War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets (including strikes on hospitals and on the energy grid);[1][2] indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas (including with cluster bombs); abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence (including rape of women and children); destruction of cultural heritage; and mistreatment, torture, mutilation and murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.[3][4][5][6]
This article is about war crimes during the Russian invasion. For investigation and prosecution of the war crimes, see International Criminal Court investigation in Ukraine. For the legality of the invasion itself in international law, see Legality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For the case brought by Ukraine before the International Court of Justice, see Ukraine v. Russian Federation (2022).
On 2 March 2023, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a full investigation into past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed in Ukraine by any person from 21 November 2013 onwards, set up an online method for people with evidence to initiate contact with investigators, and sent a team of investigators, lawyers, and other professionals to Ukraine to begin collecting evidence.[7][8] Two other independent international agencies are also investigating violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the area: the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 March 2022, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, deployed by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The latter started monitoring human rights violations by all parties in 2014 and employs nearly 60 UN human rights monitors. On 7 April 2022, the United Nations suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.[9] By late October, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's office had documented 39,347 alleged Russian war crimes, identified more than 600 suspects, and initiated proceedings against approximately 80 of them.[10]
On 17 March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over allegations of involvement in the war crime of child abductions during the invasion of Ukraine.[11][12]
Documenting war crimes
Under numerous treaties the International Criminal Court investigates war crimes and genocide. In 1949, the Geneva Conventions defined war crimes.[13] In the late 20th century the Rome Statute added additional war crimes applicable to civil war.[14]
ICC prosecutors have issued warrants for Vladimir Putin and a Russian official responsible for adoptions in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children into Russia. Investigators have submitted evidence of many breaches of the Geneva Convention in Russia's war in Ukraine.[15]
Moscow has denied any involvement in war crimes, a response Vittorio Bufacchi of University College Cork says "has bordered on the farcical,"[16] and its contention that the images coming out of Bucha were fabricated "a disingenuous response born by delusional hubris, post-truth on overdrive, (that) does not merit to be taken seriously." Even the usually fractured United States Senate came together to call Putin a war criminal.[17] One of several efforts to document Russian war crimes concerns its repeated bombardment of markets and bread lines, destruction of basic infrastructure and attacks on exports and supply convoys, in a country where deliberate starvation of Ukrainians by Soviets the Holodomor still looms large in public memory.[18] Forcible deportation of populations, such as took place in Mariuopol, is another area of focus, since "(f)orced deportations and transfers are defined both as war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol II and Article 8 of the Rome Statute—and as crimes against humanity—under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. As both war crimes and crimes against humanity, they have several mechanisms for individual accountability, the International Criminal Court and also, at the individual state level, under universal jurisdiction and Magnitsky sanctions legislation.[19]
Prohibited weapons
Russian forces used chemical weapons 465 times between 24 February 2022 and December 2023, according to Ukraine, including K-51 grenades, RGR grenades, Drofa-PM hand gas grenades, and RG-VO gas grenades, which contain an unknown chemical substance.[20] Forbes and CNN reported that they likely used CS gas (tear gas).[21]
In May 2024, the United States Department of State imposed new sanctions against Russian entities and individuals due to Russian forces' use of chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.[22]
Civilians as human shields
Russia
The International Criminal Court classifies using civilians as a human shield as a grave violation of the Geneva Convention and thus a war crime.[205] On 29 June, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern about Russian armed forces and pro-Russian armed groups as well as Ukrainian forces taking up positions close to civilian objects without taking measures for protecting the civilians.[206] The human rights agency received reports of the use of human shields, which involves the deliberate use of civilians to render certain military objectives immune from attack.[206]
