Lawyers plan dossier to indict Putin in international court for war crimes
Human rights lawyers working with the Ukrainian government are expected to prepare a war crimes dossier filed by Russia with the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing Moscow of deliberately starving civilians during the war in Ukraine.
The lawyers say they intend to document cases in which hunger was used by Russians as a weapon of war, giving the ICC evidence to indict Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yousuf Khan, the lawyer responsible for the dossier, stated that the use of hunger as a tool to spread war occurred with attacks on Ukrainian cities and cutting off food supplies.
Among the incidents cataloged by Khan is the death of 20 civilians in the city of Chernihiv, on March 16, 2022, after the explosion of Moscow cluster bombs outside a supermarket. Lawyers are also expected to talk about the case in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The city's food supply was cut off by the Russians and humanitarian corridors were also blocked.
Furthermore, the dossier also points out that cities like Mikolaiv, in southern Ukraine, were left without drinking water since the beginning of the conflict because the Russians had invaded the pumping station The lawyers' intention is also to denounce Russian attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities on the Danube River, especially after the end of the grain agreement in July this year.
Putin at the ICC
The Russian president already has a warrant issued by the ICC for his arrest, which was issued in March this year. The court says it indicted Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in kidnapping and deporting children from parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia during the war.
The court said in a statement that Putin "is allegedly responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation of population (children) and illegal transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation." Rights groups welcomed the move, but the likelihood of a trial while Putin remains in power is slim as the court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia has said it will not hand over its own citizens.
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26 сентября 2023