The International Criminal Court is investigating Russia for war crimes just a week into the invasion of Ukraine, the court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced Wednesday. “Active investigations formally commence in Ukraine upon receipt of referrals by 39 state parties,” Khan tweeted, after having said Monday that he would be seeking approval for an investigation.
”[I]n its preliminary examination of the Situation in Ukraine, my Office had already found a reasonable basis to believe crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court had been committed, and had identified potential cases that would be admissible,” Khan said in a statement. Specifically, the court is looking into “any past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine by any person,” according to Khan.
U.S. officials, led in this by President Joe Biden, have stopped short of describing Russia’s actions as war crimes. “It's clear” Russia is targeting civilians, Biden said, but “It's too early to say” that war crimes are being committed. Biden’s British counterpart, Prime Minister Boris Johnson took it the next step, saying the bombing of civilians “already fully qualifies as a war crime.”
“We're looking very closely at what's happening in Ukraine right now, including what's happening to civilians,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Wednesday. “We're taking account of it, we're documenting it, and we want to ensure, among other things, that there's accountability for it.”
On Tuesday, Amnesty International laid out a series of war crimes it said it had documented Russia committing, saying it was seeing, “the escalation in violations of humanitarian and human rights law, including deaths of civilians resulting from indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and infrastructure.”
"Strikes on protected objects such as hospitals and schools, the use of indiscriminate weapons such as ballistic missiles, and the use of banned weapons such as cluster bombs may all qualify as war crimes,” the organization said.
Russia rejects the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, so Vladimir Putin is likely to be unmoved by this news. By the time you’re committing war crimes, you’ve probably already decided not to care about little things like international law or being brought to justice for your violations thereof.