Momentum is building to try to bring war crimes charges tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Investigators from almost a dozen countries combed bombed-out towns and freshly dug graves in Ukraine on Wednesday for evidence of war crimes, and a wide-ranging investigation by an international security organization detailed what it said were “clear patterns” of human rights violations by Russian forces. Some of the atrocities may constitute war crimes, said investigators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who examined myriad reports of rapes, abductions and attacks on civilian targets, as well as the use of banned munitions. On Wednesday, civilians were still bearing much of the brunt of the seven-week-old invasion as Russian forces, massing for an assault in the east, bombarded Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, striking an apartment building. In an hourlong phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s leader, President Biden said the United States, already a major provider of defensive armaments to Ukraine, would send an additional $800 million in military and other security aid. The package will include “new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. American officials also said Wednesday that the United States, in helping Ukraine prepare for such an assault, had increased the flow of intelligence to Ukraine’s government about Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago. War crimes claims are famously difficult to investigate, and still harder to prosecute. It’s rare for national leaders to be charged, and even rarer for them to end up in the defendant’s chair. But the war in Ukraine may prove different, some experts say, and momentum has been building to hold the Kremlin leadership responsible. An International Criminal Court investigation into possible war crimes has been underway since last month, and a number of countries have been looking at ways for the United Nations to help create a special court that could prosecute Russia for what is known as the crime of aggression. Other possibilities include trying Russians in the courts of other nations under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the legal concept that some crimes are so egregious they can be prosecuted anywhere. Part of the motivation for accountability is the revulsion in Europe and much of the world over the behavior of President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces, including reported executions of bound civilians and other atrocities. War crimes experts also point to technological advances in forensic tools like facial identification software not available to those looking into earlier conflicts, and the sheer number of investigators on the ground in Ukraine — crucially, with the government’s blessing. A dozen French investigators joined the inquiries this week. “There will be prosecutions, and probably all over the world,” said Leila Sadat, an international law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and a longtime adviser to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on crimes against humanity.
