IC , HAGUE, has commenced legal filing of Genocide of Ukrainians by the Russian Federation,Anton Korynevych, ambassador on special assignment reports
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This is the end of the beginning. Note that earlier, that the IC , Hague was VERY interested
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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court prosecutor has launched an investigation that could target senior officials believed responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide amid a rising civilian death toll and widespread destruction of property during?Russia’s invasion of Ukraine .
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced the probe late Wednesday night after dozens of the court’s member states asked him to take action.
“An investigation by the International Criminal Court into Russia’s barbaric acts is urgently needed and it is right that those responsible are held to account,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. “The U.K. will work closely with allies to ensure justice is done.
After informing the court’s judges of his decision to open an investigation that covers all sides in the conflict, Khan said: “Our work in the collection of evidence has now commenced.
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The administrative procedure gives 3 months to the Russian Federation to respond
Namely we also have this to consider: The danger of not holding the Russians to account was neatly summarized as follows
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Right-wing populism, skeptical of NATO and the EU, is already a powerful force.?Hungary’s Fidesz is simply its most powerful and explicitly pro-Kremlin variant. Poland, Romania and Bulgaria would all experience spikes in anti-NATO far-right activity. Serbia would capitalize, pushing to absorb Bosnia’s Serbian portion.
The Balkan States would find little support from NATO.?Sweden and Finland would be isolated and vulnerable despite their membership in the Atlantic Alliance.
Western European NATO demanding concessions from Ukraine for peace would destroy the Atlantic Alliance.?At a minimum, it would roll back NATO to its 1991 borders, potentially including the Czech Republic and “eastern” Germany.
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Whereas not only the Hague court should be considered, this passage is in tandem with a criminal case against Russia
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There should be no mistake.?A peace settlement prior to a major Ukrainian counteroffensive that retakes significant territory – at least all of Kherson Oblast, and perhaps some of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts – is a Russian victory.
The Kremlin has made its conditions clear for a settlement in word and deed.?It will not cede territory it has conquered: Russian “passportization” has set the conditions for Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts’ absorption into Russia, likely alongside the Donbas.?Sanctions must be removed, and Russia reintegrated into the global economy.
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Over my dead body
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-genocides-crime-war-crimes-europe-499d7b6a9e955f659284b2edc6f1c508
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ICC prosecutor launches Ukraine war crimes investigation
By MIKE CORDER
March 3, 2022
FILE - A view of the exterior view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, March 31, 2021. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor has put combatants and their commanders on notice that he is monitoring Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, at the same time, Prosecutor Karim Khan acknowledges that he cannot investigate the crime of aggression. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court prosecutor has launched an investigation that could target senior officials believed responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide amid a rising civilian death toll and widespread destruction of property during?Russia’s invasion of Ukraine .
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced the probe late Wednesday night after dozens of the court’s member states asked him to take action.
“An investigation by the International Criminal Court into Russia’s barbaric acts is urgently needed and it is right that those responsible are held to account,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. “The U.K. will work closely with allies to ensure justice is done.
After informing the court’s judges of his decision to open an investigation that covers all sides in the conflict, Khan said: “Our work in the collection of evidence has now commenced.”
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service has said that more than 2,000 civilians have died since the Russian invasion, a claim that was impossible to verify.
There also have been reports of the use by Russian troops of?cluster bombs, ?with a preschool and a hospital both reportedly hit.
President Vladimir Putin’s “military machine is targeting civilians indiscriminately and tearing through towns across Ukraine,” Truss said.
Rights groups on Thursday welcomed the nations’ request for an investigation.
“The request for an ICC investigation reflects the growing alarm among countries about the escalating atrocities and human rights crisis that has gripped Ukraine,” said Balkees Jarrah, interim international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “These governments are making clear that serious crimes will not be tolerated and that the court has an essential role to play in ensuring justice.”
The court already has conducted a preliminary probe into crimes linked to the violent suppression of pro-European protests in Kyiv in 2013-2014 by a pro-Russia Ukrainian administration and allegations of crimes in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has backed rebels since 2014. It found “a broad range of conduct constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity within the jurisdiction of the court have been committed” in Ukraine, Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, said at the time.
Those findings also will be included in Khan’s investigation.
Putin and his military top brass could potentially face charges for ordering attacks that breach the laws of war, said Marieke de Hoon, assistant professor of international criminal law at the University of Amsterdam.
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“The ICC is created to circumvent Putin’s head of state immunity in foreign courts,” De Hoon said. “The ICC can now continue its investigation, open cases and issue arrest warrants.”
