Daily Archives: September 23, 2023

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Interviewed in the Guardian in March 2022, the international lawyer Philippe Sands said that: The world changed in 1945. It was a revolutionary moment. For the first time, states agreed that they were not absolutely sovereign, that they could not kill individuals or destroy groups. Sands called this the Nuremberg moment. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Nuremberg has compelling significance. Vladimir Putin described the invasion as a special military operation; international lawyers characterise it as a crime of aggression a legal term inherited from Nuremberg. Sands and others, notably former British prime minister Gordon Brown, demanded, as theDaily Mail informed its readers: a new Nuremberg trial to make Putin pay Let him face the legacy of Nuremberg.

Between June and August 1945, before the trials of Nazi war criminals began, international lawyers had gathered in London to debate the legality of the prosecutions. They confronted a question: what crimes, under existing international law, had the Nazi leaders committed? Would it be necessary to devise new laws? Winston Churchill had (perhaps) anticipated this when he described reports of the mass killings of Jews on the Eastern Front as a crime without a name. Some of the complex issues debated at the London Conference in 1945 have never been resolved. Nevertheless, the London Agreement and Charter became the legal foundation of the trials that would take place in Nuremberg.

At the same time that Sands and others proposed a new tribunal to bring Putin and his warmakers to account, the International Criminal Court (ICC) set in motion proceedings to prosecute Putin, his advisers and other alleged perpetrators. By issuing arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Childrens Rights, the ICC was playing a high-stakes game of name and shame. Neither Russia nor the US ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC and so neither state is subject to its requirements. The chances that Putin, or any member of his regime, will be arrested and tried are slim. Russia retaliated by opening a case against the ICC judges and prosecutors on the grounds that the ICC had acted illegally under Russian law. The Duma is considering legislation that would punish anyone co-operating with the ICC. The war in Ukraine has opened a legal battlefield a terrain which is littered with complex and highly specialised legal principles that offer a plenitude of opportunities for dissent and resolution.

After 1945, international courts took on unprecedented roles in the unfolding of real-world history. International criminal law began to influence historical actors. Even heads of state could be held responsible and prosecuted. The dictum of Never Again may often be a chimera, but it reflects the legal revolution that defined and proscribed, for the first time in history, a legal term unknown before 1945: genocide. The deceptively simple definition Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group is packed with legal notions such as intent that have proved notoriously difficult to resolve.

International criminal law has regulated relations and conflicts between states for centuries. Jus ad bellum, the moral justification for resorting to armed force, is rooted in Roman law and preoccupied medieval thinkers; in the 17th century, the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, in his legal masterpiece De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625), recognised that since certain uses of force by rulers and states might be unjust, aggression could be judged as such and thus criminalised, and perpetrators prosecuted.

Yet Grotius and those who followed had no means of seeing beyond the near-sacred doctrine of state sovereignty that was consecrated by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The idea that a third party such as an international court could take precedence over states was anathema. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 established rules of conduct by treaty and thus created international law, but do not provide any legal tool to realise their ideals. In practice, the laws of war provided guides to conduct rather than enforceable laws. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Hague Conventions were habitually flouted by combatants and not only by fascist powers. One of the Nuremberg judges lamented that The Hague Convention [sic] nowhere designates [certain] practices as criminal, nor is any sentence prescribed, nor any mention made of a court to try and punish offenders.

This explains why the Nuremberg moment was truly revolutionary. On 8 August 1945, after much wrangling behind closed doors, the delegates drew up four counts of crimes for which the Axis leadership could be legally prosecuted: crimes against peace; crimes against humanity; war crimes (meaning violations of the existing laws of war); and a common plan or conspiracy to commit these acts. Only crimes against humanity was truly innovative, encompassing murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts. International law could now hold the Nazi leaders criminally liable for offences against their own citizens in peacetime, regardless of whether domestic law permitted their actions.

The Cold War blunted the impact of the Nuremberg moment until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the savage Balkan wars of the 1990s. The establishment of the ICC through the Rome Statute (1998) inaugurated a succession of international criminal tribunals that were appointed to investigate war crimes and genocide in the territories of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia. Nuremberg meant that a third party, in the shape of an international court, could challenge the borders of sovereign states and that international criminal lawyers finally had the means to prosecute and punish individual state actors. What this means for historians is that the Nuremberg moment decisively transformed the way history is made.

