Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally announced Wednesday that the United States government believes Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine and should be prosecuted.
In a statement, Blinkin repeatedly cited the brutality of the Russian attacks in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine and he compared it to similar Russian campaigns against Grozny in the Second Chechen War and Aleppo during the Syrian civil war.
“Russia’s forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded,” he said.
Blinkin also noted that many of the buildings – allegedly bombed on purpose – such as a theater – were clearly marked with the word for children in Russian “in huge letters visible from the sky.” The maternity hospital in Mariupol was also bombed.
The U.S. assessment is based on publicly available information and intelligence sources, said Blinken, who issued the statement while President Joe Biden was in the air en route to Brussels for NATO and G-7 summits this week.
War crimes – What constitutes a war crime?
There is a set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between nations that govern a broad range of domains, including war, diplomacy, trade, and human rights. It is known as International Law or International Ethics, public international law and law of nations
With international law, it is basically an agreement between countries, much like a treaty, and involves practices and customs adopted by nations to maintain good relations and mutual recognition.
Keep in mind, also, that international law operates largely through consent since there is no universally accepted authority to enforce it upon an individual nation. This means that nations may choose to not abide by international law, and even to break a treaty.
So what happens if a member state violates international law? Generally, violations can be met with coercive action, ranging from military intervention to diplomatic and economic pressure.
The concept of war crimes
While the prohibition of certain behaviors during armed conflict can be traced back many centuries, the concept of war crimes didn’t come into focus until the late19th and early 20th centuries.
The term war crime has been difficult to define with precision, and its usage has evolved constantly, particularly since the end of World War I.
More recently, definitions of war crimes have been codified in international statutes, such as those creating the International Criminal Court and the war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, for use in international war crimes tribunals.
The big difference in more recent definitions of war crimes is that certain behaviors committed by civilians as well as by military personnel are criminalized.
In 1949, four Geneva Conventions were adopted by the international community. In theory, the conventions made prosecutable certain acts committed in violation of the laws of war. The conventions provided for the protection of wounded, sick, and shipwrecked military personnel, prisoners of war, and civilians.
In 1998 in Rome, some 150 countries attempted to establish a permanent international criminal court; the negotiations eventually resulted in the adoption by 120 countries of a governing statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC) to be located permanently at The Hague.
The statute provided the ICC with jurisdiction for the crimes of aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The court came into existence on July 1, 2002, and by 2016 the statute had been ratified by some 120 countries.
Interestingly, three nations, all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, refused to sign the statute – The United States, China, and Russia.
Bottom line – Just how difficult will it be to prosecute Russia for alleged war crimes?