ABC News and The Economist reported Russian soldiers using over 300 Ukrainian civilians as human shields in Yahidne from 3 to 31 March. Russian forces were using the village as a base to attack the nearby city of Chernihiv and had established a major military camp in the local school. For 28 days, 360 Ukrainian civilians, including 74 children and 5 persons with disabilities, were held captive in inhumane conditions in the basement of the school while the nearby areas were under attack by the Ukrainian forces.[207] The basement was overcrowded, with no toilet facilities, water and ventilation. Ten elderly people died as a consequence of the poor detention conditions. Witness accounts report cases of torture and killings.[208][209][172] According to the OHCHR what happened in the school of Yahidne suggests that the Russian armed forces were using civilians to render their base immune from military attacks while also subjecting them to inhuman and degrading treatment.[210]
The BBC and The Guardian found "clear evidence" of the use of Ukrainian civilians as human shields by Russian troops in the area near Kyiv after the Russian withdrawal on 1 April, citing eyewitness accounts from inhabitants of Bucha and the nearby village of Ivankiv, and of residents of the village of Obukhovychi, near the Belarusian border, Russian troops were accused of using civilians as human shields as they came under attack by Ukrainian soldiers. Multiple witnesses reported that, on 14 March, the Russian soldiers went door-to-door, rounded about 150 civilians and locked them up in the local school, where they were used as protection for the Russian forces.[211][212]
United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities stated that it had received reports of disabled people being used as "human shields" by Russian armed forces.[213]
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that Russia's use of nuclear power plants for active military operations as tantamount to the use of human shields, citing reports that Russian forces were firing on Ukrainians from nuclear sites.[214]
Ukraine
Since the beginning of the invasion,[215] Russia has repeatedly accused Ukraine of using human shields, a claim which has been rejected by scholars Michael N. Schmitt, Neve Gordon, and Nicola Perugini as an attempt to shift blame for civilian deaths to Ukraine.[216][217]
On 7 March 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces reportedly occupied a care house in the village of Stara Krasnianka, near Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast, and set up a firing position there without first evacuating the residents. On 11 March 2022, pro-Russian separatist forces attacked the care house with heavy weapons while 71 patients with disabilities and 15 members of staff were still inside. A fire broke out and approximately fifty people died. On 29 June 2022, the OHCHR published a report on the situation of human rights in Ukraine disclosing more information on the attack.[218] According to the report, Ukraine's armed forces bear a significant responsibility for what happened because "a few days before the March 11 attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target."[219][220] On 4 August 2022, Amnesty International expressed concern that "Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians".[221]
Forced conscription
At the end of February, Ukrainian civilians were reportedly forced to join the pro-Russian separatist forces in the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics.[256] The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights documented cases of people forcefully taken to assembly points where they were recruited and immediately sent to the front line. They were men working in the public sector, including schools, and also people stopped on the street by representatives of local "commissariats".[256] As recalled by the OHCHR, compelling civilians to serve in armed groups affiliated with a hostile power may constitute a serious breach of the laws and customs of international humanitarian law, and it constitutes a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC. The OHCHR also expressed concern about the case of some forced conscripts who have been prosecuted by Ukrainian authorities notwithstanding their combatant immunity under the law of armed conflict.[256]
National legal proceedings
Ukraine
The Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba stated on 25 February that Russia was committing war crimes, and that the ministry and the Prosecutor General of Ukraine were collecting evidence on events including attacks on kindergartens and orphanages, which would be "immediately transfer[red]" to the ICC.[315] On 30 March, Ukraine's chief prosecutor announced that she was building 2,500 war crimes cases against the Russian invasion.[316] On 13 May the first war crimes trial began in Kyiv, of a Russian soldier who was ordered to shoot an unarmed civilian.[317] The soldier, Vadim Shishimarin, soon pleaded guilty to this crime.[318][319] Shortly after Shishimarin pleaded guilty, two other low-ranked Russian soldiers, Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov, were tried on war crimes charges for firing missiles at a residential tower block in Kharkiv.[320] They also pleaded guilty.[321]
Several international legal teams were formed to support the Ukrainian prosecutors.[322][323][324]