Tag: Putin

• By Denys Honchar

For centuries, war has been humanity’s cruel constant. It evolves with our technology and politics – but so does our effort to restrain it. Out of the wreckage of Europe’s bloodiest battles, we built rules to spare civilians, protect cultural heritage, and hold commanders accountable. That’s the essence of international humanitarian law (IHL) – a framework meant to bring a measure of order to the chaos of conflict.

But in 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that framework began to crack.

The war has become the largest and most brutal conflict Europe has seen since World War II. Yet it’s also become something else: a catalyst. A stress test. A mirror reflecting just how unprepared our existing laws are for 21st-century warfare – and how urgently they need to change.

A legal system born in blood

Modern IHL dates back to 1864, when Swiss humanitarian Henry Dunant, horrified by the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, inspired the creation of the First Geneva Convention. That treaty set the groundwork for the humanitarian principles we still rely on today.

Over time, the law evolved through new agreements:

• The 1907 Hague Conventions, regulating the conduct of hostilities

• The 1949 Geneva Conventions, which remain the backbone of IHL

• Additional protocols in 1977 and 2005

• The 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

• And the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions

These treaties aimed to curb the worst impulses of war. But it wasn’t just treaties that advanced the law – it was also tragedy.

The genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur pushed the world to establish international tribunals that prosecuted war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. While their verdicts aren’t binding sources of law, they set legal precedents that shaped how IHL is interpreted and enforced.

In this interview Andrew Mitchell focuses not only on the need to stop Russian aggression rather than negotiate with it, but also on what Ukraine should look like after the war.

That movement culminated in 1998, when more than 120 countries adopted the Rome Statute, creating the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC was tasked with prosecuting the most egregious crimes of war, regardless of borders or politics.

But for decades, the ICC’s influence remained limited. Major powers like the United States, China, Russia, and Israel never ratified its statute. Realpolitik often trumped the ideals of justice.

Then came Ukraine.

The Geneva Conventions never imagined the world we live in now.

A historic warrant and a global wake-up call

In 2023, the ICC did the unthinkable. It issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin – a sitting head of state and leader of a nuclear power. The charge: orchestrating the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. A similar warrant was issued for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.

It was a legal earthquake. For the first time in history, a nuclear-armed president became a wanted man. And for the first time, the mass deportation of children was formally recognized as a war crime by the international community.

These weren’t symbolic gestures. They were legal milestones – and they underscored just how radically this war is reshaping global justice.

Documenting war in real time

Ukraine is fighting not only on the battlefield, but in the courtroom of global opinion. And it’s using 21st-century tools to do so.

Drones. Smartphones. Satellite images. Encrypted databases. Never before has a nation under siege so systematically documented war crimes in real time. Civil society groups and government agencies are collecting and verifying evidence daily. The sheer volume – and quality – of data may set a new standard for future investigations.

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This digital trail is already informing cases at the ICC and other bodies. It’s also exposing the limits of existing law.

What do we do when missiles knock out an entire country’s power grid in the dead of winter? When cyberattacks disable hospitals? When armies use social media to spread disinformation as a weapon of war?

The Geneva Conventions never imagined this world. But this is the world we live in now.

Toward a New Legal Order

Russia’s actions have shattered any illusion that IHL is fully equipped for modern warfare. Its missile strikes on apartment blocks, maternity wards, and energy infrastructure have tested every provision in the legal playbook – and often left those provisions looking outdated or toothless.

But something else is happening, too.

Legal scholars and diplomats are rallying behind the idea of a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Such a tribunal, if created, would not only fill gaps in existing law – it could reshape how aggression is prosecuted for generations to come.

Meanwhile, the ICC’s action against Putin is breathing new life into the principle of individual accountability, even for the most powerful leaders. And it’s nudging other countries – many of which had remained on the sidelines – to consider ratifying the Rome Statute or reforming their national laws to better align with IHL.

This war may ultimately do what no treaty or tribunal has done before: force the world to take international humanitarian law seriously.

War as a turning point

Russia’s war in Ukraine is a humanitarian catastrophe. But it’s also a legal turning point – one that could define how the world handles war in the decades ahead.