As a consequence, history-makers such as army commanders, soldiers, political leaders, bureaucrats, officials and even, in the case of the Rwandan genocide, radio producers and other propagandists, can become subjects of international criminal law. This means that historians must become familiar with some tricky legal concepts.

Take, for example, the Genocide Convention (1948), an international treaty that obliges state parties to both punish and prevent a crime defined as the intent to destroy any of four enumerated groups: national, racial, ethnic or religious. This legal definition of genocide is hedged with challenges such as the definition of a group and the meaning of destruction in whole or in part. Just as problematic is the duty to prevent. How might this be achieved? The answer to that question requires us to grasp a fundamental concept in Anglo-American common law. According to Article 3 of the Convention, the punishable acts are (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; and (e) Complicity in genocide. All of these are defined as inchoate crimes. This means they do not have to be completed to be punishable acts. As in common law where, for example, engaging in a conspiracy to commit a robbery or murder is a criminal act, the planned act need not be carried out. Under the Convention, then, conspiring, inciting or attempting genocide are legally punishable crimes.

Accusations of genocide are powerfully stigmatising. As we know from allegations of genocide against the Uighur people in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar, states react aggressively. And the Genocide Convention provides international lawyers who act for these accused states with knotty legal challenges. Notably, prosecutors must prove that the accused state or, in a number of cases, non-state parties such as the Republika Srpska that enacted the Srebrenica genocide had the dolus specialis or special intent to carry out the destruction of a group. It is not enough to commit the most egregious atrocities if these actions are not proven to be committed with genocidal intent.

One implication of the Nuremberg moment is, I suggest, that familiarity with international law should be added to the toolkits of historians. If law shapes human action, it shapes history. One of the problems debated during the London Conference was the legal concept of Nullum crimen sine lege, no crime without a law: the principle that no one should suffer prosecution and punishment for an act that was not criminalised. The problem of retroactive law-making bedevilled discussions at the London Conference and has never been completely resolved. The legal experts at the Conference had to justify innovative law-making to capture the scope of Nazi atrocities crimes, as Churchill had said, without names.

Law pivots between conservative precedent and innovation and both history-makers and historians would be advised to keep up to date. Returning to where we began on the battlefields of Ukraine, the raft of ongoing investigations, indictments and legal initiatives in short, the pursuit of accountability for Russias crimes against peace suggests that the conflict may end not at a negotiating table but in a courtroom.

Christopher Hale is a non-fiction writer and producer. He recently received an LLM in human rights law from the University of Edinburgh.

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Will Putin Get His 'Nuremberg Moment'? - History Today

In February 2022, President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale war of aggression aimed at destroying Ukraine as an independent state. As the human and financial toll of Putins illegal war climbs with each passing day, there is a growing global consensus that Russia has an obligation to pay for the death and destruction that it has wrought on the Ukrainian people and other victims of Russias aggression, unprecedented since the end of World War II. Although many countries have frozen Russian sovereign bank assets in response, they can and must do more. Any country that currently holds Russian assets should transfer them to Ukraine to help that sovereign nation survive and rebuild.

To this end, RDI has issued a comprehensive report on Constitution Day, 2023, demonstrating that transferring Russias assets to Ukraine is currently possible with no changes in U.S. law. This report was principally authored by constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe in partnership with his colleagues at the law firm Kaplan, Hecker & Fink LLP.

Read the full report here

In these extraordinary circumstances, the Presidents power to execute the proposed transfer flows from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Subsection B of IEEPA explicitly empowers the President to block and/or direct and compel the transfer of any right, power, or privilege with respect to Russias property. Traditional tools of statutory interpretation demonstrate that transfer means the conveyance of a property interest from one entity to another. Thus IEEPA authorizes the President to direct and compel the conveyance of Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine. RDIs report removes any reasonable doubt about the consistency of such transfer with precedent and historical practice and shows that it would be fully consonant with the United States Constitution and all applicable congressional statutes.

