Introduction to American Government and Politics

War Crimes in Ukraine

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine early in March, there were reports from Russian occupied of violence against civilians. This has appeared through extra-judicial killings, the bombing of civilian targets, and rape. In recent times it has come under speculation if these actions are being undertaken by individual soldiers or if these are being conducted under the direct order of the Russian military/ Kremlin. This speculation primarily arises from recent Russian news outlets outlying every Ukrainian civilian as regardless of actual political belief is too “tainted by Nazism”. It is this claim of Ukraine is a “fascist” country that has been one of the main arguments the Russian government has used to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

The issue with getting reliable information on this subject has proven difficult since there is still large-scale fighting occurring at the time and the prevalent spread of false information online that makes finding reliable sources of information difficult. Despite this, however, Amnesty International has undeniable proof of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Most recently and most shockingly satellite images from the city of Bucha, where satellite photos of the town show bodies of civilians scattered throughout the street and are further supported by video on the ground. Since Bucha was recently evacuated by the Russians it's theorized that the massacre occurred during this withdrawal. In typical Russian fashion, the Kremlin has denied any claims of civilian deaths. The Russian arguments against the evidence are that the bodies were not “stiff”, that one of the bodies sits up in one of the videos, and finally that Russian soldiers don’t harm civilians and that any claim otherwise was false information.

Another major war crime the Russian Federation has been committing in Ukraine is through the mass bombardment campaign of civilian targets and the use of cluster munition weapons. The method the Russians used for artillery and airstrikes is very reminiscent of the same carpet bombing strategies used during the second world war where the main objective was to cause as much destruction to cities to kill as many people as possible to demoralize them into submission. It was these same strategies they used in the Chechen war were at the battle of Grozny saw hundreds of thousands of bombs on the city until it was only rubble with massive amounts of civilian casualties. Unfortunately for the Russians these strategies did not demoralize the Chechen people but instead invigorated the population and brought greater unity between warring factions in fighting a common enemy, the Russians. And again we are seeing the same results from these strategies in Ukraine, where instead of demoralization we are seeing the Ukrainian people coming together to fight the Russians. The next issue with Russian bombing tactics is the repetitive usage of cluster munitions from bombers, cluster bombs are bombs that explode while falling threw the air into hundreds if not thousands of miniature bomblets that cover a wide stretch of land causing much damage. The main issue with this munition though, is that by design some of the bomblets are not designated to explode upon impact with the ground but instead will lie dormant acting as a land mind which is a war crime since landmines often lie undetected till after the war where they will be stepped on by a civilian years after a conflict has ended.