It is prompting uncomfortable questions. Can international law keep pace with the weapons of tomorrow? Can autocrats be held to account? Can justice still matter when the bombs are falling?

If the answer is yes, it will be in part because Ukraine refused to suffer in silence – and because the world, finally, listened.

• This article was originally published in www.kyivpost.com

• By Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth

Don’t look now but Russian President Vladimir Putin’s would-be global empire is getting smaller by the month. And 2025 is likely to be even more perilous for the dictator and Russian prestige around the world.

Since the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, the hollowed-out remains of the Russian military are struggling to project influence throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel region of West Africa, and Sudan.

The resulting strategic losses of the Russian naval facility in Tartus, on the Mediterranean coast, and Khmeimim Air Base located southeast of the city of Latakia are severely disrupting Moscow’s logistics and military supply chain to Africa.

Once used to keep the al-Assad regime in power, their loss is proving to be a major embarrassment to Russian prestige.

So, too, the sanctuary once afforded by al-Assad to conduct planning, training, transit of weapons and ammunition from Iran and Russia has now been denied now by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Other key Russian allies in the Mideast are taking hits too. Iran and its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies are being systematically decimated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran has proven to be no match to Israel’s intelligence community including Aman (military), Mossad (overseas) and Shin Bet (internal security).

Intended by the Kremlin to sow conflict and instability throughout the Middle East, Iran and its hapless proxies have now become a liability to Putin’s machinations to recreate a Peter the Great-like Russian empire.

All of this is the result of Putin’s ill-fated decision to support what was an IRGC-directed terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That decision runs second only to Putin’s decision to launch a “special military operation” into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Yet Putin’s walls, as John Cougar Mellencamp once sang, are “tumblin’ down” elsewhere in his would-be empire as well.

Alongside Africa and the Middle East, Russian influence is also rapidly failing in the Black Sea region – and most significantly amongst members of the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

The latest examples of Putin’s waning influence came from Sudan and Libya last week. According to a report in The Moscow Times on Dec. 18, Sudan rejected a Russian request to construct a naval base on the Red Sea coast in Port Sudan. That was followed by Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s announcement that he would “resist any efforts by Russia to strengthen its military presence in the country.”

Read Also: Syria shows that Putin is in deep, worldwide trouble

As Russia pulls its forces and equipment out of Syria, the Kremlin has nowhere to reposition them in the Mediterranean or Red Sea. To compound Moscow’s growing problem, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that the Russian-flagged Ursa Major sank south of Spain after a blast occurred in its engine room.

The ship is the flagship vessel owned by Oboronlogistika, “a shipping company that moves cargo for Russia’s Defense Ministry.” According to the Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), the vessel was sailing to Syria to move Russian weapons and equipment out of the country.

But with one slight turn of the kaleidoscope in Russia – as we have witnessed in the Middle East – change can occur, quickly.

Putin’s empire is also beginning to implode from within. Earlier this month we noted that during Putin’s visit to Astana, Kazakhstan to attend the CSTO summit, he referred to Kazakhstan as a “Russian-speaking country.”

But when Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev addressed the summit audience, he did so in his native Kazakh. Anton Gerashchenko, a former key counselor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, characterized the clash as “trolling at a prohibitive level.”

Kazakhstan is the second CSTO country to publicly snub Russia. In July, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan confirmed that Armenia plans to withdraw from the treaty.

Eastern Europe is arguably setting up to be the European Union (EU) Winner of 2025. Much to the chagrin of Moscow, Moldova is firmly on the pathway for admission into the EU.

But with one slight turn of the kaleidoscope in Russia – as we have witnessed in the Middle East – change can occur, quickly.

Russian-backed governments of Serbia and Georgia could be next. Belgrade was awarded EU candidate status in 2012; Tbilisi in 2023.

Russia’s longtime Balkan ally Serbia is feeling the pressure to integrate into the EU as well. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić – who is facing accusations of curbing democratic freedoms rather than advancing them – has accused foreign intelligence services of trying to unseat him in the wake of spreading protests and says he will not flee the country like recently ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Although not related, on Dec. 22 tens of thousands of Serbians assembled in Belgrade’s Slavija Square for a rally against Vučić and his government. The protest was in response to a collapsed canopy at a railway station in the country’s north that killed 15. However, the Vučić-led government is concerned large protests like this one could easily escalate.

