Genocide researcher Totten: Ukrainian situation is unique as evidence of genocide is being collected during the war

An American professor who worked for the U.S. State Department's Atrocities Documentation Project, and also studied the genocides in Rwanda and the Sudanese government's genocide in Darfur. Currently, Totten is working in Ukraine.

Now we are having Professor Samuel Totten with us, a person who has been professionally involved in the study of genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, and now he is working in Ukraine. The key story is how far does what they did here fall under the category of genocide? Because we hear very strange voices, in particular when representatives of the United Nations say that what the Russians did does not fall under the concept of genocide.

It's difficult for anybody to make the definitive decision or assertion that something is genocide, unfortunately, until it's carried out and until you know the intention of the perpetrator. A case of killing or torture or massacres, they're not necessarily genocide. They can be in fact simply a massacre or torture. What is needed is to ascertain what the intent of the perpetrator is as he or she is carrying out the particular atrocities.

I know the United Nations came out with a long report recently and stated that the individual or individuals who wrote the report that what is transpired so far is not genocide. I questioned that comment. I questioned that analysis and that assertion because right now I don't think anybody can ascertain what Putin's goal is exactly. To be genocide you have to have the intent to destroy in whole or in part. Most people are going to say well there's killing, the intention is to kill the people but it has to be intent. If the prosecutors cannot prove intent, you don't have genocide.

However, my position is that I think there's one clear case that's genocidal in nature, and why doesn't the UN understand this? I'm not sure but the children who have been taken to Russia from their families, and given to different family members in Russia. They've been taken to school. They're being indoctrinated. They're living in a new culture. That under the United Nations convention on genocide, taking the children away, giving them away, indoctrinating them into a culture is genocide. And I think from the pattern that we have seen how many children have been taken, what those children are going through now constitutes genocide. I think it's a clear example of genocide. And the UN typically is being wishy-washy and waffling. I wish they had not put out the report because it sends out the wrong message all the way around.

Moreover and above that I think by the UN coming out and saying well, we haven't seen any genocidal actions that's playing right into the hands of Putin because Putin can say oh, we're not committing genocide, and what it does is it undermines I believe Ukraine. And for the United Nations to do that is unconscionable. 

I think that the UN is gutless in this regard. Their decision may have been politically inspired. I don't know but what I do know is that to undermine a nation, whose peoples are being killed en masse with one mass drave after another, that millions of people were forced out of their own country, and cities and villages being virtually destroyed. It was a wrong thing to do by the UN. Why they didn't wait until the end is beyond me. And I think it's abominable for them to have done that.

And what I ultimately did with regard to Darfur is after I got that report, I went through it piece by piece and explained how the UN was wrong in their analysis and their ultimate judgment. I'm thinking of doing that with the situation in Ukraine as well.

So, how do we collect such evidence that would be accepted all over the world, in all international institutions? We understand that the International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Putin, it is about the case of the abduction of Ukrainian children, but we understand that there are a number of other crimes that need to be documented and properly qualified.

Personally, what I think is that far too many people are concerned about whether it's genocide or not. I would say and I'm not trying to be evasive but crimes against humanity - tortures, massacres, lining people up and shooting them - that's as bad as anything can be. So if the perpetrators are tried on crimes against humanity, they're going to be put in prison as long as somebody may be put in for genocide. The ICC does not have a death penalty. So the greatest penalty that an individual perpetrator can receive is life in prison. 

Now, I think what's going to happen and this is based on what has happened at the International Criminal Tribunal in the former Yugoslavia. It's the same thing that happened at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The prosecutors are going to look at the evidence. They're going to try to ascertain whether there’s an intent to destroy in whole or in part. And if so that constitutes genocide, if not, they're going to try the individuals on crimes against humanity or war crimes.

People seem to get or have the idea that there's something sunct about genocide. There's not, all of those crimes are equal. But we want this to be called genocide. It doesn't make sense because those other crimes as I said are as horrific as genocide is.

