Catholic priest Patrick Desbois spent decades searching for mass graves of Jews from the Holocaust. Now in Ukraine he proves that Russians are committing genocide. Interview

Catholic priest and president of the organization “Yahad-In Unum” Patrick Desbois has been searching for mass graves of Jews from the Holocaust in Eastern Europe since 2001. His organization has discovered 3,370 execution sites and recorded 8,180 eyewitness accounts. Since March 2022, “Yahad-In Unum” has been documenting Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. Members of the organization have conducted several hundred interviews with victims and witnesses — these materials are already being used in interstate lawsuits against Russia in the European Court and by the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office in a criminal investigation into crimes committed by Russians in Ukraine. On April 1, “Yahad-In Unum” presented its report. One of its key conclusions: the torture of Ukrainian civilians by the Russians under the direction of the FSB is part of the genocide of the Ukrainian people. Babel correspondent Oksana Kovalenko spoke with Patrick Desbois and German lawyer Andrej Umansky about the main theses of the report and why mass torture can be considered confirmation of genocide.

Why did you decide to document the crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine?

Patrick Desbois: I have been working in Ukraine for 20 years — we investigated the crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. I know almost all the villages from Lviv to Crimea or Kharkiv. I had a team of investigators from Ukraine. And when Putin attacked Ukraine, one of the Ukrainian colleagues said to me: “Patrick, will you come and investigate our mass graves?” I couldn’t say no.

At first, we investigated the crimes broadly, without any specifics. Then we got to liberated Kherson. We were in the torture chambers where the Russians were abusing the local residents. We started interviewing torture victims who ended up in the liberated territories.

Andrej Umansky: After Kherson, we also conducted at least 11 interviews with torture victims in the Kharkiv region — we recorded a total of 70 hours of interviews with Ukrainian civilians.

Can you briefly list the main conclusions of your research?

Andrej Umansky: We were not the only ones who documented the testimonies of torture victims, but we were the only ones who tried to understand what goal the Russians wanted to achieve. We came to the conclusion that through violence and blackmail they wanted to force Ukrainians to renounce their identity. It was a systematic work according to the same schemes and following a certain strategy. We will study it in detail.

75% of the interviewed victimswere tortured in specially organized temporary detention centers.

Patrick Desbois: I will give an example of one of the prisoners. He was tortured in Kherson, and then sent to another torture center — in Simferopol, where he was tortured for another six months. The man was a kickboxer, so he endured physical torture quite steadfastly. But at some point a psychologist came to him for a long conversation to draw up his psychological portrait. He realized that this man had a very close relationship with his mother. After that, the FSB officers focused on psychological pressure and began to blackmail his mother, saying that she was being tortured in the same building. Fearing for his mother, the man agreed to cooperate and made a statement on camera. Later, the Russians threatened him that if he did not cooperate, the video would be shown to the Ukrainians.

That is, part of the torture was aimed precisely at brainwashing Ukrainians into agreeing to go over to Russia and secretly work for it inside Ukraine. People who did not agree were given 15 years in prison, and many of them were sent to Russia to serve their sentences.

In the report, you claim that torture to convince people to work for the Russians is genocide. How do you justify this?

Patrick Desbois: Torture is part of genocide, because through torture the Russians tried to destroy Ukrainian identity. That is, people were tortured not only to find out someoneʼs name or some secrets, they were tortured so that they would give up their Ukrainian identity and become pro-Russian.

For example, when the Russians came to a village, they would arrest a large number of educated people, the elite of society—it could be teachers, journalists, community leaders—and they would try to turn them into adherents of the Russian way. They would also take Ukrainian children to Russia, give them up for adoption, and change their citizenship in order to make them Russian and destroy Ukrainian identity.

Andrej, then the question is for you as a lawyer. According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention [and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide], the destruction of identity is not a sign of genocide. Because of this, many international lawyers say that Ukraine should focus on proving other crimes. What do you think about this?

Andrej Umansky: When we drew the conclusion, we relied on the Convention. It states that one of the signs of genocide in Article II (b) is “causing serious bodily harm or mental disorder to members of such a group.” That is, torture, interrogations, constant psychological pressure, threats — all this falls under this article and under actions aimed at the destruction of a national group. The FSB has a methodology, they do all this not just to hurt, but to make people abandon their Ukrainian identity.

Do you have experience studying the crimes committed by the Germans against the Jews, the genocide of the Yazidis? Are these crimes similar to what the Russians are doing in Ukraine? Can this be compared?

Patrick Desbois: Every genocide has its own characteristics. In Iraq, ISIS also took away Yazidi children and gave them up for adoption in a Muslim family. But in addition to this, for example, it sold Yazidi women into sexual slavery. The peculiarity of genocide is that the group that is attacked does not have the opportunity to remain itself: it is either destroyed, or its members say: “We are no longer us, we are you.” This was the case in Iraq and Syria.

20% of the victims surveyedwere sexually abused.

Letʼs talk about responsibility. How do you use the information you collect? Will you submit it to the prosecutorʼs office in Germany? If so, does Germany recognize genocide as a crime, or will you insist on this qualification?

Andrej Umansky: We have been cooperating with the justice system in Germany for a long time and, of course, we will hand over the collected materials to them. All our witnesses have agreed to this. But in order to build a stronger case, more testimonies are needed, it is necessary for the victims to talk to us, I urge you to do this. It is important that justice works for a long time in such cases, but it works. These crimes have no statute of limitations - the criminals will be sought and tried in ten or twenty years.

Regarding your question about qualification, the German law enforcement agencies themselves will decide how to qualify these crimes - it can be both genocide and crimes against humanity. To do this, you need to show the systemic nature of the crime, to cover the widest geography.

Did you manage to identify any of the perpetrators?

Andrej Umansky: When we interviewed our victims, we always asked them to describe the people who tortured them as fully as possible. The FSB worked very carefully, they covered their faces, did not call each other by name or even by call signs. But some were identified thanks to the investigations of your colleagues from The Kyiv Independent, and our victims recognized them.

Patrick, at the Congress you said that now we find ourselves in completely new conditions and that we need to be realistic due to changes in the world. How can victims achieve justice in a world where the victim and the aggressor are increasingly confused?

Patrick Desbois: With the arrival of Trump, everything is changing, we do not know where this story with the peace agreement with Russia will lead. And so now we have to repeat endlessly that Russia is taking away not only territories. Russia is destroying Ukrainian identity in every small village it captures. During negotiations, it is important to remember that the Russians do not come as liberators, I have never seen them offer freedom.

Andrej Umansky: You probably heard Putinʼs statement that by September Ukrainians in the territories occupied by Russia must legalize their status, that is, obtain Russian citizenship. And this speaks in favor of our hypothesis - Putin is putting pressure on Ukrainians, forcing them to renounce their identity.