Georgian citizens are still incensed over the October election results. Georgia President Salome Zourabichvili maintains the election was stolen as part of a “Russian special operation.” Meanwhile, violent clashes continue in the capital city of Tbilisi between police and protesters infuriated about Georgian Dream Party Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s decision to put talks on joining the EU on hold.

Then there is Belarus. President Alexander Lukashenko is beholden to Putin, who essentially secured his sixth presidential term in 2020. In return, Lukashenko allowed Putin to stage military forces and invade Ukraine from within the borders of Belarus.

Earlier this month, to ensure Lukashenko’s survival from perceived external threats – namely Poland – the Belarusian dictator signed a treaty with Putin providing security guarantees that included the possible use of nuclear weapons to forebode any foreign aggression. Belarus now “hosts dozens of Russian [tactical] nuclear weapons and will prepare facilities for the planned deployment of Moscow’s newest hypersonic ballistic missile [Oreshnik].”

But it is the internal threat that is most likely to unseat Lukashenko. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, currently living in exile in Lithuania, once described living conditions in Belarus as the equivalent of “living in a Gulag – an atmosphere of tyranny and terror and repression.”

She has been adamant in her pursuit to bring Belarus into the European family of nations: “Belarus’ place in the European family is not just a dream; it’s a destiny that we, as a nation, are committed to achieving. We seek to join the rest of Europe as a full-fledged democracy, embodying the European values of freedom, equality, and fraternity.”

Elections are scheduled in Belarus for Jan. 26 with Lukashenko running for his seventh term in office. Tsikhanouskaya is counting on a strong turnout to unseat the him, and the same level of enthusiasm that brought tens of thousands of protesters out into the streets of Minsk carrying banners mocking the Lukashenko and chanting “Go away!”

Yet free and fair elections in Russian-dominated countries are highly unlikely. Payoffs, ballot box stuffing, arrests, and physical intimidation are the standard. Look no further than recent elections in Moldova, Georgia, and Venezuela.

Belarus will be no exception. The outcome is practically assured, and as Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich stated: “There won’t be mass protests in freezing January.”

But with one slight turn of the kaleidoscope in Russia – as we have witnessed in the Middle East – change can occur, quickly. Momentum can be dangerous. Consider the rapid fall of Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. He and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad 35 years ago on Christmas Day after a summary trial.

Putin best keep Beijing on speed dial. He may soon need to trade his dacha near Moscow for a Siheyuan in China.

•        This article was first published in www.kyivpost.com

• By Anders Aslund

Which Western leader has been best at dealing with Putin? It has not been any American or German in recent decades. In both countries bipartisan folly has abounded.

George W. Bush understood nothing, being exceedingly complimentary to Putin. In June 2001, Bush said: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy… I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

In September 2003, Bush claimed: “I respect President Putin’s vision for Russia: a country at peace within its borders, with its neighbors and with the world, a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive.”

Even after Putin’s famous anti-American February 2007 speech in Munich, Bush stated in July 2007: “But one thing I’ve found about Vladimir Putin is that he is consistent, transparent, honest… I know he’s always telling me the truth.”

At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, Putin had declared that Ukraine was not a country. Even so, Bush went to see Putin in Sochi in the most conciliatory fashion. Little wonder that Putin invaded Georgia four months later.

Barack Obama made the opposite mistakes. He insulted Putin publicly but did nothing to stop him.

In the presidential campaign in 2012, Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney’s claim that Russia was the United States’ principal geopolitical foe, stating that he was considerably more concerned about the threat of a terrorist nuclear bomb attack on New York.

Putin listened and annexed Crimea in March 2014.

Obama imposed sanctions on Russia, but he said that the US was committed to the defense of its NATO allies but not to that of non-member states along Russia’s borders. He insisted: “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.”

Obama couldn’t care less about Ukraine. He never visited it and refused to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty. Although most of his administration, including Vice President Joe Biden, asked him to send arms to Ukraine, he prohibited it. Obama appears to have been unable to understand the danger of Russia. Absurdly, he liked Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, now one of the foremost advocates of genocide in Ukraine.