As far as the testimony is concerned, my understanding is that there have been thousands of people in Ukraine who have been collecting testimony. A good number of Ukrainians have been trained to conduct interviews with survivors and witnesses and that's smart because those people know the language they don't need to go through an interpreter. But then there are individuals like myself who come. And I have an interpreter. I have the expertise and crimes against humanity and genocide and I ask questions that do try to pull out of people exactly what happened and who conducted these atrocities. The testimony is very important. But my sense is without even collecting a single testimony, what we've seen at least in the United States in the newspapers from journals from around the world, who have been to Ukraine, who have been to Bucha, who have been to other massacre sites. People across the globe if they're interested, if they care about fellow human beings, they know exactly what's happening. The testimony that's being collected more importantly is for the use by the prosecutors to figure out exactly what these crimes are and then zero in on those and put those perpetrators into prison hopefully for life, if not, 20 or 30 years which by that time a good number of them will be dead anyhow.

Mr. Professor, I would like to ask you what we should do with the qualification of war crimes committed in Mariupol? We understand that there were no machetes, no beheadings, but they used aircraft and long-range artillery. They dropped a bomb on a drama theater where civilians were hiding. There are recorded testimonies of people who can describe what happened there. Those people are alive, there are not many of them left. Everything was covered in blood, everything was in the entrails and broken heads. How can we properly prove those crimes so that no one, not just the perpetrator, but the people at the top of the Kremlin pyramid, can hide? Because the army structure provides for subordination from the lowest to the highest level, and we understand that this is the responsibility not only of the aviator, not only of his commander, but everything goes from the top down.

Again, we're focusing on genocide as if it's something that these perpetrators need to be charged with to hold them responsible. That's not the case. Every war is not a genocide, but every war sees the bombings, they see the oftentimes the artillery, the mortars, the mining, the lining the people up, like the killing that the Einsatz group did in Ukraine and the Soviet Union. So just because there's war, it's not genocide. People just to grasp on to genocide. And again, I'm going to be redundant, each of these crimes is highly significant. Each of these crimes is a terrible atrocity. So in the case of war crimes, we know that the Russians have hit schools with children in the schools. We know that the Russians have hit hospitals with doctors, nurses and patients and mothers who were pregnant and babies. Those are war crimes. Those are absolutely war crimes. And they should go to prison for as long as the prosecutors can get for that particular case. If it's going to be found to be genocide, you have to get the intent of the perpetrator to destroy in whole or in part, the intent to wipe out a group. 

What do people need to understand? With genocide, we're not talking about the destruction of individuals. Genocide is about the destruction of groups. So under the UN convention on genocide four groups are protected: national groups, racial groups, ethnic groups and religious groups. Now those four groups have been expanded somewhat as a result of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the former Yugoslavia. Those actions that you've mentioned could end up being construed as genocide if the intent can be proved. But personally, my concern is number one that they be held accountable. If people in Ukraine are disappointed that the ICC doesn't come to the conclusion that this individual, this general, Putin, his co-leaders in the Kremlin, did not perpetrate genocide, if they're disappointed, that's most unfortunate because if they're convicted on crimes against humanity and war crimes, they still could serve a life sentence and a long sentence. So this issue about genocide is complicating things unnecessarily.

If we talk, for example, about collecting certain data on war crimes or genocide, how to make sure that the current Ukrainian case, for example, the case of Russian crimes in Ukraine, is properly constructed. On the one hand, we regularly hear hate speech coming out of Russian propaganda channels, with some Russian Kremlin officials denying Ukraine's right to full state sovereignty. They are trying to present us as some kind of sub-nation, an underdeveloped nation that was created by the Austro-Hungarian General Staff and so on. That is, they are trying to convince the whole world and themselves that we do not exist. And the second point is that we understand that we need to document not only crimes in the fields, but also what is called the crimes of the top military leadership. And this was extremely difficult to do, for example, in the situation with the Third Reich. It is clear that the investigators of the Nuremberg Tribunal had to work hard to prove that there was a direct link between specific crimes committed by members of the Wehrmacht or Nazi military units and the German mainstream leadership of the NSDAP.

