Intent to Destroy: Confronting Russia’s Campaign to Erase Ukraine and Its People

On 19 November 2025, leading international lawyers, historians, diplomats, and security experts convened at Georgetown University for the conference Intent to Destroy: Confronting Russia’s Campaign to Erase Ukraine and Its People— a joint initiative of IPHR, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, New Lines Institute, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS), the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project and the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. The event examined Russia’s escalating atrocities and rhetoric through the lens of genocide, outlining concrete legal, political, and security strategies to stop the Kremlin’s campaign to destroy the Ukrainian people.

Experts reached a clear consensus: Russia’s war against Ukraine is genocidal in intent, design, and execution. Evidence from field investigations, survivor testimony, open-source intelligence, legal analysis, and historical context shows that Russia is systematically targeting Ukrainians as a national group through killings, torture, conflict-related sexual violence, mass child deportations, cultural erasure, and sustained attacks on civilians and their homes—reinforced by explicit genocidal rhetoric from the Kremlin.

Speakers stressed three overarching imperatives:

• Decisive, coordinated action by Ukraine’s allies is essential to stop the genocide. 
• Incremental or fragmented responses will not meet the scale of the threat and only assure Russia it can win this war of attrition.
• Territorial concessions or premature ceasefires without enforceable security guarantees will not end the violence because Russia’s objective is not territorial gain but the destruction of the Ukrainian people.
• A Russian victory would carry catastrophic global consequences:

• It would endanger Ukrainians’ survival as a national group;
• Invite further Russian aggression against Europe’s border states;
• Embolden authoritarian regimes worldwide; and
• Hasten the collapse of the international security and human rights architecture created after the Second World War.

The conference’s central message was unequivocal: stopping genocide in Ukraine requires urgent, unified, and sustained action—legal, political, military, and diplomatic—to ensure Ukraine’s survival and security, as well as Russia’s accountability for what it has done.

What measures must be taken to stop Russia’s genocide in Ukraine? A detailed post-conference report with expert takeaways and recommendations—across legal, political, security, and humanitarian domains—will be published by IPHR and partners in early 2026 and will include a list of concrete recommendations to policymakers.

See the window at the top of this page to watch the conference in full or continue reading for summaries of each panel.

In the first panel, experts assessed the growing body of evidence indicating that Russia’s conduct in Ukraine meets the legal threshold of genocide. They highlighted escalating attacks against civilian homes and vital energy infrastructure, the forcible transfer and re-education of Ukrainian children, and widespread conflict-related sexual violence as the main new and widespread and systematic patterns of ongoing Russian abuses in Ukraine. They emphasised that unprecedented scale of these atrocities, and Russia’s eliminationist rhetoric around them, proves that its genocidal intent. They urged recognising the unique context of Russia’s war and highlighted the urgency of halting and prosecuting Russia’s unfolding genocide in Ukraine.

The second panel examined how Russia’s conduct in Ukraine fit a clear genocidal pattern. Speakers showed that Russia’s current atrocities stem from a longstanding imperial ideology that has enabled past crimes, supported by impunity. They argued that the systematic dehumanisation in Russia’s narratives against Ukrainians historically and in the current war, and its explicit calls for extermination, reveal a state-backed genocidal project. 

The third panel outlined concrete accountability, deterrence, and defence measures in place, emphasising that these mechanisms are vital for any just and lasting peace. Panelists affirmed that Ukraine’s sovereignty is non-negotiable, argued that the US should focus on preventing Russia’s military success rather than forcing negotiations, and noted that the international justice system remains the strongest protector of stable borders and human rights, and a source of reputational costs for aggressors.

The final panel stressed that stopping Russia’s genocidal campaign requires a shift from survival-level aid to victory-enabling capacity. Speakers emphasized that Russia’s doctrine deliberately targets civilians and infrastructure, and that incremental Western support has entrenched a war of attrition favoring Moscow. Panelists called for lifting restrictions on long-range strikes, scaling NATO defense production, strengthening air defense, tightening sanctions enforcement, and advancing NATO membership or equivalent security guarantees. They also underscored that security must be paired with accountability and humanitarian action: confronting impunity through the ICC, a Special Tribunal for Aggression, and universal jurisdiction, while mobilizing sustained international support to return abducted Ukrainian children and provide long-term reintegration and trauma care.

For more information on Russian atrocity crimes and the genocidal nature of its war against Ukraine, see our previous reports:

• ​​Intent to Destroy: Why the World Must Name and Confront Russia’s Genocidal War in Ukraine
• Missed Calls from Kherson: Russian Sexualised Torture at Temporary Detention Facility #1
• Airstrikes and Atrocities: A Legal Assessment of Russia’s Aerial Campaign in Ukraine
• Torture at Balakliia Police Station: 6 cells, 64 captives and no room for humanity
• Medvezhonok Camp: The Story of 300 Ukrainian Children Kidnapped by Russian Authorities  
• When ‘russkiy mir’ comes. War crimes and IHL violations committed by Russian armed forces in Hrakove and Zaliznychne
• Attacks on civilians in Motyzhyn, Kopyliv, and Severynivka, Ukraine
• Unlawful confinement and torture in Dymer, Kozarovychi, and Katyuzhanka, Ukraine  
• Killing of civilians in Katyuzhanka, Ukraine