Killing of civilians during war is not new to Russia

Tetiana reacts as she pays tribute on the birthday day of her son Sergiy Voityshyn, who was killed in 2024 fighting Russian troops in the Donetsk region, at a makeshift memorial for the fallen Ukrainian and foreign fighters on the Independence Square in Kyiv on March 1, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)

When, in May, international human rights bodies addressed Russia’s continued killing of civilians in its war against Ukraine, the entities were unknowingly digging out Moscow’s methods which it employs whenever it has waged war to expand territory.

Historians who have researched the Black Sea basin have recorded events of the North Caucasus and Southern Caucasus, which today lie in the Russian Federation, revealing brutal campaigns by Tsarist Russia annihilating civilians, in a process that bears similarities with what Human Rights Watch and the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine reported.