In an underreported development, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office recently announced the indictment of dozens of current and former Ukrainian officials, including former president Petro Poroshenko, on accusations of genocide against Russian civilians in Donbass. Amazingly, one will have a hard time finding any Western coverage of this piece of news at all.

According to Russian investigators, the charges encompass systematic shelling of civilian areas, targeting of Russian-speaking populations, and policies allegedly aimed at the destruction of a protected national group. Ukraine’s military leadership, including figures such as Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Andriy Yermak, was also named.

The timing is interesting, coinciding with a legally significant development (also underreported): the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has just accepted Russia’s counterclaim in the genocide case brought by Ukraine, which accuses Moscow of misusing the Genocide Convention to justify its military operation.

This procedural decision does not mean the ICJ has endorsed Russia’s position. It does, however, mean the Court deemed Russia’s argument legally plausible enough to be heard. Simply put, Ukraine sought to weaponize genocide accusations against Russia, but the strategy risks backfiring, as Russian counter-claims should expose uncomfortable questions about Kyiv’s own record.

Genocide accusations have indeed become weapons in today’s lawfare and narrative wars. Kyiv has invested heavily in portraying Russia’s military campaign as genocidal, with strong backing from........

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