Putin the War Criminal » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces have intentionally targeted and killed civilians. Hospitals, schools, homes, apartment buildings, and businesses have been bombed and blown apart by Russian artillery.

Russian forces aren’t doing this by accident. It has been done — and is still being done — as a matter of policy. That policy emanates from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.

No matter how you parse the Geneva Conventions, the intentional targeting and killing of non-combatants is a war crime.  Specifically, the Fourth Convention prohibits the intentional targeting and killing of civilians who are not taking part in the hostilities.

The Fourth Convention also prohibits the taking of hostages which is a separate war crime. The Ukrainian children reportedly kidnapped and moved to Russia are hostages who will never be returned to their families.

The supposed enforcement mechanism for war crimes is the International Criminal Court. In March 2023 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian commissioner for children’s rights, alleging responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children in the course of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

ICC issued indictments of other Russians, including now-former defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Valerey Gerasimov, a Russian general.

But Putin is not being prosecuted by the ICC for his biggest war crime: the wanton killing of civilians. The ICC proceedings against Putin and the others are a sham because the ICC has no independent means of enforcing its arrest warrants and no prosecution can proceed without the execution of those warrants.

The ICC claims universal jurisdiction over the whole world. But the UN (of which the ICC is a part) said in its announcement of the arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, “The ICC can only investigate and prosecute if the national judicial system of the countries concerned are not, in the eyes of the Court, conducting genuine investigations or prosecutions for the same alleged crimes.”

Both Israel and the U.S. investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes by their forces. Neither Russia nor the terrorist Hamas group do.

America is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC and, thus, does not recognize its jurisdiction. Israel is also not a signatory and Russia withdrew from the Rome Statute two years after it conquered and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. The ICC has no jurisdiction over any of the three and it is an invasion of their sovereignty to assert otherwise.

The ICC gained a certain notoriety in November 2024 when it issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant alleging war crimes, including the starvation of civilians, in the course of the Gaza war, which Hamas started by its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Putin Yes, Netanyahu No

While the arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova are entirely justified, those against Netanyahu and Gallant are not. They are purely political. (The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas commander Mohammed Dief who the Israelis had already caused to assume room temperature.)

As a result, the ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan has been personally sanctioned by our State Department. As the president said in his sanctioning announcement, he found that, “the International Criminal Court (ICC), as established by the Rome Statute, has engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel. The ICC has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.”

The ICC’s action against Netanyahu and Gallant were proved to be entirely political by the visit in July 2024 to Gaza by my friend, Lt. Gen. David Deptula (USAF, Ret.). During his visit, Gen. Deptula — the most senior U.S. officer to have gone to Gaza — found that (https://www.forbes.com/sites/davedeptula/2024/07/31/on-the-ground-in-gaza-what-i-saw-of-israels-military-operations/) “Unfortunately, negative perceptions on social media and elsewhere, based on a combination of disinformation, ignorance, and anti-Semitism, indicates there is a wide gap between the reality I witnessed and the perceptions abroad.”

Gen. Deptula further found that, “The military activities I saw, as well as the processes and procedures followed by the Israeli military, are indicative of the IDF complying with the laws of armed conflict.”

Everyone should believe Gen. Deptula. No one can believe the ICC. As Trump said, the ICC’s actions to investigate U.S. personnel and to issue arrest warrants against Israelis are a challenge to our — and Israel’s — sovereignty.

So where does that leave us? Nowhere.

If Russia were defeated, and Putin’s regime toppled, there could be a Nuremberg-like international prosecution of Putin and his key decision-makers. Absent that, there is no means by which to punish Putin’s war crimes. Those crimes will continue until Ukraine survives — or doesn’t — the Russian war against it.

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