But she also noted the ICC can only put a suspect on trial in The Hague if they are arrested. The court doesn’t have a police force to detain suspects and relies on international cooperation to enforce its arrest warrants. Under ICC rules, suspects can’t by tried in their absence.
How armies are allowed to act during military conflicts is governed by what is known as international humanitarian law, the aim of which is to protect civilians and rein in the use of force.
“That means that a certain category of people — so-called combatants, who distinguish themselves from civilians and are engaged in the armed conflict — can use force but only against military targets and then only when those are necessary, and only with proportional means,” said De Hoon
To be classed as crimes against humanity, attacks have to be part of what the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, calls “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”
The use of munitions such as cluster bombs also likely will, if confirmed, qualify as war crimes because of their indiscriminate nature.
“It’s impossible with those types of weapons to distinguish between military targets and civilians,” De Hoon said.
While Khan has now opened an investigation, he most likely won’t be able to send investigators into Ukraine to collect evidence and speak to witnesses while war is still raging.
“It is hard to investigate on the ground now,” De Hoon said. “But there are a lot of open source investigations possible, using for instance satellite images and social media posts. Other states can also share the evidence they collect with the ICC.”
The ICC was set up in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The crime of aggression, which can’t be investigated in Ukraine because neither Russia nor Ukraine is a member of the court, was added later. The ICC is a court of last resort, taking on cases when national authorities are unwilling or unable to prosecute.
Over the past 20 years, its prosecutors have filed charges against military and government leaders in several countries, but it hasn’t managed to bring many to justice.
One of the first suspects charged by the court was Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord who leads the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group. An international arrest warrant for Kony was issued in 2005 but he remains at large.
Another high profile fugitive is ousted Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who still hasn’t been handed to the ICC despite arrest warrants dating back to 2009 and 2010 for allegedly ordering atrocities in the Darfur region.
As Khan launched the court’s latest investigation, he put combatants and their leaders on notice that he is watching them.
“With an active investigation now underway, I repeat my call to all those engaged in hostilities in Ukraine to adhere strictly to the applicable rules of international humanitarian law,” he said. “No individual in the Ukraine situation has a license to commit crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”
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Note this opinion piece. There is a point in tandem with the IC Hague filing
https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/why-us-nato-cant-let-russia-win/
Why US-NATO can’t let Russia win
Putin wants and needs to win the Ukraine war quickly but such an outcome would be disastrous for the US and Europe
By?SETH CROPSEY
JUNE 28, 2022
A Ukrainian army service member with a US-made Javelin anti-tank missile during a military parade in 2018. Image: Screengrab / Sky News
NATO meets in Madrid on June 28. As the West’s peace camp increases its din, it’s a good moment to consider the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat.?They would be catastrophic.
Any peace that secures Russian assent will be tantamount to Russian victory.?Russian victory will divide and in time destroy the Atlantic Alliance, severely weakening the United States’ long-term position in Eurasia.
Putin may not have entered this war with grandiose ambitions vis-a-vis NATO.?But his war has become his defining policy action. The West should understand that Russian victory would fundamentally transform the Eurasian order.
100 Hours to 100 Days
Despite predictions that the conflict would last under 100 hours, the Ukraine war has now entered its sixth month.?The United States and its allies have settled into a complacent rhythm, defining the conditions of a limited war.?
NATO and its global partners provide some military equipment and training and some intelligence support, Ukrainians accept that the West will not combat Russia directly and Russia restricts combat operations to Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the cracks in the Western coalition are starting to show.?France, Italy and Germany are the weakest links.?France has provided tangible military support, but Emmanuel Macron, ever the aloof, genteel intellectual-bureaucrat, has signaled his desire to terminate the war without “humiliating” Russia.?
Germany’s Olaf Scholz, despite his government’s defense spending injection, has permitted the delivery of only token supplies and has effectively stalled major support.?Italy’s proposed four-point peace plan reflects the deep desire within its governing coalition to end the conflict.?
Germany and Italy together have opened ruble accounts to purchase Russian gas.?And even Europe’s more stalwart members still purchase Russian petrochemicals, albeit rebranded as the product of Latvia or some other non-oil-producing country.
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Public discourse has also shifted against Ukraine.?The Kremlin failed to achieve its central objective, capturing Kiev and installing a quisling regime over Ukraine.?But it has succeeded in one manner: Ukraine now has no international port access, and the country is entirely beholden to Western economic and military support to survive.
