This week’s bombing of the main children’s hospital in the heart of Kyiv is the latest and most gruesome reminder of Vladimir Putin’s war crimes. They cannot go unpunished. Nato’s summit in Washington DC is the right moment not just to recommit to the defence of Ukraine, but also to deepen and hasten the inquiry of the international criminal court (ICC) into Russian atrocities.
The casualties from the attack that flattened much of the Okhmatdyt hospital include children undergoing transplants and those who have cancer and kidney disease. TV footage has shown sick children amid the ruins, linked up to IV drips, awaiting evacuation. Their suffering came in a brutal day of multiple attacks across Ukraine in which at least 41 people were killed and 166 injured.
“We are sending all information and evidence about attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities to the ICC prosecutor’s office,” the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said after discussing the attack on the children’s hospital with the ICC’s lead prosecutor, Karim Khan.
These bombings show how indiscriminate the Russian missile assaults have become. The number of children killed across Ukraine has risen dramatically – by 40% this year compared to last – and this week’s carnage brings the total number of child deaths since the war started to more than 600 and takes the number of injured boys and girls close to 1,400.
No one concerned about the rights of the most vulnerable can remain silent when we witness the killing and maiming of innocent children, and indiscriminate attacks on schools and hospitals in Ukraine and elsewhere. But the rights of children in conflict zones are too often forgotten, as I argued when writing about Gaza recently.
Indeed, Russia has already attempted a cover up – denying targeting the Kyiv hospital, and claiming the children had been hit by fragments of a Ukrainian air defence missile. They can try to hide the truth, but not for long; the Kyiv authorities say they have found remnants of a Russian cruise missile.
Already, the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian commissioner for children’s rights, for the deportation and illegal abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia. Last month, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russia’s former defence minister and its military chief of staff for their culpability in attacks on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure.
And there is now also irrefutable evidence that Russian soldiers have been involved in the enforced disappearance of people, and in sexual violence, torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial killings, including of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The illegal use of chemical weapons and cluster bombs is also a matter for investigation and, if discovered to be true, can be yet another violation categorised as a war crime and a crime against humanity.
These crimes are all the result of Putin’s original crime – the crime of aggression. Ideally, international mechanisms would exist allowing the prosecution of Russian political and military leaders responsible for unlawful acts such as the invasion of Ukraine. But the ICC’s jurisdiction is limited to allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, following Ukraine’s self-referral in 2013. It cannot have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression unless both the aggressor state and the victim state have acceded to the relevant parts of its statute; Russia, of course, has not signed on. Until now, there has been no agreement on an appropriate alternative mechanism to hold Putin accountable for this foundational crime.
Fortunately, the Council of Europe (CoE) has been considering what action it can take. In May, the CoE’s committee of ministers tasked its secretary general with creating a possible draft agreement between the CoE and Ukraine on the creation of a special tribunal and such a tribunal’s statute. This agreement could, the council says, be supported by an enlarged agreement open to other states which are not members of the Council of Europe, as well as other international organisations.
The CoE cites continuous, numerous reports of atrocities, violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed by Russian military forces and proxies in Ukraine. In prosecuting the crime of aggression, a tribunal will also be able to track the process by which decisions within Putin’s inner circle were made to commit it. Consultations among over 40 potential member states and other interested states and partners are still ongoing – but at last, under the Council of Europe’s plan to join with Ukraine, Putin may be held to account.
All countries should have an interest in preventing Putin and his circle from acting with impunity, and that is why it is outrageous that Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, whose country has recently taken over the presidency of the Council of the European Union, should be offering legitimacy to Putin’s regime by visiting Moscow.
I believe the new UK government, whose prime minister and foreign secretary have already supported the call for action on the crime of aggression, will add to the urgency of putting the Russian leadership on trial for the full totality of the harm it has inflicted. It will send a message that there is no hiding place from prosecution for aggressors – and no immunity for war criminals, whether presidents or not. Anger and outrage are not enough. The time for action against Putin is now.
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Gordon Brown is UN global ambassador for education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
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