UWC calls on the world to acknowledge the Russian genocide against Ukrainians

The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) calls on the international community, peace-loving nations’ national parliaments, and international organizations to recognize war crimes and atrocities committed by the Russian military in Ukraine as modern genocide against the people of Ukraine. 

The testimonies of former Wagner Group fighters published recently by a Russian human rights group Gulagu.net have shocked the entire world and provided new horrific evidence of the genocide that Russian forces carried out against Ukrainians in Ukraine. 

In the video interviews posted online, former Russian convicts and ex-Wagner mercenaries, pardoned by Russian presidential decrees last year, described their barbaric actions in Ukraine during Russia’s invasion – particularly the orders they have been given and that they followed in occupied territories of the Donbas. According to them, the Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin personally gave orders to annihilate every civilian when Wagner units entered the Ukrainian cities of Soledar and Bakhmut. 

“We have been entering the city and killing all men, women, elderly, teenagers, and children, including minors. We were ordered to eliminate everyone,” said one of the former Wagner fighters in a video describing Russian “cleansing operations” in the occupied Ukrainian territories. He also said he carried out orders this January in Bakhmut to throw more than two dozen grenades into a pit filled with dead and wounded Ukrainians and Russians before dousing the remains of roughly 60 people with gasoline and burning their bodies.

These new terrifying details of Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine once again prove the planned and deliberate character of the Russians’ extermination of the Ukrainian people. 

We call on all peace-loving countries of the world: Do not be silent! The world must join efforts to stop this pure evil NOW!

We also call on the Ukrainian communities and friends of Ukraine around the world to advocate with their governments, elected officials, and civil society partners for:

• recognition of Russian war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine as genocide against the people of Ukraine
• recognition of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism / a terrorist state
• recognition of Wagner Group as an international terrorist organization
• establishment of an International War Crimes Tribunal, which would prosecute the Russian Federation, its leadership, and everyone responsible or complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.