The German bipartisan folly on Russia has been different, but also harmful. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder supported Putin wholeheartedly and approved of Putin’s favorite project, Nord Stream, a gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, after he had lost the elections in 2005.

A few weeks later, he became the handsomely paid chairman of the Nord Stream company board. Ever since, Schröder, as a paid Putin servant, has claimed that Putin is always right – in the wars in Georgia and Ukraine – and even being a “crystal clear democrat.” Shockingly, the German social democratic party has not expelled Schröder.

The victory of Angela Merkel and her Christian Democrats in 2005 came as a relief, but she failed to stand up to Putin. Although she grew up in East Germany and learned good Russian, she appears to have understood as little of Putin as Obama.

All along, she was afraid of “provoking” Putin, not comprehending that nothing provokes Putin as much as appeasement. She made every possible mistake, believing in the old German social democratic folly of Ostpolitik, believing that economic integration would lead to democratization of Russia.

Read Also: Syria shows that Putin is in deep, worldwide trouble

Merkel could have stopped Schröder’s morally dubious decision to allow Nord Stream 1, but she did not. Next, she fought tooth and nail for the doubling of the gas pipeline with Nord Stream 2, mendaciously claiming that it was a purely commercial project, while Russia had designed it as a geopolitical blow against Ukraine.

At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, she and French President Nicolas Sarkozy blocked membership action plans for Ukraine and Georgia. She still defends that, although only NATO association could have salvaged these two countries from Russian aggression.

After Russia had attacked Ukraine in 2014, Obama and Merkel agreed not to allow any arms deliveries to Ukraine, because that could provoke Putin.

For years, Merkel played appeaser, insisting on meaningless Minsk negotiations with Russia about Ukraine, giving Putin respite to prepare for a bigger war. She minimized German military spending and turned the German Wehrmacht into a joke. Amazingly, Merkel claims to get upset when she realized that Putin lied to her.

What world did she live in? Don’t believe anything until the Kremlin has denied it!

Instead, Sauli Niinistö, Finland’s popular conservative president from 2012 to 2024, stands out as the wisest Western leader on Russia.

Niinistö maintained regular personal and phone contacts with Putin. He spoke his mind firmly and correctly, but privately and he made no unnecessary concessions to Putin.

In his New Year message for 2022, Niinistö opened the door for Finland’s accession to NATO, and Finland applied swiftly in May 2022 with a massive popular majority. One year later, Finland had joined NATO, ably pre-empting Russian protests.

Admittedly, Russia tried multiple provocations, from buying Finnish islands, to cutting Finnish underwater cables to flood Finland with Middle Eastern “refugees.”

These are the things Russia does, but the Finnish government understands that and acts firmly.

It prohibited Russian purchases of sensitive land and it closed all border crossings to Russia.

Unlike Germany, it has a strong defense. Finland does what Theodore Roosevelt recommended: “speak softly and carry a big stick!”

The West needs to move on from the incompetence on Russia characteristic of the US, Germany, and France, eminently depicted by Sylvie Kauffmann in her book “Les Aveuglés” (“The Blindsided”).

The size of your country does not determine the quality of your foreign policy thinking. The West would be well advised to listen to wise politicians from Finland or Estonia rather than fools in Washington, Berlin or Paris.

• This article was first published in www.kyivpost.com

• By Jeffrey S. Kargel

With huge Russian losses in Syria, culminating in Assad’s flight to Russia, the world takes stock. The big unknown is the true ideological inclination of the newly empowered rebel movement. Several powers are weakened – the Assad regime was destroyed; Russia was humiliated; and Iran lost its logistical supply lines to its proxy, Hezbollah. Two countries made immediate gains: Israel faces a further weakened Hezbollah to its north, and Ukraine benefits from Russia’s humiliation. All the world sees more clearly that Russia’s military and Iran are overstretched.

However much some may revel in Assad’s flight to Russia, the serious instabilities and unintended consequences are palpable. Nobody can be sure of the full consequences, but we can make educated guesses. Iran and Russia’s immediate responses must be of three types: shock, fear, and damage control. ISIS sees opportunity, to which the US and Israel are responding with pre-emptive strikes to destroy weapons depots and production sites that could otherwise fall to ISIS.

