Much has been written about the atrocities at Irpin and Bucha, two cities in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, and what was discovered there after the Russian defeat and withdrawal from the region in March of this year.
Photos from Bucha show corpses of civilians shot execution-style, with their hands and feet bound, appeared on global networks and screens. Back in March, Ukraine and more than 40 other states appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to investigate these events as war crimes. The ICC continues to conduct its investigation.
Obviously, the human remains have now been interred, but very telling real evidence remains in the ruins. The cities have returned to some degree of normality, but with much less vibrancy. Vivid and lasting signs of war crimes remain. There are far fewer residents now in Irpin, a city of over 60,000 prior to the war. People are slowly rebuilding their places of residence, in many cases where they had lived their whole lives.
In general, war crimes are defined as a deliberate and gross violation of the laws and customs of war. This is a collective concept in international law that unites a group of serious violations of the rules of hostilities (“law of war”) and the norms and principles of international humanitarian law, committed deliberately or due to gross negligence.
In one of the many local residential complexes in Irpin, there remain ruins of residential buildings, as well as the bullet ridden motor vehicles of former residents.
A shelled white car with Donetsk license plates- Photo by author
An ordinary white passenger car with Donetsk license plates can be seen parked outside a residential complex. It probably belonged to refugees from the eastern region. The car doesn’t contain any armored equipment or plating, such as only the civilian population would use. Yet its windows are shattered, its basic structure irreparably broken, and both sides are perforated with several hundred holes through which bullets had passed. Clearly the enemy shot many times at the vehicle or the passengers therein.
The residential complex is called Irpinski Lipky. The buildings have been almost totally destroyed by heavy artillery. Two inscriptions hang on the complex, the first being a request in Ukrainian: “The co-owners of this house really need help to rebuild.” The second inscription gives the coordinates for transferring this aid.
Destroyed Irpinski Lypky residences – Photo by author
The very fact of a war crime and abuse of the civilian population is clear to see. Collateral damage? Definitely not! Missiles were fired directly on people’s home and private cars were shot at hundreds of times. The perpetrators themselves must be identified. This is probably not about one or two Moscow soldiers. It is more about their commanders, and especially the commander in chief in Moscow.
Moscow’s way of waging war includes gross violations, as is traditionally the case with a wild horde. The Geneva conventions before the Second World War had no meaning for Joseph Stalin; the post-war Geneva Convention had no meaning for Leonid Brezhnev; and the Treaty of Rome in 1998, which formed the ICC, has no meaning for Vladimir Putin. This was visible in Chechnya, Syria and today in Ukraine.
Perhaps the current war will serve to cross the “t’s” and dot the “i’s” on accountability and there will be consequences, as the Russian Fedir Dostoevsky wrote, of “Crime and Punishment.” For the relevance of not only the ICC, and the structure and the very concept of the United Nations (UN), the victory of Ukraine and the world is necessary. Ukraine and Ukrainians understand this. It is incumbent upon the civilized global community to recognize that the war in Ukraine is not only a Ukrainian war with Russia, but a perhaps final test for civilization.
Russia’s relationship with the UN
The Russian Federation, currently flexing its veto muscles at the UN Security Council, was never formally admitted to the UN. And there is a certain process for a state to join the UN according to the UN Charter.
First there was the dissolution and liquidation of the USSR in Bialowieza Puscha and Alma-Ata in December 1991, then a letter from Ambassador Vorontsov on behalf of President Boris Yeltsin, both then representatives of a state that was not a member of the UN. This letter did not talk about membership but addressed succession. Neither the issue of membership nor succession was discussed at any UN forum and no decision was made. Russia argues that no one protested. But neither was a vote for membership taken.
The seat in the Security Council of the defunct USSR is technically vacant today, meaning the Russian Federation can now submit a request to the UN for its acceptance as a member. On the basis that the state is not a founder of the UN, and even more so given its behavior in the international arena over the past 30 years, the Security Council seat is not at issue. The Russian Federation lacks any credentials to be considered a defender of world security in the UN Security Council.
This is in line with President Zelensky’s recent speech at the UN General Assembly, and in accordance with the UN Charter and legal requirements set forth therein
A place for a demilitarized Russian Federation should eventually be found in the UN but only after hostilities end, so that the Russians can start the process of acting in accordance with the behavior of the civilized international community governed by the rule of law, justice and the viability of civil society.
Askold S. Lozynskyj is a New York attorney and president of the Ukrainian Free University Foundation. He was president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America between 1992-2000 and president of the Ukrainian World Congress between 1998-2008.
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.
