Ukrainian War | More than 20,000 suspected war crimes committed in Ukraine under investigation – Chief Prosecutor talks about the investigation, live broadcast around 2:45 p.m.

Hague

Can we have Will the Russian perpetrators of war crimes in Ukraine ever be held accountable?

At the very least, you have to be prepared for the fact that judgments can only come after years or even decades. However, the collection of evidence is already underway, and the work does not rest solely on Ukraine’s shoulders.

This is one of the key messages when the Netherlands and the International Criminal Court ICC host an international meeting on war crimes in Ukraine on Thursday in The Hague.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced in March shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine that the ICC would open an investigation into the attack. According to Khan, already at that time there were enough grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have occurred in Ukraine since 2014.

A total of 43 countries have supported the investigation.

Read more: Reckless aggressor of war strikes apartment buildings, shopping malls and maternity hospitals – These atrocities Ukraine remembers

Now examinations are underway on more than 20,000 cases. Experts from several countries, including Finland, are participating in the investigation.

In May, the ICC’s more than 40-member investigation team visited Butša, for example, where hundreds of civilians were found killed after the Russians withdrew.

In the opening words of the meeting, there was a concern that mistakes would not be made in the collection of evidence and that there would be no duplication of work, and that the victims would not be needlessly traumatized, for example, so that they would have to repeat their accounts of the atrocities they witnessed over and over again.

of the EU Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders called investigating war crimes a “gigantic task”, not least because evidence must be collected and preserved in wartime conditions.

On the other hand, a new feature is that there is a lot of material thanks to smartphones. The threshold for reporting suspected war crimes is low, as websites have been opened in Ukraine for this purpose.

“It is extremely important for the victims to find out what happened and who did it,” says the foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (green), who attended the meeting’s dinner on Wednesday.

Haavisto says that he is also waiting to see if the ICC will be able to say something about the command-and-control relationships:

“How many war crimes have occurred in the field, as if beyond the control of the superiors, and how much of these are planned, that is, how much the middle management and top management are responsible for them.”

Ukraine has also proceeded with the trials itself and has already sentenced two of the Russian soldiers it captured for war crimes in a Ukrainian court.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine participated in the meeting via video connection Dmytro Kuleba demanded the convening of a special court that would judge Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just the crimes that followed it.

of the ICC jurisdiction is limited to the most serious international crimes, such as mass destruction, which is also called genocide. In addition, the ICC investigates war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression.

War crimes are defined in the Rome Statute, on the basis of which the ICC was also established in 2002. A war crime is, among other things, intentionally launching an attack with the knowledge that it will also cause injuries to civilians and unreasonable loss of human life.

Crimes against civilians are by definition crimes against humanity. In addition to murders, they include, for example, rapes and forced transfers of the population, which according to witnesses have taken place in Ukraine.

Just For the ICC, which celebrated its 20th anniversary, the investigation of war crimes in Ukraine may be a significant turning point.

During its twenty years of operation, the ICC has investigated several war crimes, but it has only been able to issue verdicts in five cases. All those convicted come from African countries, which has raised accusations about the attitude of the court.

In the Ukraine investigation, the ICC has taken the initiative and received the political support of the international community. Prosecutor Karim Khan, who was appointed a year ago, seems to have raised the prestige of the ICC.

Support is now also coming from the United States, which has signed the Rome Statute but has not ratified it. US relations with the court have been strained since the ICC investigated suspected war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Rome Statute has been ratified by 123 countries. In addition to the United States, Russia, China and Israel are among others missing from the group.

The UN Security Council can also ask the ICC to investigate suspected war crimes. Many investigations have collapsed because one of the members of the Security Council has used his right of veto.