Institute for the Study of War & AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 15
Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and
Frederick W. Kagan
October 15, 8:30pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russia continues to conduct massive, forced deportations of Ukrainians that
likely amount to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign in addition to
apparent violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin stated on
October 14 that “several thousand” children from Kherson Oblast are “already in other
regions of Russia, resting in rest homes and children’s camps.”
1
As ISW has previously
reported, Russian authorities openly admitted to placing children from occupied areas of
Ukraine up for adoption with Russian families in a manner that may constitute a violation
of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
2
Russian authorities may additionally be engaged in a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing
by depopulating Ukrainian territory through deportations and repopulating Ukrainian
cities with imported Russian citizens. Ethnic cleansing has not in itself been specified as
a crime under international law but has been defined by the United Nations Commission
of Experts on violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former
Yugoslavia as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation
to remove persons of given groups from the area” and “a purposeful policy designed by
one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian
population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
3
According to the UN definition, ethnic cleansing may be carried out by forcible removal,
among other methods.
4
These definitions of ethnic cleansing campaigns are consistent
with reports of the forcible deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children, as well as
reports by Ukrainian sources that reconstruction projects in Mariupol are intended to
house “tens of thousands of Russians” who will move to Mariupol.
5
Prominent Russian milbloggers who yesterday announced the existence of
“hit lists” reportedly originating with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)
and targeting milbloggers for their coverage of operations in Ukraine walked
back their claim on October 15. As ISW reported on October 14, prominent Russian
milblogger Semyon Pegov of the WarGonzo Telegram channel accused “individual
generals and military commanders” of the Russian MoD of developing a “hitlist” of
Russian milbloggers whom the MoD intends to prosecute for “discrediting” the MoD’s
handling of the war in Ukraine.
6
Pegov’s claim was amplified by several other milbloggers
and generated substantial panic about censorship in the hyper-nationalist Russian
information space.
7
