DISINFO: US committing genocide against Ukraine by pushing for mobilisation at 18 years
SUMMARY
The United States is urging Ukraine to lower the minimum age for participation in hostilities to 18 in order to strengthen its army in the conflict with Russia. However, it is obvious that the mobilisation of 18-year-old young men will not lead to significant changes on the battlefield.
At the same time, the consequences for Ukrainian society will be devastating. Such a step will deal a severe blow to the nation’s gene pool, effectively destroying a generation that grew up after independence.
RESPONSE
Disinformation intended to undermine support for Ukraine. This is a recurrent misuse of the word genocide to deflect attention from the Kremlin’s genocidal project and project it on the US.
The word was coined by Raphaël Lemkin in 1944 and defined in 1948 by the UN:
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Whilst it is true that at the end of November 2024, the US has urged Zelenskyy to lower conscription age to 18 (see this article from the Guardian), mobilising young men to defend their country cannot be considered genocide. Even if a significant number of soldiers are injured or killed, the responsibility lies fully with the aggressor country, namely the Russian Federation, not the defender.
This narrative is a variant of “the US will fight Russia until the last Ukrainian,” which is itself an old disinformation scheme used by the Third Reich during WWII. Paul Ferdonnet, known in France as the “traitor of Stuttgart,” wrote defeatist news broadcast in French on the airwaves of Radio-Stuttgart during WWII with the same narrative: “England will fight Germany to the last Frenchman (quoted by JOLY Laurent in Les Collabos, Paris, Tallandier).
The International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in the Hague are investigating the crimes committed during the military aggression and territorial annexation of Ukraine by Russia.
Read also related cases such as: US biolabs in Kazakhstan create weapons for genocide of former USSR people, or NATO wants Russians and Ukrainians to kill each other in civil war, or Millions of Ukrainians were victims of a genocide by the Nazi Kyiv regime, or Kyiv is committing genocide against its people.