Ukraine and the international community have at their disposal four instruments to respond to Russian aggression against Ukraine: armed resistance is the task of the Ukrainian armed forces; economic sanctions, a tool used by Ukraine’s allies to weaken the Russian economy; diplomatic isolation; and international justice. The latter is represented by the various international courts.
The war, launched by Russia on February 24, 2022 against Ukraine, falsely called by President Vladimir Putin “the special military operation” has provoked multiple international crimes on Ukrainian territory, namely: war crimes, crimes against humanity, the crime of aggression, and crimes against the environment, named by international jurists ecocide. It turned out, after a few days of fierce fighting on Ukrainian soil, that the “special military operation” is in reality the synonym of Putin’s unacknowledged “declaration of war” against Ukraine. Putin justified his “special military operation” in order to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine” which he said was committing genocide against the Russian-speaking population in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine. Ukraine.
According to Putin, Ukraine was planning an attack on Russia with the help of NATO. This false story about the causes of war in Ukraine was denied by Yevgeny Prigojine, the leader of Wagner, a private militia. Prigozhin, an ally of Putin for 20 years, claimed during the armed rebellion of his Wagner militia against Putin and the Russian Army General Staff on June 24 that “in 2022 Kiev had no intention to attack Russia with the help of NATO”. Prigozhin claimed that the case was fabricated by Russian Defense Minister, “Sergei Shoigu, and other corrupt officers, supported by oligarchs who made money from the deployment of the army” . Prigozhin’s militia and himself participated in the invasion of Ukraine from day one and fought, at the front, on the front line, which makes his statements credible.
It appears that one of the reasons why President Putin named the war in Ukraine “the special military operation” was to avoid engaging the responsibility of the Russian state before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Both courses are universal. They play a vital role in maintaining a stable international order based on respect for the rules of international law.
Here are the most important legal steps taken by the Ukrainian state with international legal bodies after February 24, 2022. Three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 27, 2022, Kiev filed a complaint against Russia before the ICJ. The Court had ordered Russia on March 16, 2022 to immediately suspend its military operations in Ukraine. Russia never accepted this order and continued military operations on the territory of Ukraine.
war crimes
On March 17, 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President Putin and for the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. Putin and Mme Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for war crimes, deportation or forcible transfer of population (children) and illegal transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia”. The arrest warrant issued by the ICC against President Putin was a legal blow with serious political and legal consequences for him and his country. The arrest warrant prevents Putin from traveling to the 123 states that have ratified the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. Never before has the ICC charged a head of state whose country is a member of the UN Security Council with war crimes.
Note that Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia at the time, was the first president of a state in office accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1999. ICTY prosecutor, Canadian Louise Arbour, signed Milosevic’s indictment. Few would have imagined that, two years after the indictment, in 2001, Serbia would deliver Milosevic to The Hague (the seat of the ICTY). Hopefully the same will happen to Putin and he will come under the caudin forks of international criminal justice. The analogy between Putin and Milosevic is obvious. Both sought to alter the borders of the successor states of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia by force. By pursuing these political projects, they committed war crimes causing tens of thousands of deaths.