The proposed transfer also comports with settled principles of international law. Because Russias actions constitute grave and ongoing violations of international law and lack even a plausible justification, the doctrine of countermeasures entitles the United States and its allies to respond to Russias flagrant actions so as to induce its compliance with international legal norms. RDIs proposed transfer of Russias assets to Ukraine would satisfy the key requirements of a lawful countermeasure, including the principles of proportionality and reversibility.

Objections based on claims of sovereign immunity are baseless. Using Russias assets as a countermeasure helps restore the principles of national sovereignty; it doesnt violate them. Moreover, sovereign immunity as a legal doctrine arose out of the need to prevent the courts of one state from sitting in judgment on the actions of another. It is thus a doctrine applicable only in judicial proceedings, not one designed to hamstring a countrys foreign policy as reflected in executive or legislative action. There is simply no basis for saying that Russia can violate Ukraines sovereignty while invoking its own sovereignty as an inviolable shieldespecially given that the United States and its allies have already crossed the Rubicon and frozen Russias assets.

Russias assets could be transferred to Ukraine in a manner that is transparent and accountable, with safeguards against the abuse of these legal authorities in the future. RDIs report demonstrates that the policy objections to such transfer rest on misconceptions: The U.S. dollar will remain the worlds reserve currency because of unique structural advantages, and Russia possesses few, if any, avenues to meaningfully retaliate to the transfer of its assets to Ukraine. Not only would transferring Russias frozen assets to Ukraine make strategic sense. Failing to do so would embolden lawless aggressors by sending the dangerous signal that the United States and its allies lack the political and moral will to do all it takes to stop President Putin and his military from murdering civilians and flouting the basic rules of the international order.

Authors Laurence H. Tribe, Raymond P. Tolentino, Kate M. Harris, Jackson Erpenbach, and Jeremy Lewin

Media Requests Please direct media requests for this report to info@rdi.org.

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to a number of individuals whose contributions were invaluable to the production and publication of this report. Angela Scorese was essential in assisting the authors research and in moving the report through the publication process. Elizabeth Wallace and James Piltch, as Summer Associates at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, conducted crucial research and assisted in drafting portions of the report. Alysha Naik, James Blum, and Peter Kaplan helped to finalize, fact check, and proofread the report.

This report was made possible by generous donations to RDI from many individuals and organizations all of whom support the idea advanced by the report but none of whom sought to influence the analysis or conclusions reached by the reports authors. Thus, the views expressed in this report are solely those of RDI and of the reports authors, not of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP or of RDIs donors.

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Making Putin Pay RDI - Renew Democracy Initiative

Vladimir Putins backyard just got a whole lot smaller.

A year and a half after the Russian presidents rash, illegal, blundering invasion of Ukraine, Russian peacekeepers have been forced to admit defeat in the faraway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, handing control back to Azerbaijan after a 24-hour military offensive, which killed a senior Russian officer.

For Azerbaijan, which began talks with Karabakhs Armenian separatist leaders on Thursday to formally take back control of the region, it looked like a surprisingly swift conclusion to a 35-year conflict that has cost thousands of lives.

But for Putin's Russia, its an equally stunning loss, proof that Moscow's writ no longer holds in the Caucasus and that the post-Soviet security bloc Putin set up to mirror NATO in the regionthe Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)is a spent force.

And the Russian dictator has only himself to blame.

In the two full-on wars fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, from 1988 to 1994 and again in 2020, the separatists had full military and political support from Armenia itself and, indirectly, from Russia.

Attack Drones Dominating Tanks as Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Showcases the Future of War

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Caucasus calculus has changed. Armenia took no action as Azerbaijan moved to cut off its supply route to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Lachin Corridor, over the past year. Then, earlier this month, Armenia held its first joint military exercises with the United States, clearly turning its back on the CSTO.

On Tuesday, emboldened by events, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev ordered the offensive, his troops quickly capturing key heights and strategic junctions in Nagorno-Karabakh. The separatists crumbled, agreeing to a ceasefire backed by Russian peacekeepers.

Amid the violence at least two Russians were killed, reportedly including the deputy commander of Russias North Fleet submarine forces, Captain First Rank (Colonel) Ivan Kovgan, who was seconded to the region with Russian forces stretched desperately thin.

