The distance between these fantasies and reality guarantees the present atrocities. Putin cannot admit to an error, and he must try to bend the world to his fantasy. Victory can mean only a country so destroyed that the remnants of a stateless population have no choice but to accept that they belong to a foreign nation, submit to Russian police control and reeducation for the rest of their lives, and accept that their children will be raised as Russians without any of the freedoms that they as Ukrainians have known

This ambition is visible in the way the war is prosecuted: The teams of assassins keep coming, and local elites keep disappearing. Thousands of Ukrainians have been deported to Russia against their will. Hospitals, schools and civilian bomb shelters are targeted again and again. One-quarter of a population of 44 million people has been displaced by war.

Putin’s words are clearly reflected by his country’s actions in Ukraine. Article II of the United Nations Convention on Genocide specifies five acts that fulfill its definition of “genocide”; all five have been committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. As for evidence of intention: Putin has been confessing it all along.