A coffee with… Louise Arbor | A Clear Look at Putin and Ukraine

Snoro greets me as soon as I set foot on the ground. It’s a kind of huge sheepdog that must have swallowed a wolf or two. He watches over his mistress in this northern forest. It is here that Louise Arbor put her suitcases, after having traveled the vast world in its bloody corners, on the trail of the worst massacres of our time.

Since February, I had been trying to convince her to give me an interview about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the former prosecutor of the tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, ex-judge at the Supreme Court and ex-high commissioner of the United Nations for human rights is not just an “ex”. She is still a partner in a law firm (BLG), a board member of the Mastercard Foundation (very active in Africa) and author of a recent report on the system of complaints for sexual assault in the army.

Finally, this summer, she had time.

The little big woman has lost none of her energy, but a little of her illusions.

“When I started as a war crimes prosecutor, I believed that the fight against impunity was an irreversible movement,” she told me.

She recalled her two meetings with Vladimir Putin, when she was high commissioner. The current Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, whom she had known well when he was his country’s representative on the UN Security Council (1994-2004), had organized the meetings. The time was very different and a semblance of discussion seemed possible.

“Putin is a very attentive man, who examines you in detail. But I’m not the type of George [W.] Bush, to pretend that I saw his soul through his eyes…”

The Russian president had messages to convey to the official guardian of the universal rights of humanity. Messages completely consistent with the Russian justification for the invasion of Ukraine, that of 2014 like that of 2022.

“He said to me, ‘You know, it would be more useful if you also talked about the repression of Russian minorities in neighboring countries.’ He said to me: “Our concerns, you never worry about them. The rights of the Russian minority are flouted in Georgia, Lithuania, Ossetia…”

She couldn’t “assess her good faith,” she said. In other words: how sincere he is in his defense of Russian-speaking minorities (whose rights are no longer what they were in the days of the USSR). And how much of it is consciously fabricated rhetoric just to justify aggression.

“To properly analyze a situation, you need what I call political empathy: the ability to put yourself in the opponent’s position, to understand his motivations.

“I don’t have an intelligence service to really determine what he thinks, where he wants to stop. I didn’t even believe he would invade Ukraine. Sometimes, under the official discourse, the goals are very down-to-earth. Sometimes, under the veneer of rationality, the leader positions himself as a historical figure. »

Meetings with Vladimir Vladimirovich did not end so badly at the time. “He gave me access to territories, to rights groups [notamment Mémorial, qui documente l’histoire des abus du système soviétique… et que Poutine a fait interdire en janvier 2022]. All that is unthinkable today. »

What constitutional democracies call at the UN “human rights” is perceived “with enormous skepticism and cynicism by several countries”. Because coincidentally, this philosophy combines perfectly with the economic interests of these countries.

When the United Nations, particularly at the instigation of Canadian diplomacy, adopted the principle of the “responsibility to protect” at the turn of the century, Louise Arbor was thrilled.

Under this doctrine, the international community has the right, or rather the duty, to intervene militarily to protect an oppressed minority. This is how we justified the military intervention in Libya, which was initially only to protect the populations around Benghazi, while armed opponents tried to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Western countries convinced Russia and China not to block the Security Council resolution authorizing the establishment of a no-fly zone over part of Libya – and the military actions necessary to maintain it.

“When they realized that the military operation had served to get rid of Gaddafi, China and Russia felt betrayed. Their speech was very credible with several countries. »

But is it a moral or legal responsibility? If we are serious, can we be prosecuted, as a State, for not having protected a population?

“It’s not for nothing that Bill Clinton did not want to qualify the massacres in Rwanda as “genocide”. It was to avoid a legal obligation. »

“The 2014 invasion of Crimea confirmed one thing: no one wants to start World War III. And we allowed a lot to happen in Chechnya. There is a lot of talk about the crimes against the Rohingyas and the Uyghurs, but their protection is not exactly a success…”

“Clinton said, ‘We will have more influence by force of example than by example of our force. But this lofty rhetoric no longer means anything after the war in Iraq; the United States had the means and there was no price to pay.

– You do not believe any more, in short?

— Let’s say I’m less optimistic than I was. »

This is no reason to give up investigating the war crimes currently being committed in Ukraine — starting with the invasion itself, which did not respond to any military provocation.

You had to walk between the mines in these countries. Find the mass graves. Digging up bodies. Examine the cause of death. Calling on forensic anthropologists, botanists (the presence of certain plants could show that bodies had been moved), resorting to secret service electronic tapping, satellite images and, of course, hundreds of testimonials…

And all this often on hostile ground, where the state refused to cooperate, or hid the suspects.

“In Ukraine, the investigation is done during the crimes. Access to cookies and sites is unlimited and the authorities are sympathetic to these approaches. On the other hand, with all the media and social networks, there is a risk of contamination of the versions. There is the risk of manipulation, of losing control of the facts. The armies of countries under attack also often commit war crimes, which must be investigated. »

“To accuse someone of a war crime, you have to know which battalion was present. A charge is directed at one person. Who was the Colonel? You have to go up the chain of command. »

“In the case of Slobodan Milošević, who ruled Serbia, ‘everyone knew’ that he was responsible for the massacres in Bosnia. And we were like, “Why is it so hard to prove what everyone knows?” »

When the evidence was finally amassed, it had to be decided whether it was in the public interest to charge Milošević. The Americans, and almost everyone, in fact, thought it was madness, that in any case it was impossible to go and arrest Milošević and that it would kill the peace process.

But what good is an accusation against Vladimir Putin or his generals? First, Russia refuses the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Then it will be impossible to stop it…

“All those who have been brought before the international criminal tribunals have been brought after losing power. When I was told: “You will not be able to get them out of Serbia”, I answered: “They will not be able to stay out of The Hague.”

“It all depends on how they lose power. But it is political decay that can stop them.

“I was telling our team, ‘Our mandate is to arrest the people most responsible for the most serious crimes. Our strength is not political, it is legal.” »

Six months later, no one knows how the Russian invasion will end. Or how the succession of Putin will be organized. The “responsibility to protect” Ukraine has failed in the face of the dangers of a global conflagration. It is all the more necessary to document war crimes, to collect all the evidence, in the hope that these crimes will not go unpunished, that perhaps one day some kind of justice will be implemented, in The Hague – or in the story “.