United Nations, had asked for.

"I want to express my deepest regrets for the wounds of the past, the pain of which is revived today by discriminations that are still too present in our societies," the king wrote in the letter sent to President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The king would, he added, "continue to fight against all forms of racism."

The letter, which was followed by a statement from Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès of Belgium urging her country to "look its past in the face," is part of the European nation's newfound willingness to address its vicious colonial past.

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King Philippe of Belgium in 2018. "I want to express my deepest regrets for the wounds of the past," he wrote to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit... Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

In an address on Monday, Mr. Tshisekedi said that King Philippe had planned to be at the Independence Day celebrations in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that the coronavirus pandemic had intervened.

Mr. Tshisekedi said he was trying to foster a strong relationship with the European country. "I consider it necessary that our common history with Belgium and its people be told to our children in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in Belgium on the basis of scientific work carried out by historians of the two countries," he said.

"But the most important thing for the future is to build harmonious relations with Belgium," he added, "because beyond the stigmas of history, the two peoples have been able to build a strong relationship."

Belgium has long grappled with its legacy in Africa, and protests in the United States against the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police have spurred a global conversation about racism that has given a new intensity to the issue.

In addition to the remarks from the king and prime minister, statues of King Leopold II, known for his violent personal rule of what was then the Congo Free State, have been removed from city squares and government buildings across Belgium. On Tuesday, the city of Ghent removed a bust of the former king from public display.

Leopold, an ancestor of King Philippe, extracted wealth from the resource-rich territory in central Africa while inflicting immense harm that led to the deaths of millions.

Jean-Luc Crucke, the finance minister for Wallonia, one of Belgium's three regions, said on Tuesday that a parliamentary commission would begin work in September to scrutinize the country's colonial past. The panel would allow Belgium to "continue this path" laid out by the king's letter, which he called "heavy with meaning and more than symbolic."

Ms. Wilmès, speaking at a commemoration event in Brussels later in the day, acknowledged the troubled history with the Democratic Republic of Congo, "a past imprinted with inequalities and violence against the Congolese."

Some activists said that the king's letter did not go far enough because it did not contain an apology and, because he is not a member of the government, it did not formally reflect the views of the Belgian state, which took control of the vast land after King Leopold II and continued colonial exploitation.

Jean Omasombo, a political scientist at the University of Kinshasa and a researcher at the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium, said that the Belgian state had never recognized its responsibility for colonial atrocities.

"This letter is a first step," Mr. Omasombo said. "But it is not sufficient." Mr. Omasombo added that he welcomed the idea of the parliamentary commission but that it should not be "a distraction" from accountability.

An event in Brussels on Tuesday to mark the 60th anniversary of Congo's independence from Belgium. Credit... Pool photo by Stephanie Lecocq

Until 1908, Leopold ran the Congo Free State as a venture for personal profit. With an army that included Congolese orphans, the king and his agents drained the land of resources, and then forcibly moved, separated and enslaved families, before being forced to turn control of the area back over to the Belgian state. Congo achieved independence from Belgium in 1960, but the following decades were scarred by civil war.

Almost 10,000 people demonstrated in Brussels against racism this month in the wake of the killing of Mr. Floyd. Some protesters climbed on a statue of King Leopold II and flew a giant flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo, chanting "murderer" and "reparations," repeating a demand for the Belgian state to pay damages to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Belgium's grappling with its colonial heritage has long been fraught. For decades, Belgians were taught that the country had brought "civilization" to the African continent, and some have defended King Leopold II as a foundational figure. Streets and parks are named after him, and statues of the king can be found throughout the country.

As in so many European nations, racial discrimination is an ongoing issue in Belgium. Recently, a black member of the European Parliament said she had been mistreated by the police in Brussels.

The member, Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, a 71-year-old Green party representative from Germany, filed a legal complaint this month against Belgian officers who she said had pushed her against a wall and taken away her purse and her mobile phone as she was trying to film what she described as the police "harassing" young black men at a Brussels train station.

According to Ms. Herzberger-Fofana, police officers did not believe her when she said she was a member of the Parliament, despite her identification and a diplomatic passport.

