Russia using genocide ‘lie’ as pretext to destroy

Ukraine told the UN's highest court in The Hague yesterday that Russia justified waging war against Ukraine by invoking "a terrible lie", namely that Moscow's invasion was to stop an alleged genocide.

"The international community adopted the Genocide Convention to protect; Russia invokes the Genocide convention to destroy," Ukraine's representative Anton Korynevych told judges.

He called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to decide that it has jurisdiction to hear the case fully and eventually rule that Russia must pay reparations for invading under a false pretext.

"Can a state use false allegations of genocide as a pretext to destroy cities, bomb civilians and deport children from their homes? When the Genocide Convention is so cynically abused, is this court powerless? The answer to these questions must be 'no'," Korynevych said.

On Monday, Russia urged the ICJ, also known as the World Court, to throw out the case, claiming Kyiv's legal arguments were "hopelessly flawed". Ukraine brought the case before the ICJ, also known as the World Court, days after the Russian invasion on February 24 last year.

Kyiv argues Russia is abusing international law by saying the invasion was justified to stop an alleged genocide in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine says there was no risk of genocide in eastern Ukraine, where it had been fighting Russian-backed forces since 2014, and that the genocide treaty does not allow an invasion to stop an alleged genocide.

The hearings, set to run until September 27, will not delve into the merits of the case, but will instead focused on legal arguments about jurisdiction. The convention defines genocide as crimes committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such".

Meanwhile, Russia struck three industrial warehouses in a drone strike on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv early yesterday, causing a huge fire and killing at least one person, local officials said.

Russian forces also shelled the southern city of Kherson, killing a policeman and wounding two civilians on a trolleybus, the head of the city's military administration said.

"In the morning, a 49-year-old police sergeant was killed by Russian artillery fire in Kherson," Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

In Lviv, fire fighters tackled a blaze after three industrial warehouses were hit in an attack at around 5:00 am, emergency services said.

Photos released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine showed huge flames lighting up the sky above the burning warehouses.

Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi said the body of a man who worked at one of the warehouses had been found under the rubble.

Sadovyi said the warehouses stored windows, household chemicals, and humanitarian aid.

"I want to emphasise that these are ordinary industrial warehouses. Nothing military was stored there," regional govenor Maxim Kozitsky said on the Telegram messaging app.

He said Russian forces had launched 18 drones in the attack and that 15 had been shot down, including seven that were directly over the Lviv region.