Mick Hartley

In Timothy Snyder's latest substack piece, he underlines the significance of the latest legal moves against Putin:

In the past few days, a number of very interesting things have happened, which I thought I would signal in this post.  The wheels of justice may turn slowly, and certainly it is easy to be frustrated when obvious atrocities are not met with immediate formal condemnation.  That said, it is hard to think of many moments when so much legal attention was paid over a short period to a single dictator.  So, a quick and incomplete rehearsal might be useful:

1.  The creation of a group of more than thirty states preparing the way for a special tribunal for the crime of aggression.  A working group will meet tomorrow, March 21st.  Aggression is one of the core crimes to be tried by the International Criminal Court at the Hague, and is defined by "the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations." 

The crime so defined is committed by individuals rather than states, so it would seem to apply to Vladimir Putin and other high political and military officials of the Russian Federation.  Of all the crimes committed in and with respect to Ukraine, this one is generally regarded as the simplest to try and prosecute.  The formidable legal mind Philippe Sands has lent his support to just this approach.  At Just Security you can find a selection of articles on the topic.

2.  The appearance, on 16 March, of the "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine" to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.  It documented "willful killings, unlawful confinement, torture, rape, and unlawful transfers of detainees from the areas that came under the control of Russian authorities in Ukraine."  These include a "widespread pattern of torture and inhuman treatment committed by Russian authorities against the people they detained" as well as "cases of sexual and gender-based violence involving women, men, and girls, aged from 4 to 82, in nine regions of region, and in the Russian Federation."  The report specified that rapes "were committed at gunpoint, with extreme brutality and with acts of torture, such as beatings and strangling.  Perpetrators at times threatened to kill the victim or her family, if she resisted." 

3.  The issuance by the International Criminal Court, on 17 March, of an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes, the first charge being the abduction of children from Ukraine.  This has been one of the ghastlier Russian practices, one to which I and others have been trying to draw attention for a year.  The issuance of an arrest warrant by the ICC is the most politically consequential of recent events, since it defines Putin as a wanted suspected war criminal subject to arrest by any country that acknowledges the ICC (which is most of them).  It is also not a signal that can be ignored by Russian elites as they ponder he future of their country.  It will hinder Putin's international travel, and not only in the obvious sense.  Henceforth he will have to wonder, every time he gets into an airplane, whether the pilot might just deliver him somewhere where he is subject to arrest. 

The kidnapping of tens (or more likely hundreds) of thousands of children is certainly a war crime, but it is worth noting that some war crimes are also genocide.  The 1948 genocide convention specifically defines it as such.  Genocide is thought to be a harder crime to prosecute, because the convention also specifies that the actions must be accompanied by an intent to destroy a group.  This war is historically unusual, however, in that Russian authorities and propagandists have provided a constant, public flow of evidence of intent….