A woman cries by a grave in Bucha (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
By any objective measure, many of the actions of the Russian armed forces over the last six weeks have clearly amounted to war crimes. Initially there were strong suspicions based on the little information. But now that the Russian army has withdrawn from the Kyiv area, the evidence is damning. Today, a Russian rocket attack on a railway station in eastern Ukraine killed 30 people and wounded 100. Random, widespread, killing of civilians, use of human shields, the systematic targeting of non-military buildings, all these disgraceful activities and more are clearly contrary to the accepted rules of war and deeply offend common decency. Quite properly, there is international outrage but that is not enough.
The thorough and detailed compilation of evidence is essential. Survivors’ accounts, photographic images, records of intercepted Russian army communications, all must be carefully collected and analysed. It may seem unlikely today that Vladimir Putin or his senior generals will ever stand trial in an international court, but in the mid-Nineties we thought the same about President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, or President Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic of the Bosnian Serbs
Yet, over time, they were all indicted and tried. Milosevic died in prison during his trial but the other two were convicted and are serving long sentences. I gave evidence in The Hague against General Mladic, as I did against General Radislav Krstic, whose troops carried out the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. All four of these appalling men were tried for war crimes but Karadzic, Mladic and Krstic were also convicted of genocide.
This week, Boris Johnson has suggested that the undoubted war crimes in Ukraine do not “look far short of genocide” and he is right. But will Putin ever stand trial and how would genocide be proved? It will come down to proving command responsibility, whether one day in an international court or in the court of history. Putin’s statements about the future of Ukraine and the actions of his troops must be carefully linked by the evidence to prove that the man in command ultimately bears the responsibility. There must be no hiding place.