By focusing on a small slice of the Donbas, specifically between Slovyansk-Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk-Lysychansk, Russia hopes publicly to demonstrate the hopelessness of Ukrainian resistance to the West, thereby encouraging the gathering dove flocks in Western Europe and North America to pressure Kiev into accepting Russian conquests.
In reality, the war still favors Ukraine – as the use of long-range US artillery is starting to show in the Donbas.
Russia’s incremental gains in the Donbas were purchased at a high price: It has thrown nearly all of its battered combat formations into Severodonetsk and its environs.?But Severodonetsk is no Austerlitz. By employing tactics reminiscent of the Great War – a creeping bombardment behind which Russian soldiers can advance – Russia has achieved some success.
But it is eminently clear that the Russian armed forces lack the reserves to exploit, and in many cases even generate, a decisive breakthrough, complicating the long-predicted “encirclement” of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.?
Ukraine, meanwhile, has depth on its side. After Severodonetsk, it can hold Lysychansk, bloodying Russian forces that cross the Siverskyi Donets to assault the city from its high ground.
If Russia jeopardizes that position by pushing the Bakhmut-Lysychansk road, Ukrainian forces can withdraw to the ridge between Bakhmut and Kramatorsk, another natural defensive position.?
Finally, the Ukrainians can defend Slovyansk and Kramatorsk themselves, a conurbation with a combined population well over 250,000.?Barring a collapse in Ukrainian morale, it will take Russia weeks, more likely months, to drive Ukraine from the Donbas.
All the while, new Ukrainian recruits are drilling with Western equipment – and this equipment is coming, albeit slowly.
It is not, as some analysts have argued, that Ukraine wishes to regenerate its entire maneuver force with Western weapons – but that it must equip hundreds of thousands of men, something like 40-plus maneuver brigades alongside support units and artillery, with heavy weapons to ensure its victory.
Russia, meanwhile, already approaches a manpower wall, absent mobilization. The Russian army is already offering huge incentives for short-term contracts, something on the order of a year’s pay in three months, and has begun deploying its third-line battalion tactical groups (BTGs) from covert mobilization.
Anti-war protest in Russia, 2022. Photo: Wikipedia
Even with this, recruiting stations are sabotaged – and Russia still faces a numerical issue.?Putin avoided mobilization on May 9, recognizing the risks it poses to his regime.?
Giving hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Central Asians, Siberians and Caucasians weapons, and shipping them through Moscow, is a recipe for a February revolution.?But at a certain point, he must mobilize if he wishes to continue the fight.
Putin’s current emphasis on cultivating Western despair is an attempt to terminate the war before Russia must mobilize.?Western support for Ukraine has become a core pillar of Ukrainian morale.?If the West backs out, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must capitulate.
Indeed, the entirety of Russia’s strategy has had an informational bent.?Its attempt to overwhelm Ukraine early in the war, striking targets across the country and invading along six distinct axes, was meant to signal to the West that Russia would march into Kiev within days, driving the ever-perfidious homosexual-drug-addicted-Jewish-Nazi Zelensky into exile.
Support should have been fruitless. Russia’s 40-mile column, whether a supply convoy or combat formation, was meant to demonstrate the sheer weight of the Russian Bear.
Russia’s missile strikes throughout Ukraine, nuclear threats and hypersonic weapons tests are still meant to showcase Russian technical-material superiority and resolve.?The Donbas campaign displays Russia’s true strength – its ability to pulverize cities brick by brick.
Russia cannot win conventionally.?It must win informationally.
Eurasia unbound
There should be no mistake.?A peace settlement prior to a major Ukrainian counteroffensive that retakes significant territory – at least all of Kherson Oblast, and perhaps some of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts – is a Russian victory.
The Kremlin has made its conditions clear for a settlement in word and deed.?It will not cede territory it has conquered: Russian “passportization” has set the conditions for Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts’ absorption into Russia, likely alongside the Donbas.?Sanctions must be removed, and Russia reintegrated into the global economy.
Perhaps it will allow a loose security guarantee, particularly if France and Germany are key guarantors.?But it will undoubtedly demand limits on Ukrainian combat capacity and Western military assistance to neuter Ukraine’s self-defense abilities.
After licking its wounds and rebuilding military capacity, it will return and finish the job in Ukraine, whether in three months or three years, finally installing a pliant regime and potentially annexing the country outright.
However, there is an evolution in Putin’s policy between February 24 and today.
Putin’s invasion had two motivations: the toxic version of Russian nationalism to which he subscribes, and the more pedestrian fear of Kiev’s future assertiveness. These spring from his two fundamental motivations:
Under Putin’s conception of history, expressed consistently from his 2007 Munich Security Conference Speech through to his July 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Russia is a unique civilization and the true shield of civilized values.
