The international community’s efforts to enforce accountability for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine are vital to achieve justice for Ukrainians suffering through war crimes and crimes against humanity. But they also present an opportunity to strengthen the international justice system, which has suffered from a perception and reality of impotence over decades. However, to do so, revived commitments to international justice in Ukraine must be complemented by an equal appetite for justice in other such cases, particularly in places where the world has largely come to accept impunity as the norm.

International justice mechanisms, backed by exceptional state support, have played an active role in Ukraine. These efforts include the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. That means Putin could be arrested in the territories of the 123 ICC member states.

But the question is whether this institutional recognition is only a moral gesture, as important as that is. Is there any legitimate enforcement mechanism that will actually see Putin and his cronies face any justice other than the embarrassment of not defeating a smaller neighbour? Because Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and in a ‘no limits’ partnership with China, holding Putin to account for his illegal actions will be an important test not just for individual states but for international mechanisms. Holding Russian leaders to account for their war on Ukraine could strengthen international justice, particularly its oft-debated ability to deter future atrocities.

Moral and strategic imperatives create an impetus for the kind of international justice effort we have seen in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion launched the first interstate war in Europe for 78 years and has unleashed the kind of devastation that the European Union and NATO were created to prevent. It has shaken the foundations of the international order and has thus warranted responses that are proportionate to the magnitude of the shock and fear it has created among Western states that are the principal architects of that order. This war of aggression launched by one European state against another mirrors the circumstances in which international legal norms and institutions were forged in the wake of World War II.

But the invasion has fed into the international community’s tendency to be spurred to action by ‘crises’, while accepting longstanding atrocities. Ironically, this worked against accountability for Russian crimes in Ukraine prior to the full-scale invasion last year. Ukraine requested an ICC investigation in 2014 following Russia’s actions in Crimea and Donbas, but the court’s independent Office of the Prosecutor only opened its investigation eight years later, after the 2022 invasion had begun. Atrocities committed in other parts of the world have quickly faded out of the collective conscience. It’s noteworthy, for instance, that there appears to be no prospect of concrete action being taken in response to war crimes committed by Russia in Syria.

The strong international support for holding Russia to account over Ukraine should prompt a wider rethink of the approach to international justice. It should not entrench what one author has called an ‘asymmetry of empathy, attention and funding’. International justice needs to be able to bring perpetrators to account across the full breadth of scenarios in which atrocities are committed.

The arrest warrant for Putin was a watershed moment for the ICC. He’s the first European state leader that it has sought to arrest since it was formally established in July 2002. Previously, the court had issued arrest warrants only for African heads of states—and overwhelmingly for Africans generally—fuelling allegations that it harboured an anti-African bias, though judicial bodies that predated the court prosecuted European leaders as far back as the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.

Should a powerful ICC response with state backing successfully hold Russia to account, it has the potential to revitalise the court, which has suffered from a paucity of funding and staffing, and hence delays in concluding cases. Dwindling resources, including money and staff, have been flagged as key challenges to the Office of the Prosecutor’s work. As a result, investigations such as those in Burundi and Cote d’Ivoire have been accorded lower priority. Even matters referred to the court by the UN Security Council, such as the situation in Libya, have languished in the absence of state support.

The ICC’s investigation in Afghanistan has had several inexplicable delays. Initially paused at the Ashraf Ghani government’s request, it was then watered down in the face of US pressure, and only resumed over a year after the Taliban takeover.

Several states have launched independent inquiries into Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The Office of the Prosecutor is, for the first time, taking part in a combined investigative team by joining the European Union’s EuroJust. The US Justice Department has established an ‘accountability team’ to investigate war crimes in Ukraine. In addition, the US passed the Justice for Victims of War Crimes Act, altering its domestic laws to enable war criminals to be prosecuted in the US even if the perpetrators or victims are not Americans. That brings American law into line with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a change the US has long avoided.