Under the terms of the CSTO, any military aggression against one member is seen as an attack on all of them, just like NATOs Article 5, but Russia did nothing to stop the latest incursion.

In an interview earlier this month with Politico, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spelled out clearly what was going on: Armenia could no longer rely on Moscow to guarantee its safety and had to assert its own independence. As a result of the events in Ukraine, the capabilities of Russia have changed, Pashinyan said. We want to have an independent country, a sovereign country, but we have to have ways to avoid ending up in the center of clashes between West and East, North and South."

It is clear that the bloodshed is not yet over. Thousands have joined protests on the streets of Yerevan this week to protest Pashinyans perceived desertion of Armenians inside Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh. Despite the ceasefire, there are still reports of fighting in the mountainous region.

The Karabakh conflict began in the late Soviet era when Armenians inside the enclave demanded that it be transferred from the control of Azerbaijan to Armeniaboth then still Soviet republics.

The main man in Soviet Azerbaijan was Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB official who became the first president of independent Azerbaijan in 1983. After his death in 2003, his son Ilham took over, thanks to rigged elections, and has held power ever since after doing away with constitutional term limits.

The Gravedigger Who Fears Digging His Own Sons Grave in Nagorno-Karabakh

If Putin, abandoned by yet another ally as Armenia turns towards NATO, is the big geopolitical loser in the latest Caucasian crisis, the big winnerthis may have a familiar ringis Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey has long been Azerbaijans key ally, supporting it through the various Karabakh conflicts. As Aliyev carved out a post-Soviet role for his nation, primarily as an energy producer, he has developed increasingly close ties with the Turkic-speaking nations of Central Asia and with Erdogan himself.

In June 2021, Aliyev even took Erdogan on a visit to an area of Nagorno-Karabakh recaptured the previous year in a 44-day conflict that laid the ground for this weeks victory. Armenia called the visit an outright provocation against regional peace and security, but the Turkish leader's message was unmistakable: that this is now his backyard.

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Shockingly Quick Defeat Shows Putin Is Now Too Weak to Defend ... - Yahoo News

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had planned to destroy many European countries, but having met strong resistance from Ukraine, he is now forced to humiliate himself by seeking support from North Korea and Iran.

Source: Zelenskyy on Telegram

Quote from Zelenskyy: "Putin's list [of countries to destroy ed.] was long. Just recently. After Ukraine, if we fell, half of Europe would be at danger of Moscow's sphere of influence. But American investments in Ukrainian security and global protection of freedom is working. One hundred percent. Every cent.

Now, Putins list of goals is different. Instead of dictating terms to America, Europe and the whole free world, Putin is forced to humiliate himself by personally entertaining a delegation from Pyongyang and trying to find favour with Tehran. This is his clear weakness."

Details: Zelenskyy emphasised that Ukrainian soldiers are fighting in the same way that US President Abraham Lincoln urged General Grant once.

Quote from Zelenskyy: "President Lincolns words (the words "Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible" from Lincoln's telegram to Grant during the Civil War ed.) reflect exactly how Ukrainians fight.

Every day of this war, Ukrainian soldiers hold on with a grip of a bulldog. They chew and choke the Russian occupiers as much as possible. Never before had the Russian dictatorship met such strong resistance. And never again will Russia manage to destroy any other nation."

Details: Zelenskyy emphasised that Ukraine pays the highest price for freedom and global security protection, while Russia continues its terror every day and night with missiles and Iranian-made drones.

But since the unity of the world "remains strong", Ukraine knows that "we will not fall".

"We are confident that other nations will not have to throw their armies into this battle. Because Ukraine is capable of ending this war with a victory that will become our common victory. It is not the evil empire. No, but only the lack of unity that can bring freedom to its knees," Zelenskyy said, adding that all Ukrainians are grateful to the American people.

"When I spoke with President Biden early in the morning on 24 February 2022, the first day of the Russian invasion, the world did not really believe in Ukraine But I assured President Biden then that we in Ukraine will not give up. And he assured me that America will be with us as long as it takes. The US Congress supports us. Ukraine will always be grateful for this," Zelenskyy summed up.