"I consider this as a racist and discriminatory act," she said in a recent speech at the European Parliament. "We can't ignore this police violence."

The police claim she insulted officers and have filed their own complaint. The public prosecutor is investigating the episode.

Monika Pronczuk reported from Brussels, and Megan Specia from London. Ruth Maclean contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal.

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Belgium's King Sends Letter of Regret Over Colonial Past in Congo

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The first acknowledgment by the royal family of the European country's brutal actions in central Africa stopped short of an outright apology. It comes as Belgium begins to publicly reckon with the abuses.

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Germans Apologize to China over Dalai Lama quote. 

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Germans Apologize to China over Dalai Lama quote. 

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Still Waiting for a Russian Apology for Holodomor 

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Still Waiting for a Russian Apology for Holodomor 

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After more than six months of study and deliberation, the Pulitzer Prize Board has decided it will not revoke the foreign reporting prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty of The New York Times.

In recent months, much attention has been paid to Mr. Duranty's dispatches regarding the famine in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933, which have been criticized as gravely defective. However, a Pulitzer Prize for reporting is awarded not for the author's body of work or for the author's character but for the specific pieces entered in the competition. Therefore, the board focused its attention on the 13 articles that actually won the prize, articles written and published during 1931. [A complete list of the articles, with dates and headlines, is below.]

In its review of the 13 articles, the Board determined that Mr. Duranty's 1931 work, measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short. In that regard, the Board's view is similar to that of The New York Times itself and of some scholars who have examined his 1931 reports. However, the board concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case. Revoking a prize 71 years after it was awarded under different circumstances, when all principals are dead and unable to respond, would be a momentous step and therefore would have to rise to that threshold.

The famine of 1932-1933 was horrific and has not received the international attention it deserves. By its decision, the board in no way wishes to diminish the gravity of that loss. The Board extends its sympathy to Ukrainians and others in the United States and throughout the world who still mourn the suffering and deaths brought on by Josef Stalin.

Walter Duranty's 13 articles in 1931 submitted for 1932 Pulitzer Prize

Eleven-part series in The New York Times

Duranty 1 6/14/1931 - "Red Russia of Today Ruled by Stalinism, Not Communism"

Duranty 2 6/16/1931 - "Socialism First Aim in Soviet's Program; Trade Gains Second"

Duranty 3 6/18/1931 - "Stalinism Shelves World Revolt Idea; To Win Russia First"

Duranty 4 6/19/1931 - "Industrial Success Emboldens Soviet in New World Policy"

Duranty 5 6/20/1931 - "Trade Equilibrium is New Soviet Goal"

Duranty 6 6/22/1931 - "Soviet Fixes Opinion by Widest Control"

Duranty 7 6/23/1931 - "Soviet Censorship Hurts Russia Most"

Duranty 8 6/24/1931 - "Stalinism Smashes Foes in Marx's Name"

Duranty 9 6/25/1931 - "Red Army is Held No Menace to Peace"

Duranty 10 6/26/1931 - "Stalinism Solving Minorities Problem"

Duranty 11 6/27/1931 - "Stalinism's Mark is Party Discipline"

Two articles in The New York Times magazine

Duranty 12 3/29/1931 - "The Russian Looks at the World"

Duranty 13 12/20/1931 - "Stalin's Russia Is An Echo of Iron Ivan's"

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Statement on Walter Duranty's 1932 Prize

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After more than six months of study and deliberation, the Pulitzer Prize Board has decided it will not revoke the foreign reporting prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty of The New York Times. In recent months, much attention has been paid to Mr. Duranty's dispatches regarding the famine in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933, which have been criticized as gravely defective.

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There's a real threat that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. As evidence of war crimes emerges, there is reason to believe it may already be taking place.

"Russia's forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on March 23, 2022. Blinken cited as evidence for his allegation Russia's destruction of "apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure" and a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol that was marked with the Russian word for children.

Russia has killed at least 1,189 civilians and wounded 1,901 additional Ukrainians since it began its attack on Ukraine in February 2022, according to the United Nations. This actual death toll is likely much higher.

Such attacks on civilians during conflict are considered war crimes under international law.