The damage for Iran and Russia runs deep. Here, I explore possible consequences for Russia, beyond the clarity that Emperor Putin has no clothes. Let’s look to where Russia already has weaknesses and how humiliation and tangible military loss in Syria may further manifest.

The Kremlin obviously must know that its military is overstretched, an awareness already revealed in the invitation to North Korea to send troops. Assad’s failure was rooted in the Russian military’s hollowing out in Syria as well as in popular discontent.

There may be no immediate change on the front lines, but the steady erosion over nearly three years of war and now events in Syria have shredded the imagined Russian invincibility. A rapid collapse of some Russian-held sectors of the front lines could occur, but other impacts further afield are even more likely.

A chain reaction of Russian withdrawals are likely, including of Wagner in Africa. Wagner has experienced recent defeats in Africa, in part connected to covert Ukrainian operations. While Ukraine has taken heat for its actions, the heat has come primarily from Russia-aligned countries. Russian forces abroad already were on the back foot before Syria collapsed. Domestic African political pressure and insurgent pressure will mount on remaining Russian forces. A full Russian withdrawal is almost a fait accompli, because Africa is the only place where Russia can draw many well-trained and equipped troops of its own. Western powers should prepare contingency plans.

The situation in the “Stans”

The biggest consequences of Putin’s Syria debacle may be in the former Soviet and now independent “Stans”: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. The independent governments, seeing Putin’s weakness, are more likely to insist that Russia is not their master. Russia has no spare conventional army and air power to punish divorced pieces of the former Soviet empire. Some – Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan especially – have terrain that would be unforgiving to invading Russians, if any can be scraped together from an already dis-enthused domestic Russian population.

The Central Asian countries together comprise 70 million people, nearly twice that of Ukraine, and a land area six times bigger than Ukraine. While the Central Asian armies are poorly equipped and their air forces are derelict, the same was true of Ukraine’s armed forces before Russia’s aggressions.

Though Russia has overall friendly governments in the former Soviet countries,  the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to the region in 2023 and talks with leaders underscored that not all is harmonious between Russia and those governments. There is a hint of Central Asian sympathy for Ukraine and a refusal to support Russia’s war. If the governments do not raise pressure against Russian domination in Central Asia in the face of Russia’s displayed weakness, then former and existing insurgencies likely will, from a differing perspective.

Might Tajikistan, for instance, see a revival of its 1990s civil war, which ended with the Moscow Protocol? The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) also was in armed rebellion in the 1990s.

Low-level conflicts periodically erupt across the former nations. For example, protests over high gas prices led to widespread protests in Kazakhstan in 2022, the response to which was the provision of a small number of Russian troops under the banner of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization). The Russian forces were, at the time, minimized as a mere spectacle.

Read Also: Berlin hosts Europe’s defence ministers after Putin hails new missile

Would Putin, today, order its forces to quell protests or an insurgency in a former Soviet, independent “Stan” today? Using what forces? Many people in those countries must share my doubts. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are not even CSTO members.

And what about China?

President Xi cannot be impressed by Putin’s performance. He must wonder about the stability of the bordering regimes in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. The al Qaeda-linked IMU and East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) are considered by Russia, China, the US, and the UN as terrorist groups. ETIM was founded by a Uighur. China used the then-minor threat of those groups to clamp down indiscriminately on its Turkic Uighur minority in western China.

It seems inevitable that the Central Asian “Stans” will either migrate away from Russian dominion either by government policy or by insurgent pressure. Russia is paralyzed by Ukraine. China will see a threat if Central Asian governments do not take command of their security or do so with striking independence.

Putin’s woes may also enflame the Russian hinterlands. Some former Soviet “Stans” are still a part of the Russian Federation. There could be a flare-up of jihadist Islamic or nationalist insurgencies inside Russia, in Chechnya and Dagestan, for example.

Geopolitical outcomes will depend on how independent former Soviet Republics and disaffected domestic Russian demographic groups respond to Putin’s weaknesses.

For Ukraine, events are unfolding favorably in some regards: Putin is revealed as a weakling. Global Chaos Theory has two measures of trouble in one hand, and a measure of hope in the other. The next few months will be wild. The global geopolitical map of national boundaries, military lines of control, and alliances may soon look very different. December 2025 will not look like December 2024.

• This article was first published in www.kyivpost.com