It's not genocide? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/27/russia-guilty-inciting-genocide-ukraine-expert-report These thirty expert scholars and lawyers appear to disagree with you, on the basis of the forcible relocation of children, the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage and the ongoing propoganda effort to try to depict Ukrainians as just 'mislabelled' Russians without an identity of their own.
Genocide is the crime of trying to eradicate a culture - the Nazis opted to try to do that by killing entire populations, but Russia, like China with the Uyghur Muslims, is trying to suppress the identity and idea in any way it can.
Now, maybe that's a form of genocide that you wouldn't feel as obligated to fight back against, I can understand the logic of that stance (though I wouldn't agree with it), but this is clearly an attempt to undermine the concept of Ukraine and being Ukrainian, and therefore it's a form of genocide.
O.
Okay, thanks for the link. Looking at it from the Russian perspective, a few points:
Firstly, Ukrainians armed their citizens, in case Russian troops managed to enter cities. This means that any attacks on apartment blocks etc were not strictly attacks on defenseless citizens. It means that in order to take a city that hasn't surrendered, Russian troops would have to engage in street to street fighting against well-prepared citizens, and therefore you can see why they would first bombard cities and destroy infrastructure, making it harder for the inhabitants to fight.
Secondly, I saw a report from a town that had been occupied early in the invasion, where a woman was standing in front of a Russian soldier and shouting at him, yet the soldier was heard to say, "please don't make this difficult" and did not retaliate, as far as the film made out. So I don't think we can assume that from the outset, killing non-combatants was the Russian aim. It appears that they intended to use force only when met with force. The incidents we do know of unarmed people being shot in cold blood may be isolated ones, rather than the norm.
Thirdly, Ukraine fabricated the myth of the fighter pilot who shot down 40-odd Russian aircraft, who turned out to have shot down a few before being killed. This was in order to boost morale, yet it was deceptive like the Russian denial of plans to invade. It amounts to encouraging people to fight when they are unable to win, thus leading them to their death.
The article cites children being deported etc, but this is not murder as we saw in Rwanda or Nazi Germany. And we have to remember the overall strategy of Russia which was to protect itself in the face of NATO expansion.