But war crimes also often take place in tandem with other atrocity crimes - a legal term that also encompasses ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide.

And indeed, there is evidence Russia has also committed crimes against humanity, or widespread attacks against Ukraine's civilian population. Such attacks include killings, enforced disappearances, rape and torture.

These also include the mass deportations of Ukrainians into Russia that the Kremlin is reportedly carrying out in eastern Ukraine.

Some observers warn that this violence has the potential to become genocidal, particularly given Russian propaganda and physical destruction of Mariupol and other cities.

Ukrainian officials claim genocide has already begun. "The aerial bombing of a children's hospital," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on March 9, 2022, "is the ultimate evidence that genocide of Ukrainians is happening."

Other experts disagree, sometimes arguing that the Russian violence doesn't meet the legal requirements of genocide.

Given the scale of Russian violence in Ukraine, however, genocide warnings need to be taken seriously.

The field of genocide studies, in which I have long worked, has developed frameworks for assessing the threat of genocide in such volatile situations. These tools, including one used by the U.N., indicate Ukraine is indeed at considerable risk for genocide.

Historical precedent

Genocide refers to "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

These acts involve not just killing people, but seeking to destroy the target group by causing "serious bodily or mental harm," creating harsh "conditions of life," preventing births and "forcibly transferring" children to another group.

One predictor for genocide is a history of mass human rights violations and atrocity crimes, including genocide.

Russia has a long history of mass violence against Ukrainians and other groups.

Perhaps most infamously, the Soviet Union enacted land policies that prompted a food shortage and a famine, killing millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. This is known as the Holodomor, a Ukrainian word meaning meaning "death by hunger."

Other Soviet atrocities include forced deportation of national and ethnic groups and massive political purges.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia committed mass violence against civilians in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. It bombarded and obliterated cities like Grozny in 1995 and Aleppo in 2016.

Political upheaval

Genocide and atrocity crimes are also strongly correlated with political upheaval, especially war. Such upheaval destabilizes a society and makes it less secure - especially for vulnerable groups of people who may be blamed for the political or economic instability.

Genocide has taken place during global conflicts, as illustrated by the Armenian genocide during World War I, and the Holocaust during World War II.

And then there are genocides associated with colonial conquest and invasion, like the destruction of Indigenous peoples in North America.

Such countries as China and Cambodia have also undertaken social engineering projects resulting in genocide.

Russia has experienced a number of political upheavals, including a current economic crisis. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the sort of armed conflict often associated with atrocity crimes.

Ideology and demonization

Genocide is justified by propaganda and language that devalues and demonizes target populations. Historical examples abound, ranging from European colonial caricatures of Indigenous " brutes" and "savages" to Nazi representations of Jews as rats.

Russia is using this type of demonizing language to justify its invasion of Ukraine. First, Russia depicts its violence as necessary to " denazify" Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin, for example, has referred to the Ukrainian leadership as a far-right " gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis."

And second, Putin has suggested that Ukrainian identity is not real and that, historically, "Russians and Ukrainians are one people - one nation, in fact."

Understanding the risk

Proving genocidal intent is difficult, especially in a court of law. This is evident in current debates - including an ongoing court case at the International Court of Justice - about whether Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority group.

But it can be inferred by patterns of violence consistent with the legal definition of genocide.

[ There's plenty of opinion out there. We supply facts and analysis, based in research. Get The Conversation's Politics Weekly.]

Has Russia carried out genocidal acts?

Russia has targeted and killed civilians and reportedly forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, including children, to Russia. It has bombed a maternity hospital.

Russia has also created " harsh conditions of life" in parts of Ukraine. It has destroyed electrical and water supplies, deprived Ukrainians of food and humanitarian aid and displaced more than 10 million people within and outside of Ukraine.

Russia seeks to seize and Russify Donbas and other parts of eastern Ukraine, where, if Putin is taken at his word, an "imaginary" Ukrainian identity will be erased.

There is a significant risk that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. It is possible that a genocide has already begun.

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Is Russia committing genocide in Ukraine? A human rights expert looks at the warning signs

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There's a real threat that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. As evidence of war crimes emerges, there is reason to believe it may already be taking place. "Russia's forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on March 23, 2022.