[15][19] Many Russian generals, such as Grigory Zass, described the Circassians as "subhuman filth" and a "lowly race" to justify and glorify their wholesale slaughter[15][20][21][page needed] and their use as human test subjects in unethical scientific experiments.

[64][65] The Russian empire's decision to launch genocide against Circassians was driven by anti-Muslim sentiments and by Tsarist Russia's "messianic self-image" as the champion of Eastern Orthodoxy against non-Christian inhabitants in its territories.

During the 1860s, the Russian imperial army conquered Circassia and launched a scorched-earth campaign of state terror aimed at the extermination or complete expulsion of all Circassian natives from the Caucasus region.

[109]In April 1862, a group of Russian soldiers slaughtered hundreds of Circassians who had run out of ammunition, leaving "the mountain covered with corpses of bayoneted enemies", as reported by Ivan Drozdov.

Our most humble Petition to Her Magnificent Majesty the Queen and Emperor of England is to the effect that – It is now more than eighty years since the Russian Government is unlawfully striving to subdue and annex to its dominions Circassia, which since the creation of the world has been our home and our country.

But if it is not possible to afford this help for the preservation of our country, and race, then we pray to be afforded facilities for removing to a place of safety our helpless and miserable children and women that are perishing by the brutal attacks of the enemy as well as by the effects of famine; and if neither of these two requests are taken into consideration, and if in our helpless condition we are utterly annihilated notwithstanding our appeals to the mercy and grace of the Governments, then we shall not cease to invoke our right in the presence of the Lord of the Universe, of Him who has confided to Your Majesty sovereignty, strength, and power for the purpose of protecting the weak.

[144][145] As part of Yevdokimov's strategy, Russian Imperial Army blocked all exitways and bombarded the valley from all directions with heavy artillery, indiscriminately killing men, women and children for several days.

[8] Russians troops with heavy artillery and other modern weaponry killed all the men, women and children, in a scene that a Circassian chronicler Shauket who had witnessed the events described as "a sea of blood".

[146] The last Circassian resistance, along with the coastal Abkhaz tribes of Pskhu, Akhtsipsou, Aibgo and Jigit were defeated and then killed en masse to the last man, woman and child, after which, on 21 May, Prince Mikhail Nikolayevich gathered the troops in a clearing in the area for a thanksgiving service.

[148] After this, the Russian army began increasing their efforts in raiding and burning Circassian villages, destroying fields to prevent return, cutting down trees, and driving the people to the Black Sea coast.

A Russian historian of the time, Adolph Petrovich Berzhe, who witnessed the events regarding the departure of the Circassians described the following:[153] I shall never forget the overwhelming impression made on me by the mountaineers in Novorossiisk Bay, where about seventeen thousand of them were gathered on the shore.

And indeed, whose heart would be touched on seeing, for example, the already stiff corpse of a young Circassian woman lying in rags on the damp ground under the open sky with two infants, one struggling in his death-throes while the other sought to assuage his hunger at his dead mother's breast?

[169] The Russian consul based in the Ottoman Black Sea port of Trabzon reported the arrival of 240,000 Circassians with 19,000 dying shortly thereafter with the death rate being around 200 people per day.

[174][175] Of these, between 1.5 and 2 million Circassians were killed in several massacres, military operations, and large-scale state terror perpetrated by the Russian imperial army during its extermination campaigns in Circassia.

[74] He further argues that Western European indignation at the unfolding situation in Circassia arose only after Russia leveraged the Ottomans to gain special rights in the Dardanelles thus threatening their trade interests.

[216][page needed] Imam Shamil's son Muhamed Shafi was appalled by the conditions the migrants had faced upon their arrival to Anatolia and went to investigate the situation: "I will write to (Turkish sultan) Abdülmecid that he should stop fooling mountaineers ...

[227][228][229][230][231][232][233] Kadir Natho lists the following areas as having notable concentrations of Circassian refugee settlements: "in spacious Anatolia ... near Amasya, Samsun, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, on the Charshamba peninsula, along the Aegean Sea, in Turkish Armenia, Adapazar, Duzge, Eskisehir, and Balikesir.

[citation needed] The "Circassians" in question may not always speak the languages of their ancestors, and Turkey's center-right parties, often with varying tones of Turkish nationalism, generally do well in localities where they are known to constitute sizable parts of the population (such as in Akyazı).

[221] While, in many areas, Bulgarian Christians had initially been very hospitable to the Circassian refugees, including by producing extra resources to support them, the collapsing humanitarian situation combined with the political instability caused relations between the two groups to spiral downward.

In many cases, lands were assigned to North Caucasian refugees by the Ottoman government, but the locals refused to give up their homes, causing outbreaks of fighting between Circassians and Chechens on one side, and the Bulgarian, Serbian, Arab, Bedouin, Druze, Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish natives on the other, leading to armed conflict.

In Uzun Aile, between Kayseri and Sivas, Circassians ultimately pushed the local Kurdish population out, and to this day the Kurds with roots in that region recall in a folk song how a "cruel fair-haired and blue-eyed people with sheep-skin hats" drove them from their homes.

[6] German historian Karl Friedrich Neumann estimated that out of the 1.5 million Circassian exiles who tried to flee to Anatolia from the extermination campaigns of the Russian imperial army, more than 500,000 people died during death marches.

[253] Anssi Kulberg has asserted that the Russian Empire played a central role in formulating "the strategy of modern ethnic cleansing and genocide" during its systematic extermination campaigns against Crimean Tatars and Circassians.

[146] There is concern by the Russian government that acknowledging the events as genocide would entail possible claims of financial compensation in addition to efforts toward repatriating diaspora Circassians back to Circassia.

In October 2006, the Adygeyan public organizations of Russia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Syria, the United States, Belgium, Canada, and Germany have sent the president of the European Parliament a letter with the request to recognize the genocide against Adygean (Circassian) people.

"[256] The Russian parliament (Duma) rejected the petition in 2006 in a statement that acknowledged past actions of the Soviet and previous regimes while referring to in overcoming multiple contemporary problems and issues in the Caucasus through cooperation.

[41] Following a consultation with academics, human rights activists and Circassian diaspora groups and parliamentary discussions in Tbilisi in 2010 and 2011, Georgia became the first country to use the word "genocide" to refer to the events.

[291] Asker Sokht, chairman of the public organization Adyge Khase in Krasnodar Krai, also believes that "the main tasks facing Circassians as an ethnic group are the preservation of their language and culture".

[295][296] In spring 2017, a court in the Lazarevsky district of Krasnodar Krai sentenced seventy-year-old Circassian activist Ruslan Gvashev for his participation in the May 21, 2017 mourning events dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Russian-Caucasian War.

[297][298][299] Numerous facts of harassment of activists, commissioned trials against the most prominent figures of the Circassian national movement make it necessary to seek a fair solution in international courts.