New obstacle to international legal action against i war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. According to the New York Times, the US could win a conviction from the International Criminal Court stranded because of the US itself. The root of this sudden slowdown, reports the American newspaper, would be the Pentagon’s obstruction, concerned about future developments that might occur if Russian leaders were prosecuted by the Hague court.
The Pentagon Wall on Russia’s War Crimes
The US Department of Defense fears that any action taken against the Kremlin leadership, most notably Vladimir Putin, could set a precedent use against the military or the US Presidents themselves. There would therefore be an impasse within the Biden administration, as the Secret Services, State Department and Justice Department are all in favor of full cooperation with the court, which the United States withdrew from after signing it Statute of Rome In 1998.
The National Security Council convened a Cabinet-level “Committee of Principals” meeting on Feb. 3 to resolve the dispute, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has so far declined to share the collected material with ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, saying he has gone ahead with himself to oppose the idea of meeting to solve the problem. The United States has promised since day one show the atrocities of Moscow in this conflict. A month ago, during the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Kamala Harris announced to the world that her country possessed evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
Last December, Congress repealed Title II of the Hague Invasion Act, a 2002 law that cooperation prohibited with the International Criminal Court and allowed the President to use all necessary measures Free any American or Confederate citizen held by the ICC. In 2021, however, Biden had revoked an executive order issued by Donald Trump that defined the ICC (International Criminal Court) as a “threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
The International Criminal Court and Ukraine
The current CPI examined on the behavior of the Kremlin more than a year after the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin and almost ten years after the illegal annexation of Crimea, particularly with regard to the chain of command ordering the bombing of civilian infrastructure and the deportation of 6,000 Ukrainian children in Russia. Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin said in autumn 2022 his office had already filed charges 135 people and documented over 34,000 potential war crimes committed by Russian forces while allegedly formulating charges of genocide against Moscow. Ukraine has never ratified the Rome Statute, which the Kyiv Supreme Court ruled in 2001 as “incompatible with the Ukrainian Constitution”, but has repeatedly recognized The Hague jurisdiction, which it appealed against Russia in 2013 and 2014.
The International Criminal Court is a permanent court which investigates serious crimes under international law such as genocide (the annihilation of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such), war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression by one state against another. Based in The Hague, Netherlands, it has in the past tried several leaders of sovereign nations such as Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and former dictator of Sudan Omar al-Bashir. It is highly unlikely that the ICC, which is not a UN body and has supranational jurisdiction only over member states, will try Vladimir Putin. In fact, Russia did not sign the founding treaty and is therefore not obliged to guarantee extradition.