How to do it is exactly what the prosecutors at Nuremberg did, exactly what the prosecutors did at the ICT, and what they did in the cases at the ICC? You collect every piece of data you possibly can. Every time Putin's on television or the radio, you collect that footage and commentaries because he has said certain things about how Ukraine is not a sovereign nation, that it is part of Russia and that he wants what he considers Russia's territory back. But he's wrong. Ukraine is a sovereign nation whether Putin wants to recognize this or not.

What he's done, he's committed a criminal act and an international criminal act ,and he's playing wrong, so he can talk about that all day long. The other thing is as part of the documentation, you document exactly where the fighting has taken place. You look at the weapons that have been used. You look at how many missiles have been shot at a particular city. You looked at the complete destruction of towns, villages and cities across this entire nation. So all of that can be documented. You go in and you film it, you talk to the witnesses, you talk to the survivors, you talk to the Ukrainian soldiers who witnessed with their eyes close up what these perpetrators have been doing. That is going to be invaluable.

So that's the evidence that's collected and that then will show the world what exactly Putin has done. The war crimes that he's committed, the crimes against humanity that the Russian soldiers on the ground have committed and the genocidal acts that they've committed, You know, of course and the Ukrainian people, we talk about Bucha. But there are many massacre sites and my sense is that more, unfortunately, are going to be uncovered. And that could lead to the decision that this is the intent to attempt to wipe out part of the Ukrainian people. And my other understanding, is and this is important if you want to talk about genocide, my understanding from the interviews that I've been doing is that oftentimes when the Russians when into a town or village, one of the first things they did was to find out who the leaders were and eliminate them somehow. Well that happens in one genocide after another, it happened in Cambodia, it happened in Rwanda. You go in, you take the leadership away and then the community starts to crumble, and that is part of genocide. So all of that needs to be taken into consideration. I think it's pretty clear to the world unless you're an ally of Russia. And then they're going to buy the lie that Putin has been putting out there that Ukraine is not a sovereign nation. That's plain wrong... plain wrong. And it's the same thing in a sense that Stalin did in 1932-33. He comes to Ukraine. He starves the people and he basically treats Ukraine as the Soviet Union. The people as individuals that have no importance at all. And treats them anyway he wants, kills him en masse. And again the patterns that you see and I'm talking about both the Ukraine famine, which ultimately... there was a debate for as you probably know for decades and decades was that genocide or not...Ultimately people such as James Mace who moved from the US to Ukraine, taught at Kyiv University. He was one of the individuals that pushed the study to show that in fact, that was a genocide. I think in many cases what's going to happen is that the patterns of the attacks, the patterns of the destruction of entire communities, the pattern of the destruction or killing of leaders of communities, the kidnapping of the children, all of these patterns are going to be looked at through the evidence that is collected. And my sense is there's no way around these leaders including Putin of getting away with war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide if it comes to that.

Genocide implies criminal intent, in addition to the characteristics you described, and speaking about the Holodomor, about James Mace, the most difficult thing was probably to prove that there was a plan that led to the deliberate destruction of millions of Ukrainians. Yes, it was an extremely difficult job, and we understand the forces that opposed James Mace's ability to convey the truth about the genocide against Ukrainians at the time.

Jim was passionate about Ukraine. He loved Ukraine. He was passionate about the world understanding what happened to the Ukrainian people. Jim was passionate about documenting, as you have suggested, collecting testimony about what happened to the people when Stalin's people came through with the iron rods and they'd go up and down poking the ground trying to find even seeds. They'd go through the fireplace inside the house, they sift through the cold ashes to find the seeds. Jim was intent on collecting as much documentation as possible and he was also intent on the United States government recognizing what he called it was a Soviet man-made famine in Ukraine. Jim wanted people to know that it was a man-made famine. It wasn't from the sun. It wasn't from a lack of water. Not from drought. This was planned and carried out from the top, from Stalin down. And I agree that he accomplished his goal when he headed up what was called the US Commission on the Ukraine famine, and the documentation he collected was vast. And then his goal was to come to Ukraine and conduct further research and actually go up into Russia and find archives that had never been examined and to find out exactly what the plan was, and he was in the middle of that before what I referred to is before he lost his life. He was a relatively young man, and he was beaten and died not long after that. And I think that was an effort by somebody within Russia quite frankly who didn't want Jim to accomplish what he set out to accomplish. I don't know if anybody's going to follow in Jim's footsteps. He was a brilliant scholar. He was a Harvard professor at one time, and his entire life was really consumed with getting the point across that the Ukraine famine was in fact a genocide.

