By invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is not just putting Russia’s prestige as a military power at stake. In addition to his country’s economy already taking a heavy hit, with a 25% drop in the value of its currency, the ruble, Putin himself risks being arrested if he is removed from power, and sees the end of his days. being tried at the International Court in The Hague for his crimes.
The Russian president has a long history of human rights violations and even the rules of the Geneva Conventions (signed by several countries, including Russia), which establish the rights of civilians and the duties of the military in times of war. As soon as he took power as prime minister in 1999, Putin had to deal with the separatist aspirations of the Chechnya, which he did with an iron fist, using large-scale violence against civilians and launching heavy air strikes against Grozny, capital of the former Soviet republic. At the time, human rights organization Human Rights Watch said the Russian army “indiscriminately and disproportionately bombed civilian targets”.
In 2008, it was the turn of another former Soviet republic to suffer from Putin’s expansionist ambitions. Under the guise of protecting Russian citizens living in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both part of the Georgia, the Russian government invaded the two provinces, a justification similar to the one used last week when invading the Lugansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine. At the time, attacks on civilian targets were also recorded, accounting for more war crimes against Putin. But his status as Russia’s strong leader has caused the West to respond timidly to Russian aggression.
The first invasion of Ukraine
In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimea, starting an escalation of aggressions that were never repelled by the main western powers with due vehemence. Even the sanctions invoked at the time proved insufficient to stop the former KGB agent — the Soviet Union’s secret service — Vladimir Putin. And there was no shortage of reasons to do so: in the occupied territories, pro-Russian forces shot and tortured opponents in makeshift prisons that practically functioned as concentration camps.
In 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into possible war crimes committed in Georgia in 2008 and ended up including the most recent ones against Ukraine in the 2014 invasion. there are clear indications that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed.
The invasion that started last Thursday was also condemned by the organization Amnesty International. “The Russian military has shown blatant disregard for civilian lives by using missiles and other explosive weapons in densely populated areas,” said the organization’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard. According to the organization, the invasion was marked by indiscriminate attacks against civilian areas, including hospitals, which constitutes a war crime.
THE Lithuania called on Monday (28) for the International Criminal Court to investigate possible war crimes committed by Russia and Belarus, a country that supports the invasion, in Ukraine. “What Putin is doing is murder, pure and simple, and I hope he will be tried in The Hague,” said Ingrida Simonyte, Lithuania’s prime minister, referring to the ICC’s host city in the Netherlands.
This Monday (28), Karim Khan, prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, announced that he will open an investigation into the current situation in Ukraine. “I am convinced that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Ukraine,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
The chances of Vladimir Putin sitting in the dock in The Hague, however, are very slim. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are part of the 123 member countries of the ICC. Russia even opened negotiations to join the ICC, but withdrew in 2016. The only way for the International Criminal Court to have jurisdiction over Russian aggression would be if the United Nations called it to investigate, which is impossible at the moment, a since Russia is one of the five permanent member countries of the UN Security Council, and with veto power.
international laws
By invading Ukraine, Russia went against the Charter of the United Nations, the document that laid the foundations of the organization in 1945: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or independence policy of any state.”
Of course, this does not mean that Russia or Putin individually will be punished. In 2003, when Russia and China vetoed the invasion of Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom acted unilaterally to remove Saddam Hussein from power. That is, there is precedent in what Russia is doing, although while the US and UK acted against a bloodthirsty dictator, Russia invaded a democratic country and with a president elected by the people in a clean election, winning with 73% of the votes. One of Putin’s claims is that he is “denazifying” Ukraine. In addition to the claim being totally unfounded, it is worth remembering that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyis Jewish.
Even in the face of these aggressions and the breaking of the UN charter itself, Russia cannot be removed from the security advice. Even if France, the United Kingdom, the United States and China agreed among themselves on the expulsion, Russia itself would have to vote against itself – needless to say, this is out of the question.
There remains the possibility that Putin will be taken to the International Criminal Court for the intentional attacks on civilian targets, as has happened before in Chechnya and Georgia and is now repeated in Ukraine, with missiles hitting residential buildings in Kiev. For that, Putin would have to be arrested and sent to The Hague. For that to happen, not only he, but the entire Russian military chain of command would need to fall. Something that seems very unlikely in the short and medium term. Long-term? It’s still extremely difficult, but there’s a “maybe” here.
At least two heads of state who have carried out mass killings have fallen into the clutches of the ICC. In 1998, the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London thanks to a warrant issued by Spain. He only escaped trial because, at 83, he was in frail health.
the other was Slobodan Milosevic, president of Serbia between 1989 and 1997 and of Yugoslavia between 1997 and 2000. Once popular and powerful, in 2000 he resigned from the presidency due to demonstrations against his government, accused of corruption, persecution of opponents and the independent press. Six months after resigning, he was arrested by the authorities of his own country. He was sent to The Hague to stand trial for crimes committed during clashes with Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including ethnic cleansing, genocide and breaches of the Geneva Conventions. On March 11, 2006, he was found dead in his cell in The Hague.
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