Putin faces double blow in Europe

Two international bodies have simultaneously accused Russia of war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine.

The Global Prison Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber said on Tuesday it issued arrest warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian military general Valery Gerasimov for “war crimes of directing attacks on civilian objects” in Ukraine. Was.

At the same time, the EU Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Lavish Chamber said that Moscow has violated human rights in Crimea in the decade since the beginning of its illegal career on the peninsula in February 2014.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for the World Human Rights Organization, whose file this year detailed how Putin’s forces employed starvation methods during their siege of the southern city of Mariupol in 2022, told newsweek Through Russia “food and commodities indispensable for survival are being weaponized throughout the conflict”.

In their acquittal observation on Tuesday, the ICC judges said there are boxes that hold the suspects accountable for missile launches directed at Ukrainian electricity infrastructure “from at least 10 October 2022 to at least 9 March 2023”. .

newsweek Both bodies have contacted the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry for comment on the decisions. Russia’s Security Council, which is now headed by Shoigu, called the ICC arrest warrant “hot air” because the court’s jurisdiction did not protect Russia and was “part of the West’s hybrid war” towards Russia.

The ICC report described Shoigu and Gerasimov’s complaint as serious, accusing them of causing accidental harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects, and inhumane acts.

These are violations of the Rome Statute that established the court in The Hague which relies on its 124 members to arrest someone under a warrant.

It is the latest conflict crime allegation involving Putin and his inner circle. In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin in connection with the alleged kidnapping of children from Ukraine, which Moscow rejected.

siege of mariupol

This year, Crowd International Rights Compliance (GRC) rejected a file that Russian forces had starved Ukrainians in the southern city of Mariupol, which lasted until May 22, 2024.

Based on satellite imagery, photos, videos, population details, and virtual information, Crowder concluded that Russian forces had concentrated on water, food, and scientific supplies in a planned strategy of starvation before capturing the port city.

It found that all water, electricity and gas supply cuts have been focused on 450,000 citizens. Ukrainians were forced to drink from puddles, radiator batteries, and melted snow, food distribution facilities, scientific facilities, and humanitarian corridors were bombed around the clock.

Naomi Prodow, a legal professional with the GRC’s Hunger Cellular Justice Workforce, said, “Most shockingly, the findings show that Russian forces used what they believed to be starvation of the civilian population as a means of hastening the surrender of Mariupol.” Strategy adopted.”

“Attacks on the civilian population, attacks on civilian objects, attacks on hospitals – some of these are attacks on objects indispensable to the survival of civilians,” he said. Newsweek.

He said such techniques had been employed by pro-Russian forces in alternative sieges before Mariupol, such as in Aleppo, where Moscow had intervened in the Syrian civil conflict, “so there were first examples of these strategies before Mariupol. ”

“There are strong indicators that Russian and pro-Russian forces employed similar siege tactics and starvation tactics in the northeastern regions at approximately the same time as the siege of Mariupol,” he said. “This shows that this is a tactic that is routinely employed and deployed against Ukrainian civilians.”

“Food and commodities indispensable for survival are being weaponized in conflicts that go beyond siege tactics,” he said.

The ECHR Lavish Chamber said on Tuesday that since Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, Russia has committed human rights violations on the peninsula, including against Ukrainian soldiers, people of Ukrainian origin, journalists and members of the Turkic Crimean Tatar minority. Including abuse. ,

Following its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe, of which the ECHR is a constituent, and its decision was welcomed by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which called it an “important milestone”.

Meanwhile, the GRC is taking its evidence to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor of the Global Prison Court to build a major war crimes case against Putin.

Prodo stated that, similar to genocide, the crime of starvation demands a specific intent to attack objects indispensable to civilian survival and a specific intent to starve that mass, “which is a better bar.”

He said, “Under that standard, if Russian or pro-Russian forces knew that in the normal course of events, civilians would die of starvation, that qualifies as intent.” “No one has ever been prosecuted in international courts for the war crime of starvation,” he said. “It’s a lesser offense and it’s harder to prove,” he said.