It was Russia that defeated the Mongols in 1380, shattering the Golden Horde’s control of Eastern Europe.?It was Russia that humbled Poland in the early 17th?century.?It was Russia that broke Swedish power in the Great Northern War.?It was Russia that doomed Napoleon’s European empire.?And it was Russia that wiped Nazism from Europe’s soul.?
In each case – as Putin sees it – Russian blood cleansed a decadent, effete and weak Europe.?Yet the Europeans persistently refuse to recognize Russia as the only power worthy of great power status in Europe.?Nor do those in Russia’s sphere grasp the obvious superiority of Russian culture, language and history.
This Russia, in Putin’s view, has a right to assert itself and is the only power with interests and territories beyond Europe with a right to shape European security.
Hence Putin’s comparison to Peter the Great in his recent remarks on the 350th?anniversary of the Tsar’s birth.?Peter transformed Russia from a marginal principality on the European periphery, a state more Asian than European, into an?empire?with a central role in European and Eurasian political affairs.
Uniting the Russian peoples is crucial to fulfilling this vision.?The Soviet Union’s collapse – and the Soviet Union’s mistakes – divided the?Rus’ ?into Belarussians, Ukrainians and Russians.?This historical mistake must be corrected on purely cultural-ideological terms.?Ukraine, Belarus and Russia must be reunited.
Putin’s obsession with Nazism and the supposed oppression of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians in Ukraine stems from this reading of history.?Anyone opposed to the unity of the Russian people must be a Nazi, the enemy that came closest to destroying the?Rus’.?
The simple Ukrainian desire for independence and identity is not an expression of national feeling, but evidence of Nazi penetration into the Ukrainian state, which actively oppresses its predominately Russian-speaking population.?Never mind that the first to take up arms against Russia in 2014 were those Eastern Ukrainians who Putin sought to protect.
While the broader paradigm of Russian superiority encouraged Putin’s aggression, contingent factors drove Putin to war on February 24. Zelensky, elected on a peace platform and promising a resolution to the Donbas War, quickly transformed into an implacable foe.
The Ukrainian armed forces, meanwhile, were expanding their combat capabilities.?Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missiles were due to be fielded in numbers midway through this year.?
Their sinking of the?Moskva?demonstrates the threat they would have posed to Russia in large numbers.?Ukraine’s integration of UCAVs and artillery would also provide a decisive advantage over the Donbas separatists.
Russia’s Moskva warship lists after a missile attack in April 2022. Image: Twitter / CBS News / OSINT Technical / Screengrab
Given the supposed?Banderite ?co-optation of Ukrainian politics, a Nazi war of aggression against the Donbas – and perhaps Crimea – was conceivable in the near future.?If the timing coincided with Putin’s 2024 election bid, Russia’s Maximum Leader might have been jeopardized.
Russia’s initial campaign plan, prepared under the utmost operational security in Putin’s view, failed for multiple reasons – not in the least the Kremlin’s assumption, driven by poor intelligence, that a significant proportion of Ukrainian forces would surrender or defect.
However, it was also meant to shock the West, preventing it with a fait accompli that demonstrated Russian military superiority.?Indeed, as noted, every major Russian action – from the initial assault to its Kiev column to its punishing bombardment in the Donbas – is meant to convince the West that arming Ukraine is futile.
In this respect, Western resolve has shocked Putin and the Kremlin.?They have prompted a shift in objectives – yet not the shift one would expect.
Rather than reducing his exposure, cutting his losses and negotiating a token peace, Putin has doubled down on his strategic position.?Regime security certainly motivates this.?
The domestically relevant Russian nationalist lobby demands a smashing victory to justify the costs of the Ukraine War, while anything short of this threatens to turn Putin into Boris Yeltsin after Chechnya.
Again, the least Putin can accept is a position in which Russia holds its gains in Ukraine’s south and the entire Donbas, and in which Ukraine is demilitarized and left vulnerable to another assault.
In the long term, Putin almost certainly planned on a confrontation with the West, one that would shatter NATO and secure Russia’s long-term strategic position in European Eurasia.?Ukraine was to prepare for this confrontation.
By incorporating Belarus and Ukraine into a revitalized Russian empire, Putin would expand Russia’s population by over a third and its gross domestic product (GDP) by a seventh.?
