Vienna, Austria
Reuters
A mission of experts set up by Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity by Russia in Ukraine, the mission said in a report on Wednesday.
The mission was set up last month by 45 of the OSCE’s 57 participating states to look into possible offences in Ukraine including war crimes and to pass on information to bodies such as international tribunals. Russia opposed it.
Service members of pro-Russian troops ride an armoured personnel carrier during Ukraine-Russia conflict on the outskirts of the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on 12th April. PICTURE: Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko.
The OSCE is an international organisation that includes former Cold War foes the United States and Russia and various countries in Europe, Central Asia and North America.
“The mission found clear patterns of IHL [international humanitarian law] violations by the Russian forces,” the report said, citing failures to take necessary precautions, act proportionately or spare sites like schools and hospitals.
Not all violations of international humanitarian law are war crimes. The mission comprised three professors of international law from Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
Russia’s mission to the OSCE said on Twitter the report “is based solely on unfounded propaganda theses, contains references to dubious sources and logical stretches in the style of ‘highly likely'”.
Despite Russian denials, the report said a 9th March attack on the Mariupol Maternity House and Children’s Hospital was carried out by Russia and those responsible had committed a war crime.
It also said the 16th March attack on Mariupol’s Drama Theatre, in which local Ukrainian officials said roughly 300 people were killed, was a war crime.
“The Mission is not able to conclude whether the Russian attack on Ukraine per se may qualify as a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population,” it said, referring to the context in which crimes like murder and rape constitute crimes against humanity.
“It however holds that some patterns of violent acts violating IHRL [international human rights law], which have been repeatedly documented in the course of the conflict, such as targeted killing, enforced disappearance or abductions of civilians…are likely to meet this qualification,” it said.
“Any single violent act of this type, committed as part of such an attack and with the knowledge of it, would then constitute a crime against humanity.”
Forensic technicians exhume the bodies of civilians who Ukrainian officials say were killed during Russia’s invasion and then buried in a mass grave in the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, on 8th April. PICTURE: Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko/File photo.
The mission also found what it called violations by Ukraine, particularly in its treatment of prisoners of war, but it said Russia’s violations “are by far larger in nature and scale”.
“Taken as a whole, the report documents the catalog of inhumanity perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine,” US ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter said in a statement.
“This includes evidence of direct targeting of civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting, and forced deportation of civilians to Russia.”
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Meanwhile, the US stopped short of promising to launch its own inquiry to determine whether genocide was committed by Russia in Ukraine on Wednesday but said it will support international efforts to hold Russia accountable.
President Joe Biden said for the first time on Tuesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine amounts to genocide, a significant escalation of his rhetoric.
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Wednesday declined to say whether Biden’s comments reflected the overall position of the US government, but said the president “was speaking to the impression he had garnered from watching the horrific footage that we’ve all seen” from Ukraine.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration would further assess whether to launch its own formal review.
Price said the United States supported international lawyers trying to determine whether a legal threshold was met, but did not say whether the United States would launch its own inquiry.
“What we are doing is the most effective means of achieving that ultimate goal of accountability,” Price said.
Such a State Department determination normally follows a meticulous internal process, but the final decision is up to the secretary of state, who weighs whether it advances American interests, officials said.
Genocide, considered the most serious international offense, was first used to describe the Nazi Holocaust. It was established in 1948 as a crime under international law in a United Nations convention.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands and displaced millions.
Moscow calls its actions a “special operation” to destroy Ukraine’s military capabilities and capture what it views as dangerous nationalists, but Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it categorically disagreed with Biden’s description of Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide,” and accused Washington of hypocrisy.
– With HUMEYRA PAMUK and DAPHNE PSALEDAKIS
