Report Of Legal Experts Accuses Putin Of Inciting Genocide In Ukraine

Russia's actions in Ukraine provide enough evidence to conclude that Moscow is inciting genocide and committing atrocities intended to destroy the Ukrainian people, according to the first independent report into allegations of genocide in that country, Ivana Kottasova reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: Exhuming and identifying bodies from a mass grave after the Russian massacre in Bucha

The legal report, signed by more than 30 leading legal scholars and genocide experts, accuses the Russian state of violating several articles of the United Nations Genocide Convention.

It warns there is a serious and imminent risk of genocide in Ukraine, backing the accusations with a long list of evidence including examples of mass killings of civilians, forced deportations, and dehumanizing anti-Ukrainian rhetoric used by top Russian officials.

The report was put together by New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a US-based think tank, and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights which is based in Canada and is set to release on Friday, with the authors sending copies to parliaments, governments, and international organizations around the world.

An advance copy of the report has been shared exclusively with CNN.

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: Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The New Lines and Raoul Wallenberg Centre report says the Russian state is breaching Article II and Article III (c) of the Genocide Convention.

Article II of the convention states genocide is an attempt to commit acts "with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Article III (c) concerns the "direct and public incitement to commit genocide."

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