If there’s no doubt about the viciousness and blood-thirsty criminality of the Russian campaign, it’s not specific to Ukraine. The Russians employed basically the same tactics in Chechnya, Syria and Afghanistan before that. This is the Russian way of war.

Even in Ukraine, it’s not as though the Russians are making cultural and ethnic distinctions in their brutality. The watchword for the scorched-earth nature of their tactics is Mauripol, a predominantly Russian-speaking city with a large Russian population.

Zelenskyy praised Biden for making the accusation of genocide. It makes sense that the Ukrainians want the charge to be part of the conversation — there’s no better way to delegitimize their Russian invaders.

There is no formal obligation to do anything to stop a genocide. Yet, it’s such a monstrous crime, harkening back to the Holocaust, that it creates considerable moral pressure to act.