Wednesday 16 March 2022

War Crimes - ICC to report today

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is due to report today on its investigation into potential war crimes taking place in Ukraine. It is inconceivable that they will not declare that there has been widespread war crimes committed by Russian forces including multiple attacks on wholly civilian targets, use of cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons and probably plenty of others. It’s not as if there is a lack of evidence. Social media is full of terrible examples, some too horrific to watch coupled with Ukrainian drone footage.

I saw the one below about the village of Yakovlivka, a village of 969 people (2001) more or less in the middle of the Donetsk Oblast. I’m not sure if this was in the part of Donetsk already under Russian occupation before 24 February or not. I assume it wasn’t.

Someone has driven through to find the entire village apparently wiped out and everyone killed. It’s absolutely horrific.

What causes a human being to do this? It’s a level of barbarity that is hard to understand even when inflicted on your worst enemy, let alone on people you are supposed to be liberating. After what appears to have happened in Yakovlivka, which Ukrainians would want to live under a regional puppet Russian administration.

Remember, the eastern part of Ukraine was supposed to be the most pro-Russian. But, looking how villages, towns and cities have been under near constant indiscriminate bombardment for days, levelling whole areas while people cower in cellars and metro stations, it’s difficult to see who would now think of Russia as a protector.

Elsewhere, west of Kherson, in Bilozerka, a town with a population of about 10,000 before the invasion, residents were out protesting against Russian troops who begin shooting into the air with automatic weapons. There are no crowds greeting the ‘liberators’ with flowers. None whatsoever.

How is Russian ever going to quell 40 million Ukrainians with 190,000 troops? Bilozerka would have just 50 Russian soldiers to keep the populace down 24 hours a day, 25 at any one time working 12 hours shifts.  They would last a day. It doesn't add up.

Some videos on Twitter are absolutely shocking. One shows a Russian tank firing its main 125mm gun directly at a civilian 20-30m away - the person is offering no threat but simply disappears into oblivion. 

Who could do such a thing?

Regular TV channels are showing residential blocks being systematically blasted with missiles and artillery shells in cities across eastern Ukraine. These are all war crimes whether deliberate or accidental.  If they are declared so today by the ICC, it’s hard to see how western sanctions can be lifted until the perpetrators are identified and handed over to The Hague.

Talks are continuing to try to find a way to end the war with hints that Ukraine might agree not to join NATO, or that parts of the Donbas are somehow handed over to Russian control. If that is indeed the extent of the concessions made by Ukraine, it will make Russia’s invasion look even more utterly insane. So many lives have been lost, so much destruction, so much damage to their own economy for what? It will come across as a spectacular failure by Putin.

Cracks are beginning to appear in the great dam in Moscow which is holding back the truth about Putin’s action in Ukraine. The brave lady who worked for Russia’s Channel One,  Marina Ovsyannikova, and who burst onto the news the other night with a sign protesting about the war, has been released after receiving a paltry £200 fine.

She may yet face other charges, but it seems she may not be alone. The BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford tweeted:

Is it a sign? I think it might be. If the Russian public, or a majority of it, ever learn the truth Putin is finished. That moment may be closer than we think.

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