Ukrainska Pravda is the place where you will find the most up-to-date information about everything related to the war in Ukraine. Follow us on Twitter, support us, or become our patron!

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Putin wanted to destroy many countries but now he's forced to humiliate himself Zelenskyy - Yahoo News

If Russian leader Vladimir Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will keep on going, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Speaking in advance of delivering Irelands formal annual statement to the United Nations in New York, he said Ireland wanted to see global solidarity with Ukraine in the face of the invasion by Russia.

This is about right and wrong. This is 2023 and no country should try to change borders by force and no country should try to bring down a democratic government by military means or by supporting a military coup. There cannot be equivocation on this.

In his formal address to the UN on Friday, Mr Vararkar condemned the war in Ukraine as an imperialist and brutal invasion and also hit out at Russia over ending the Black Sea grain export deal and over threats to use nuclear weapons.

It was an act of unprovoked and unjustified aggression by an expansionist, revanchist power against its neighbour.

The brutality of Russias actions in Ukraine has caused unfathomable suffering for the people of that country.

The Taoiseach said each country in the UN had a deep interest in ensuring that Russia did not succeed in its attempt to move borders by force and that this was not just a European problem.

For when one aggressor prevails, their peers elsewhere take note and are emboldened. We know this from history.

When Europeans draw attention to the profound injustice of what is happening in Ukraine, there can be criticism, some of it justified, of the developed worlds failure to respond with the same intensity of feeling and action to conflict and suffering elsewhere.

But, while we can acknowledge that we have fallen short, the people of Ukraine should not be the ones asked to pay the price.

They have done nothing to bring down this war on their heads.

Mr Varadkar also criticised Russia for collapsing the deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, saying it would have implications for global food security.

He also said that threats by Russia to use nuclear weapons as part of its war in Ukraine were outrageous.

Russia knows, as we all do, that their use would result in devastating humanitarian and environmental disaster.

The Taoiseach also backed the only just solution to the Israelis-Palestinian conflict. He said this involved a two-State solution, with a viable Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, living in peace and security alongside the State of Israel, whose right to exist should be accepted and respected by all its neighbours.

The Taoiseach also called for the abandonment of the system of vetoes by permanent members of the UN security council as part of overall reforms.

During Irelands recent term on the Security Council, we saw first-hand the positive effect that its work can have. But we also saw its efforts stymied, its mandate undermined; crucial decisions and actions blocked by the use of the veto.

Our future requires a UN with a reformed Security Council without the anachronism of the veto. It has no place in the 21st century. We also need a UN Security Council that properly reflects the worlds demography and politics as it is now not in the 1940s.

He also fully backed the implementation of the programme of sustainable development goals which aim, for example, to eradicate extreme poverty.

It is beyond time for us to demonstrate that the sustainable development goals are more than a set of aspirations.

It is time for all of us to turn our collective commitments into reality.

He said 80 per cent of Irelands domestic sustainable development goals had been fully achieved.

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Varadkar says if Putin not stopped in Ukraine, he will keep going - The Irish Times

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a day after Azerbaijan began its "anti-terrorist measures" in Nagorno-Karabakh, the news outlet European Pravda reported on Sept. 20.

The Armenian government announced in a statement that Putin and Pashinyan discussed the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and the "bilateral agenda" between Russia and Armenia.

According to the Kremlin, the conversation was initiated by Prime Minister Pashinyan, and Putin welcomed a ceasefire agreement between Azerbaijan and the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh with the active participation of Russian peacekeepers.

Earlier today, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said that his country "restored its sovereignty" following the Azerbaijani military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Following Azerbaijan's military offensive launched on Sept. 19 and reported advances into the territory held by the ethnic Armenian forces, authorities in the capital of Stepanakert (Khankendi in Azerbaijani) agreed to accept a ceasefire earlier on Sept. 20 mediated by Russia.

According to the terms of the proposal, any remaining Armenian troops must leave Azerbaijan territory and there must be a "dissolution and complete disarmament of the Armed Forces of Nagorno-Karabakh."

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Strikes on command post in Crimea, saboteurs attack airbase near Moscow

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Putin discussed Karabakh offensive with Prime Minister Pashinyan - Yahoo News