Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia is trying to kill Ukraine's economy in order to break the country's resistance, as Russian drone attacks continued throughout the day on September 12.
Zelensky, Ukraine's wartime president since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, said Russian forces had fired almost 500 attack drones since that morning alone.
He said Russia had effectively expanded the war from the front line, where it could not achieve success, into the economic sphere, and that its tactic was as primitive as possible: destroying every object that could help people endure the conditions of war.
According to Zelensky, Russian forces are burning warehouses containing food, fuel stations, pharmaceutical facilities, ordinary passenger trains, residential buildings and civilian enterprises.
He said that in recent days Russian strikes had hit a metallurgical plant owned by an Indian business, an American-owned enterprise that produced sunflower oil, and a Polish company that manufactured plumbing equipment. Truck parking areas, ports, shopping centers and energy facilities had also come under Russian attack, he said.
Zelensky said it was important that such Russian strikes not only receive a fair response but also get the necessary moral and political assessment from Ukraine's partners.
Pattern of strikes across Ukraine
Russian forces regularly attack Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure across all regions of the country, using a range of weapons that include attack drones, missiles, guided aerial bombs and multiple rocket launch systems.
Ukrainian authorities and international organizations describe these strikes as war crimes committed by the Russian Federation and say they are deliberately targeted rather than incidental.
Genocide allegations
Lawyers, genocide researchers and human rights defenders say Russia has carried out, during its full-scale invasion, acts against Ukrainian citizens that could fall under the definition of genocide. They point to repeated statements by Russian officials and President Vladimir Putin claiming that Ukrainians do not exist as a separate ethnicity, that Ukraine is an artificially created nation, that those who reject this view must be destroyed, and that Ukraine and Ukrainians should not exist in the future. They also cite public calls for the destruction of Ukrainians.
They further point to targeted shelling of power, heating, water and communications systems and of healthcare facilities, aimed at depriving people of the conditions necessary for life, the persecution and killing of people with pro-Ukrainian views in occupied territory, and what they describe as the extermination of the intelligentsia, including teachers and artists seen as carriers of Ukrainian culture.
They also cite the introduction of a Russian curriculum in schools in occupied territory intended to change children's identity, the deportation of children without parents to Russia, and the removal of Ukrainian books from libraries, the looting of museums and the theft of artifacts linked to Ukraine's ancient history.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. It now has 149 states parties, which are obliged to prevent and punish acts of genocide in both war and peace. The convention defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including killing members of the group or causing them serious bodily harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, preventing births, forcibly transferring children from one group to another, and public incitement to commit such acts.
Russia's leadership denies that its military has deliberately struck civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian cities and villages during the full-scale war, or that it has killed civilians and destroyed hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and energy and water facilities.
