The Russians use hunger as a weapon of war: in Ukraine, lawyers collect evidence for the International Criminal Court

Human rights lawyers working with Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office are preparing a war crimes dossier for submission to the International Criminal Court, accusing Russia of deliberately causing famine during the 18-month-old war.

The goal is to document Russia’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, providing evidence for the International Criminal Court to launch the first prosecution of its kind that could indict Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yusuf Khan, a senior associate at the law firm Global Rights Compliance, said “the use of food as a weapon occurred in three stages,” starting with the initial invasion, when Ukrainian cities were besieged and food supplies cut off.

Among the documented incidents is the death of 20 civilians in Chernihiv in the early morning of March 16, 2022, when Russian cluster bombs exploded near a supermarket in the city where Ukrainians were queuing for bread and groceries.

Investigators are also focused on the siege of Mariupol, Khan added.

Food supplies to the city were cut off and humanitarian aid corridors blocked or bombed, making it very difficult or impossible for desperate, starving civilians to escape.

The second phase involves the destruction of food and water supplies, as well as energy sources throughout Ukraine during the hostilities, which the lawyer described as “objects necessary for the survival of the civilian population.”

Such attacks, Khan argued, were “crimes not of consequence, but crimes of intent” because “when you take out objects that civilians need, such as energy infrastructure, in the dead of winter, your actions are predictable.”

Cities such as Mykolaiv in the south were left without drinking water at the start of the conflict after Russian forces seized a pumping station that supplied it. The rest of the residents were forced to rely on water delivered daily for safe drinking and washing.

The third element is Russia’s attempts to prevent or limit the export of Ukrainian food. “Then we saw Russia attacking grain facilities in the Danube and playing muscle in the Black Sea,” Khan said, referring to reports by Ukrainian officials that 270,000 tons of food had been destroyed in late July and early August.

The “field” Office of the International Criminal Court was opened in Ukraine. His work will strengthen the interaction between Ukraine and the International Criminal Court.

New accusations that Russia tried to starve Ukrainians to death are especially emotional in light of the two countries’ history: In 1932-33, millions died of starvation during the Holodomor, a forced famine caused by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet government.

But these issues are receiving special attention after the adoption of a resolution of the UN Security Council in 2018, which condemned the use of hunger as a means of warfare, and the introduction of amendments to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 2019, which expanded the list of cases that can be brought on this fact .

Global Rights Compliance is working with the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office until the end of next year to compile a dossier. The intention is to file an application under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, which would allow third parties to send information about alleged war crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. A prosecutor based in The Hague will decide whether to proceed with the case.

In part, the efforts of lawyers will be aimed at identifying the guilty, including whether to demand charges for Putin, as happened in March, when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the president of the Russian Federation for the crime of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia from the territories temporarily occupied during the war.

The same can be said for hunger-related crimes, Khan said.

“Putin can be held responsible for actions directly, jointly with others, and/or through others,” he argued, as well as for failing to exercise adequate control over Russian military or other individuals accused of specific criminal acts.

Human rights defenders work with open-source intelligence experts to detail examples of war crimes and map damage; collating relevant data, such as the number of refusals to accept humanitarian aid convoys, and examining statements made by Putin and other leaders down to the local level in an attempt to piece together a dossier.