Putin in court – Back to Nuremberg

When lawyers and politicians talking about rules of war in the midst of a ruthless war, it can appear as an academic exercise without contact with the brutal reality on the ground. What does the bully Putin care if he breaks any rules? He does not even recognize the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) which has started the investigation of possible war crimes in Ukraine. The court will have its first hearing on Monday.

Can Putin be held personally responsible for war crimes, many are wondering. It is not unthinkable, experts say. International law makes it possible. The legislation that came into place after World War II and which has been further developed throughout the post-war period, does not aim to ban war. The rules are about limiting the damage, not least sparing the civilian population, and it is about placing responsibility. The lawyers believe there is no doubt that Putin has broken several of the rules, and that the war of aggression is illegal.

NATO’s foremost guarantor

But it is not easy to put sitting heads of state in court. They tend not to respond to summonses. War crimes and crimes against humanity are also not easy to prove, even when abuse is broadcast live on television. Although the investigation started quickly, it is a painstaking and time-consuming work that can take several years.

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has therefore proposed setting up an international tribunal following the pattern of the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, in which selected Nazi leaders were convicted of war of aggression, or of having “broken the peace,” as it was called. Breaking the peace was described as “the greatest of all international crimes”.

This weekend, Kuleba was backed by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a number of prominent human rights lawyers. They believe the ICC investigation is important, but not sufficient to convict the Putin regime and hold Putin accountable. For that you have to return to Nuremberg.

Therefore, Russia can never win

For one of the lawyers, French-British Phillippe Sands, it’s personal. His family comes from Ukraine, specifically the city of Lviv in the far west of the country, and 80 of his relatives were killed by the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews. In the formidable bestseller “Back to Lemberg”, Sands unravels the family’s dark fate, a story his grandfather Leon would never talk about, and he also tells the fascinating story of how international law against war crimes came to be.

Sands, one of the world’s foremost human rights lawyers, was invited to give a lecture at the University of Lviv in 2010. In Leon’s footsteps, he stumbles upon an almost incredible story. Two of the men who were central in the drafting of the statutes of the Nuremberg Trials both studied at the Faculty of Law in what was then Lemberg. One, Hersch Lauterpacht, coined the term “crimes against humanity”; the other, Raphael Lemkin, is the origin of the term “genocide”, genocide, a new word he created himself. In the post-war period, these concepts have been central in a number of international court settlements, including Rwanda and Srebrenica, but at that time there were partly new ideas that the two men struggled to introduce in their own way and from different sides.

While Jewish Lemkin was preoccupied with crimes against specific groups, Lauterpacht’s concept contained crimes against the many. For lay people, it can be difficult to distinguish between them, but for the lawyer Sands, the concepts contain important differences that tell of different views on the great crime they were shaped by. They complement and complement each other. The Nazis were guilty of both.

There’s something gurgling

Now there are Russians again which is attacking Lviv, the city which in the course of a few decades changed its name countless times as it was subjected to ever new regimes. It would be appropriate for Putin to be convicted of legislation originating in the city and country he is attacking, reminiscent of the place of his abuses in history.

But is it realistic to believe that Putin will ever appear in court? Phillippe Sands responds: “Once upon a time, it was unthinkable to have Herman Goering and other Nazi leaders brought to justice. Still, it happened. The same was true of Serbian leaders and Slobodan Milosevic. “

The new international legal order that two lawyers in Lviv helped to create manifests the values ​​that democratic alliances are now gathering to defend. The settlement must come one way or another, with Putin or not. In the meantime, I recommend reading the book.

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