In Groza, Ukrainians are once again thrust into horror. On Thursday, a Russian strike fell on a cafe and a store in this village in the east of the country, brutally claiming the lives of 52 people. Amid the rubble and human flesh, survivors wander in shock. A shower of international condemnations followed this new carnage, which occurred on the sidelines of the funeral of a soldier. The day after the bombing, the UN spoke of a possible “war crime”. An accusation that pursues Russia in the wake of its multiple shelling targeting the Ukrainian civilian population.
“Unfortunately, it is very probably a war crime,” immediately confirms Mathilde Philip-Gay. “But we have to start by defining what we’re talking about. War crime is an act – which can be murder, rape, assassination etc. committed in the context of a war and in connection with it”, explains the professor of public law at the University of Lyon-3 and author of the work Can we judge Putin? “According to the Geneva Conventions, subjecting the civilian population to an indiscriminate attack is a serious offense and, therefore, a war crime,” explains Catherine Le Bris, expert in international law.
Civilian victims
To qualify the strike as a war crime, “it is necessary [donc] prove that it was a deliberate attack against civilians,” summarizes Mathilde Philip-Gay. For the moment, this is in any case France’s analysis. “By deliberately targeting the Ukrainian civilian population, Russia is once again guilty of atrocities constituting war crimes,” criticized Paris. The victims of the Groza strike, including a 6-year-old child, do indeed appear to be civilians.
Because if the tragedy took place on the sidelines of a soldier’s funeral, that does not mean that the participants in the tribute were soldiers. Witnesses speak of the presence of neighbors and the family of the deceased. Furthermore, “if there were combatants, they were mixed with the civilian population and were not present in this capacity,” says Catherine Le Bris. “The fighter is the one who takes part in combat at the moment, a soldier who attends a funeral is a civilian,” adds Mathilde Philip-Gay.
“It’s hard to see a military objective”
Even if civilians are targeted by bombing in the context of war, it is not automatically considered a war crime. There is one exception. “The only possibility for an act which has the appearance of a war crime not to be considered as one is when it is launched as part of a military necessity,” explains Catherine Le Bris. . “However, if the village is close to the front line, it has, a priori, no strategic interest so it is difficult to see a military objective,” notes the CNRS researcher.
The village of Groza seems difficult to assimilate to a point of strategic interest and, even if this were the case, this clause “is not necessarily a blank check and the attack must remain proportionate”, notes the expert. . However, dozens of civilians suddenly lost their lives in this strike. It will therefore be difficult for Moscow to assert that these collateral losses were proportionate. On Friday, the Kremlin limited itself to “reaffirming that the Russian army does not strike civilian targets but military targets”. However, the hypothesis that the bombing was a Ukrainian mistake seems unlikely. The Ukrainian authorities are talking about an Iskander ballistic missile, a weapon that Moscow has unlike kyiv and the UN has estimated that “any port [ait] to believe” that it was a Russian weapon.
Many jurisdictions involved
The fact remains that the judicial machinery is based on tangible evidence. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will send a team of eight people, one of its spokespersons announced on Friday. The legal response will come later. First, in Ukraine, because “Ukrainian courts are competent to judge soldiers”, underlines Mathilde Philip-Gay. Then “the International Criminal Court will judge the senior leaders”. And Vladimir Putin himself could be worried. “There is no immunity before international courts, even for a head of state like Vladimir Putin,” recalls Catherine Le Bris. The Russian president is also under arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in connection with the deportations of Ukrainian children.
Finally, the “special criminal jurisdiction will judge the crime of aggression”, points out Mathilde Philip-Gay. Because Russia is accused of having started an illegal war and “without the crime of aggression, there would be no war crimes in Ukraine”. The specialist in international criminal justice evokes a sad irony in passing. “The war is framed by humanist principles thanks to the leadership of Russia. It was Tsar Nicholas II who initiated the first International Peace Conference and Russian diplomat Frédéric Fromhold de Martens who felt that it was necessary to humanize the war,” she relates. Good intentions that Russia today seems to be blithely trampling on.