Crimes against Ukrainian civilians will lead to international legal response
For an international lawyer, a claim of genocide is extremely serious. It is a charge that lawyers do not pronounce lightly and certainly not a political tool. There is a valid consideration that such claims would dilute the persuasive power of the absolute prohibition that international law has placed on genocide.
But sometimes injustices have to be called what they are, and from all the information that is publicly available, it has become clear Russia is committing not only war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine but also can amount to acts of genocide. At the end of the day, courts that are bound to the rule of law will have to make this determination. Indeed, there have already been the first war crimes trials held in Ukraine, against Russian soldiers who have murdered innocent civilians.
Genocide can come in different forms and can be committed through a wide range of actions or omissions, as defined in the Genocide Convention and elsewhere in international law. Among the acts of genocide defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention is the forceful transfer of children from one ethnic group to another. This is what has been reported from Ukraine:
Children have been taken by Russian forces from Ukraine and brought to the territory of the Russian Federation. In some cases, they have been adopted by Russian families. This is genocide as defined in Article II (e) of the Genocide Convention.
The prohibition of genocide under international law is absolute. There are no exceptions. All states have a duty to fight genocide. This means that perpetrators must be brought to justice through national courts or international courts and tribunals. Under customary international law (and Article 29 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which does not apply here), there is no statute of limitations for the crime of genocide. This means that there is no time limit for prosecutions. This is also why German courts still deal with crimes committed during the Nazi era. Justice delayed is still better than no justice at all. There is a consensus in international law that these crimes require legal responses.
It follows that the current war and the crimes that are being committed against the people of Ukraine, including against Ukrainian children, will receive a legal response, too. In fact, all states are obliged to participate in this effort to combat genocide.