It could then snap up Moldova and Georgia, bully Azerbaijan into its orbit and solidify a concrete tributary relationship between Moscow and Central Asia’s post-Soviet republics, co-opting their resource wealth as Moscow has done to Asian Russia.?
This bloc would be capable of confronting the West, ideally with Chinese assistance.?Russia would manufacture another crisis in the Baltic or Black Sea, stir up trouble in the Balkans and exploit divisions between Western and Eastern European NATO over their willingness to shed blood in defense of Europe.
Italian, French and German spinelessness would be exploited. Russian naval capabilities in the High North and Eastern Mediterranean would be used to pressure Europe, and Russian nuclear capabilities – and ideally concurrent Chinese action against Taiwan – to terrify the United States.
A long-term confrontation with NATO over Ukraine, however, has changed Putin’s calculations.?Russia cannot win a multi-year war. Per the Central Bank of Russia’s own admission, the war’s economic costs will not be felt in Russia until the fall or early winter, when Russia’s currency reserves dry up.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin share a toast. Photo: AFP / Zuma
After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Conference, Xi Jinping’s support will become more public, assuming he retains power.?But China is unlikely to prop up the Russian state indefinitely.?
Indeed, it may simply leave Russia to its fate given the extent of economic damage, snapping up the juiciest morsels of the Russian economy and leaving the rest to collapse.
Russian mobilization would provide more combat power – but also would risk revolution.?A peace agreement less than that outlined above raises the odds of a palace coup.?Nuclear use may terminate the conflict, but that carries severe risks.
By robustly supporting Ukraine, NATO has effectively entwined its alliance cohesion with Ukraine’s fate.?Eastern European NATO has warned Western European NATO since 2014 that Ukraine was at risk of invasion, and that Russia would turn on them next.
Germany, France, Italy and the EU’s leadership tabled their concerns, maintained robust links with Russia and looked askance at any demands to increase military spending.
The West should now deliver more materiel – much more and much faster – if Ukraine is to drive Russia back within the next year.?But it has sustained Ukraine through this war.?Absent NATO intelligence and military and financial support, Ukraine may have survived the initial Russian onslaught but over time it would have collapsed.
If Putin simply grinds through Ukraine despite NATO’s best efforts, the Atlantic Alliance can survive and resist.?But if Ukraine’s defeat stems from insufficient NATO support or, worse, Western European pressure on Ukraine to accept a crippling peace, Eastern European NATO will crumble.
Right-wing populism, skeptical of NATO and the EU, is already a powerful force.?Hungary’s Fidesz is simply its most powerful and explicitly pro-Kremlin variant. Poland, Romania and Bulgaria would all experience spikes in anti-NATO far-right activity. Serbia would capitalize, pushing to absorb Bosnia’s Serbian portion.
The Balkan States would find little support from NATO.?Sweden and Finland would be isolated and vulnerable despite their membership in the Atlantic Alliance.
Western European NATO demanding concessions from Ukraine for peace would destroy the Atlantic Alliance.?At a minimum, it would roll back NATO to its 1991 borders, potentially including the Czech Republic and “eastern” Germany.
.
What is to be done?
The United States has two paths ahead of it. Either it ensures NATO morale and its commitment continues – seeing Ukraine through this difficult phase of combat and providing Ukraine with the support it needs to drive Russia from its territory – or it actively plans for a much smaller global role restricted to the Indo-Pacific, and accepts a separate peace with Russia and Russian domination of Eastern Europe.
It is rather an issue of will.?Western European NATO cannot be allowed to break ranks.?Rather, those countries must help shoulder the burden of European defense – not with their sons and daughters, but with their defense industries.?
The Atlantic Alliance’s Western European members must be convinced to expand their defense production and deliver Ukraine the quantities of heavy weapons it requires to drive through to victory.?
Only then can negotiations lead to a durable peace – only after Russia is driven out of Ukraine’s south, and ideally back to the pre-February 24 borders, can a settlement be reached.
This will require a consistent NATO military commitment that deters Russian horizontal escalation.?But the central question is spiritual: NATO must have the resolve to see the war through.
Some damn little thing in the Balkans failed to spark yet another world war in 1999.?It is, for the sake of parallelism, some damn big thing in Ukraine that calls up this possibility.?
This is the decisive confrontation.?Prudence dictates resolve, not passivity. The NATO meeting in Madrid is an excellent occasion to show resolve.
Seth Cropsey is the founder and president of the Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of?Mayday?and?Seablindness. Follow him on Twitter @sethcropsey
Chemical Engineering Specialist at Firma-Terra
2 年Why would RF agree to any court's jurisdiction over the case?