There is a loud and growing chorus of calls for the International Criminal Court to pursue Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, the court said it would immediately proceed with an active investigation of possible war crimes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The US Embassy in Kyiv said on Friday that Russia committed a war crime by attacking a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
“It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant,” the embassy said on its official Twitter feed. “Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further.”
Russia’s suspected use of cluster bombs and so-called vacuum bombs in dense areas with many civilians has also been described as a war crime.
“I want to be very clear about this, that Mr. Putin is a war criminal,” former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday. “He has to sit behind the bars in International Criminal Court.”
However, if justice in general moves slowly, international justice barely moves at all. Investigations at the ICC take many years. Only a handful of convictions have ever been won.
Here’s a very broad look at war crimes and the international justice movement:
Note: Some of what’s below comes from CNN’s research library, which compiled information about the International Criminal Court.
What is a war crime? The International Criminal Court has specific definitions for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. Read about them in this guide published by the ICC.
Specifically, targeting civilian populations, violating the Geneva Conventions, targeting specific groups of people and more could be potential Russian war crimes.
“One thing is certain, that intentionally directing shelling or targeting civilians or civilian objects is a crime within the jurisdiction of the court,” the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
“And even if there’s military necessity, there’s a clear obligation upon parties to a conflict to not use disproportionate force, to make sure the ordnance used and the weapons don’t have a very wide footprint in heavy civilian areas,” said Khan.
What are cluster bombs and vacuum bombs? The feared use of banned weapons meant to kill without discrimination is what people are discussing now as a very specific war crime.
With a cluster bomb, a missile is fired and explodes thousands of feet in the air, releasing smaller bombs that each detonate when they fall to the ground. See an illustration from The Washington Post. Amnesty International said a Russian cluster bomb fell on a Ukrainian preschool.
“Vacuum bombs,” or thermobaric weapons, suck in the oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a powerful explosion and a large pressure wave that can have enormous destructive effects. Russia previously used them in Chechnya, and a CNN team spotted a Russian thermobaric multiple rockets launcher near the border with Ukraine late last month.
Read the full analysis here.