The responsibility of the Church, which has seen or perhaps sometimes participated in war crimes or acts of genocide, in particular, we are talking about the classic scheme that took place in Rwanda, and perhaps in Sudan. But the question is also about the Russian Orthodox Church. When it hears the voice of hatred that is literally pouring out of Russian TV channels, and how it behaves in that situation. We understand that Patriarch Kirill supports Putin's policy, which is manifested in the tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed.

Here I agree with you 100%. We didn't see that in Sudan. We saw it in Rwanda. There were priests in Rwanda who put out the call for the Tootsies who were the victims to come to the churches as a place of sanctuary. Those priests were hutus related to the Hutu killers. And once they reached the churches, they entered inside the priests would close the doors and lock them and then invite the killers in to hack them to death. Also, as you may know there was a radio station directed by the extremist. And every single morning they would put calls out for the Hutus to go to work and work was a euphemism for killing, every single morning.

There's a direct parallel here between that and what's happening in Ukraine and those Ukrainian priests who are basically supporting Putin's actions. As far as I'm concerned, they're collaborators. These priests who are getting on the radio or speaking to the press. They are collaborating with Putin to harm Ukraine, to force or attempt to force Ukraine to submit to the will of the Russians, and it's an international crime. And I'm willing to say here and now a lot of those priests are going to end up in the dockets at the International Criminal Court, and they're going to end up in prison to have a long think about not being true Christians, but political agents for Putin.

And how long does it take to investigate cases in international criminal tribunals in general? In particular, how long does it take to collect evidence, to qualify and verify all the materials? It is clear that a case can be investigated for a year or two, or it can be extended for five or ten years.

I think the trials will go on for quite a while. Now as far as the individual trial for individual perpetrators, it's hard to tell because of course you have the defense attorneys who are trying to get these alleged perpetrators off. So they can go a long time. 

But what I do think is that Ukraine is being very wise the way it's going about getting the documentation right now. Ukraine is not waiting until this war is over, until all of the atrocities have been perpetrated. Ukraine is in the process of collecting the documentation right now. The International Court is in the process of getting the documentation now. And that should move these cases forward much faster than we saw, for example, in Rwanda because the collection of the data, the testimony wasn't done until after the genocide was over. And the same thing in Sudan, it was collected during the period but not to the extent that we see in Ukraine. This is a very unique situation where Ukraine is on top of this now. And not only will more alleged perpetrators end up in the docket, but I think that early on the court will be moving fairly quickly because of the evidence that's been collected and there will probably be even more alleged perpetrators being tried than these other cases because of this collection.

And what, for example, was particularly outrageous to you in those situations when criminals who should have been held accountable and jailed for life or received 150 years for the crimes they committed, were able to avoid responsibility?

It's extremely disturbing. In fact, I know in the case of Rwanda there's a priest who was a head priest in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. He used the church as a sanctuary. So he said. He would invite people in, the Tootsies, the potential victims, and he would give them places to sleep. Give them food to eat. But frequently every night of a week, he would approach young women and tell him that he wanted to go to bed with them. If they refused, that very night, he would turn the women over to the killers and that was it. That man has not been found guilty yet, and he's living with great wealth in France. That is absolutely absurd, and anybody who gets off scott free, there's something wrong with it. There's something wrong with a system if that happens because these people need to be held accountable. And if they're not, it's not fair to the perpetrators. It's not fair to the country Ukraine and something needs to be done about that. Now you may know the International Criminal Court can try as many perpetrators or alleged perpetrators that they wish. If Ukraine gets to the point thinking well, they're not doing the job that we think they should do, Ukraine does have the right to hold national courts or establish a national Court to try these perpetrators as well. And who knows they may do it. But my sense is the International Criminal Court is very serious about this and wants to get these perpetrators into the dockets to try them, starting at the top with Putin.