Independent, state-led inquiries and prosecutions for atrocities committed in other parts of the world remain few and far between, despite years of allegations and documentation. A German court’s conviction of two former officials of Syria’s security forces for war crimes last year was the first time Syrian regime officials were held accountable for their crimes. German and Dutch courts have also heard cases on behalf of Afghan victims of atrocities. Recently, a former member of the Australian Defence Force was charged with the war crime of murder for allegedly shooting an Afghan civilian while deployed in Afghanistan. Barring Australia’s investigation, there are no ongoing independent investigations into war crimes committed by international forces in Afghanistan, including into the use of US ‘black sites’ where torture allegedly took place, according to former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

There have also been calls to create a special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression. These calls were prompted by restrictions on the ICC’s jurisdiction over this crime, primarily owing to pressure from the US and allies to amend the court’s rules. Creating an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute Russia rather than removing limitations on the court’s jurisdiction—which would also enable it to investigate other acts of aggression—would ‘consecrate selective justice‘, according to former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.

In some cases, countries oppose international investigations of war crimes in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq to preclude prosecution of their own personnel. This was illustrated in the Donald Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions on ICC personnel following the court’s decision to investigate war crimes by international forces in Afghanistan.

The absence of international troops in Ukraine lessens the risk that international investigations might implicate other countries’ personnel, making it easier to lend support. It’s evident that Western states expect these responses to remain exceptional and not to have spillover effects that strengthen calls for justice elsewhere, particularly in conflicts where their own personnel could be implicated.

Justice is not evenly or equally applied, and it is not driven by the severity of the atrocities or the strength of the victims’ claims. To be a vehicle for all victims of atrocity crimes, international justice efforts need to thrive not just in situations where it’s easy to seek justice but also in difficult situations, including when powerful states are indifferent or even opposed to accountability.

Achieving justice in Ukraine is vital for the effectiveness and longevity of international rules and the institutions that are meant to uphold them. Holding Russia to account and bringing this appetite for justice to bear in conflicts across the world are the dual existential challenges not just for international justice bodies but for the international community at large. Failure to succeed in either will do further damage to the international system, likely resulting in the ICC reverting to inaction and cementing a two-tiered system that further alienates the global south, subverts and weakens the norm of international justice, and exposes the limits of the rules-based international order.

The extent of the cruelty displayed by Russia’s invaders has shocked the people of Ukraine and deepened their determination to fight for their nation’s survival.

Galyna Mykhailiuk, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and a highly qualified lawyer, tells The Strategist the Russians have used rape of civilians and prisoners, and other forms of unlawful violence, as weapons in a process of dehumanisation.

While war is always terrible, the Russian crimes are beyond belief, she says.

Mykhailiuk is heading a delegation of MPs who have come to Canberra to deliver a message of thanks to the government and people of Australia for the help they’ve provided to the Ukrainian forces fighting a much more powerful adversary. ‘Our Ukrainian armed forces do count on Australian support. For us, it’s very important to express our gratitude to Australia citizens, to the parliament, the government of Australia personally, face to face, for all the support that was provided to Ukraine, military, financial and humanitarian.

‘We survived, thanks to not only the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers, but also the support provided by our international allies. Australia proved to be a very reliable ally in a dark period of Ukrainian history. You helped us to preserve our freedom, independence and democracy. Hopefully this year will be victorious for Ukraine.’

Mykhailiuk says her country’s forces will soon take the offensive against the Russians. Her delegation wants Australia to send some of its Abrams tanks to Ukraine. ‘If Australia can join the tank coalition, it will be highly important for us.’

She says that despite civilian and military casualties, morale remains high. ‘We realise that we don’t have any other choice except to win this war.’

Mykhailiuk says Ukrainians have been appalled by the Russian military’s tactics. ‘It’s beyond belief that they can be so cruel,’ she says. ‘We did not expect that they could do such things. They use everything as a weapon—rape as a weapon, energy as a weapon, cold as a weapon.’ It’s impossible, she says to understand how this can be done by a country in 21st-century Europe.

