One of the main elements of Russia’s war against Ukraine is the Russian Army’s indiscriminate killing of innocent Ukrainian civilians. The list of atrocities grows longer and longer as the Kremlin trains its wrath on Ukrainian citizens when it cannot defeat Kyiv’s military. Other Kremlin civilian targets are also well-known: hospitals, theaters, orphanages, schools, shopping malls, hotels, apartment buildings, and other infrastructure of modern society. Not all these cases are as ugly as the war crimes Russian soldiers committed in Bucha, Irpin, and other places. But they are also atrocities and are happening daily.
The Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties has documented approximately 68,000 Russian crimes since the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Headed by Oleksandra Matviichuk, the center won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize together with Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski and Russian human rights organization Memorial. This was the first Nobel Prize awarded to a Ukrainian organization.
In February 2022, Matviichuk helped create the Tribunal for Putin initiative to document these crimes under the Rome Statute. In 2023, the International Criminal Court concluded that Russian crimes against children had been of sufficient gravity to issue an arrest warrant for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his so-called commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
But international enforcement efforts remain lackluster. Putin continues to travel abroad with impunity, and other perpetrators remain at large. The international community needs to do more to respond to these crimes, and institutional architecture needs to be stronger so that the tens of thousands of victims and their families may receive a modicum of justice.
To give an update on joint efforts to catalog Russian war crimes and to bring war criminals to justice, Matviichuk will join Senior Fellow Matt Boyse for a live conversation.
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