Law students and young lawyers in Ukraine are filing for JURIST on the latest developments in that country as it defends itself against Russian invasion. Here, Kyiv-based lawyer and University of Pittsburgh LLM graduate Yaroslav Pavliuk reports.  

As Ukraine enters the eighth week of Russian military aggression, the cost of the war rises dramatically.

In late March-early April, Russian forces were pushed back near Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine, revealing atrocities committed by Russian forces in the temporary occupied areas. Europe has not seen such violence since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The brutality of some episodes can even be compared to Nazi crimes during WWII.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman claims that “level of brutality of the army of terrorists and executioners of the Russian Federation knows no bounds”. She mentions a couple of the most blatant cases: a 14-year-old girl is pregnant after being raped by five men in the town of Bucha, an 11-year-old boy was raped in Bucha in front of his mother as she was tied to a chair, a 20-year-old woman was raped by “three occupiers in all possible ways at once” in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.

A town of Bucha in the northern outskirts of Kyiv had a pre-war population of about 35,000 people. The major of Bucha said that after the town was recaptured by the Ukrainian army, only 3,700 people remained. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the Bucha deaths “not far short of genocide”.

The scenes in the town of Borodyanka, where nine-story buildings collapsed like houses of cards from Russian bombardment, are “significantly more dreadful” than in Bucha. As the Ukrainian forces continue to demine the area and clear the ruins, new mass graves are discovered. Apparently, some people have managed to escape, but the confirmed civilian casualties amount to thousands.

Mariupol, a city of almost 450,000, is in complete Russian blockade since 1 March 2022. The major estimates that the city is 90% destroyed, and around 130,000 people are believed to be trapped there. Thousands of people are reported to be forcefully deported to Russia and put in filtration camps.

Russia relies on phosphorous munitions and unguided indiscriminate weapons. The cluster bombs were reported to be used by Russian forces all across Ukraine. It is confirmed that Russian used thermobaric weapons. President Zelensky has stated there is evidence of maltreatment of Ukrainian prisoners, including using basements for torturing. All this evidence of large-scale use of prohibited and indiscriminate weapons, and atrocities against civilians committed by Russian forces may imply that is a planned strategy approved of by the senior military leadership rather than episodic initiatives of lower-ranking officers.

The present Russo-Ukraine war shows a disappointing impotence of important and respectable world institutions. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) prohibited to use its emblem on humanitarian vehicles used during evacuations of Ukrainian civilians. The chief of the ICRC was exchanging handshakes and smiles with Russian foreign minister and committed to build a new office in Russia with the international donations sent to help Ukrainian refugees. The members of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security organisation, fled Ukraine in the early stage of the war. Regretfully, such organisations with huge peace-time budgets and salaries are among the first to quit their post of duty when it comes to hostilities.

Russia, who started the largest military aggression in Europe in decades, remains a member of the United Nations (UN) and is a permanent member of the UN Security Council (SC) possessing the veto power on any decision (even when it comes to condemning its own aggression!). Russia neither obtained approval of the UN SC, nor even tried to justify its military actions against Ukraine in self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter and customary international law, which are the only permitted ways to wage a war. On 7 April 2022, the UN General Assembly voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. It is an important, but a rather symbolic move.

Even the League of Nations, which ultimately failed to prevent WWII, managed to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 for its aggression against Finland.

New alarming reports show that certain European countries violated the embargo on sales of military goods to Russia imposed in 2014 for the occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine alleges that parts from the German engineering company Bosch were used in Russian military vehicles captured by Ukraine. At the same time Germany was successfully blocking Ukraine’s attempts to purchase weapons to defend itself as well as effectively prohibited other states, such as Estonia, from selling German-made equipment to Ukraine. Germany cited its “long-standing policy” against supplying weapons to the conflict zones, which apparently has more exceptions than rules considering the cases of Egypt an Saudi Arabia. Even now, Germany holds up deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine. A different investigation showed that France was arming Russia between 2015 and 2020 by supplying state-of-the-art navigation systems aircraft and thermal cameras for tanks.

Since the outbreak of the war, the EU spent 1 billion euro on security assistance to Ukraine as compared to over 35 billion euro in oil and gas payments to Russia. The fifth package of EU sanctions against Russia, which includes an embargo on Russian coal to be effective since mid-August, is believed to fall short of having a decisive impact on Russian economy. Only a full and immediate embargo on Russian oil, gas and trade can be a meaningful step to force Russia to reconsider its actions. The nations that place temporary inconveniences for their workers higher than the fundamental values on which their nations are claimed to be based, have no vision of the future to offer.

The US Congress is working to pass the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, which will provide “enhanced authority for the President to enter into agreements with the Government of Ukraine to lend or lease defense articles to that Government to protect civilian populations in Ukraine from Russian military invasion, and for other purposes.” On 6 April, the bill was unanimously passed in the Senate. The House will now consider the bill.

The UK has also pledged a new package of military assistance during Prime Minister Johnson’s visit to Kyiv on 9 April 2022.

This Russo-Ukrainian is a test for the real friends of democracy. Even more importantly, it raises a fundamental question of why do we need an international system that fails to achieve its principal goal – to maintain peace in the world? It is not just about Ukraine. The world needs a new global security architecture, where any aggressor state will be swiftly and unanimously condemned, isolated, and forced to stop its aggressive behaviour.

As long as these lessons are not learned, no country can feel safe.