Bucha (Ukraine)

In News

• More than 300 bodies have been found in a Kyiv suburb called Bucha. The discoveries have drawn comparisons with the killings of civilians in this area during World War II.

About Bucha

• Bucha:
  • The discoveries have been made in a Kyiv suburb called Bucha, a town located about 25 km to the northwest of the capital, which had an estimated population of around 36,000 before the invasion began.
• The discoveries have drawn comparisons with the killings of civilians in this area during World War II.
  • The First Battle of Kyiv in which part of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union that began in June 1941 and
  • The Second Battle of Kyiv when the Red Army started to push back the Germans from Ukraine, the area around the Ukrainian capital, including Bucha, saw the Holocaust by bullets during which an estimated 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were shot dead at close range.
• Genocide or war crimes?
  • Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of war crimes even earlier, alleging that it targeted civilians in the bombing.
  • War crimes are defined as “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, agreements signed after World War II that laid down international humanitarian laws during war time.
  • Deliberately targeting civilians amounts to a war crime.
  • The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague has already opened an investigation into possible war crimes by Russia.
  • The crime of genocide, as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention of December 1948, includes acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
  • Genocide is seen as the gravest and most serious of all crimes against humanity.
• Issues associated
  • Russia does not recognise the ICC and will likely not cooperate with the investigation.
  • Differences of opinion on what constitutes genocide explain in part the reluctance of the international community to use the term frequently.
• History of genocides
  • Holocaust in which more than 6 million Jews were exterminated
  • The 1915-20 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks
  • The killings of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994
  • The Srebrenica massacre of 1995.
• Global reaction
  • Amid calls for more, stronger sanctions against Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, and Swedish prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Source: IE