In one of many episodes Mykhailiuk recounts, a four-year-old girl and her mother were raped in front of the father.

‘They’ve raped men, and even women aged over 80. They want Ukrainian women to feel such fear that they’ll never again give birth to a child, that they’d rather commit suicide than carry this burden.’ Many women in the Ukrainian army would rather be killed in battle than surrender to the Russians because they know they’re likely to be tortured, Mykhailiuk says.

Areas liberated from Russian forces have been heavily mined and hundreds of Ukrainian civilians have been killed by exploding mines, Mykhailiuk says. ‘They put mines everywhere, even into kids’ toys. When people go back to their apartments and open the door there might be explosion, or they open the door of their fridge, there might be an explosion, or when they start their car.’ The same applies to farmers’ fields, she says. Everything must be screened.

It’s estimated that about 1,000 children have been killed in the war, many hit by Russian missile strikes and gunfire. A further 16,000 Ukrainian children are believed to have been kidnapped and taken to Russia. Mykhailiuk says the Russian Federation has enacted a law allowing Russians to adopt such children even if they have parents alive in Ukraine. ‘We don’t know how they are being treated,’ she says.

Ukraine is pleading with the European Parliament and the governments of European and other nations for help to set up a specialised international organisation to help it get the children back.

‘For an occupier and invader to kidnap children is against any international law.’

If Russia wins and occupies Ukraine, it will quickly round up members of the government, she says. ‘As an MP, my home addresses and the addresses of my parents and my family are out there. They know where to find us. If Russia occupies my homeland, they will come for my parents, for my family and they will torture, rape and blackmail. That’s why we don’t have any other option than to have a free Ukraine. It’s win or die. That’s it.’

Some of the language emerging in this war has morphed from Ukraine’s past. Mykhailiuk talks of the front lines as ‘point zero’. That’s where hell is happening, she says. People ask their loved ones in the forces, ‘How many kilometres are you from point zero?’

The Bayraktar TB2 is a Turkish-manufactured armed drone used to great effect by Ukrainian forces to destroy Russian tanks and vehicles. Bayraktar, says Mykhailiuk, has become a common name for boys born in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

The American-made Javelin shoulder-launched anti-tank missile has been dubbed by many of those fighting the Russians ‘Saint Javelin, protector of Ukraine’. Since the Russian invasion, many girls have been christened Javelina.

She says Russia has failed in its threats to carry out a major military offensive to capture Ukraine. Its troops targeted the small city of Bakhmut in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk but had not been able to take it. ‘There’s a myth,’ says Mykhailiuk, ‘that Russia has the world’s second most powerful army. But we’ve cracked this myth.’

At the same time, Iranian drones provided to Russia have done a lot of damage, and it’s of concern that some Chinese spare parts have been found in Russian weapons, she says.

The cost on Ukraine has been high. In one terrible week in January, Mykhailiuk lost seven of her friends to the conflict. She says some of Ukraine’s bravest soldiers ‘are already in heaven’, but the nation will fight until the Russians are driven out of all of the country including Crimea. There will be no peace in Ukraine as long as Russia holds the strategically positioned peninsula.

If Ukraine surrenders, then Russia will invade Poland and the Baltic countries, Mykhailiuk says. ‘We don’t have any choice: we have to win.’

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address in Volgograd on 2 February, in which he sought to draw moral parallels between the heroic Soviet defence of Stalingrad in World War II and the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, represents a new low for Kremlin propaganda.

First, by asserting that the victory of Stalingrad was a Russian victory, Putin is effectively repudiating the legacy and contributions of the large proportion of the approximately 750,000 Soviet troops that died in the defence of Stalingrad who were not ethnic Russian. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad involved military units drawn from a large number of Soviet national republics and was arguably as much a Ukrainian victory as it was a Russian one.

The Soviet commander of the Stalingrad Front, General Andrey Yeryomenko, was a Ukrainian with an illustrious military career, and ethnic Ukrainians made up a significant proportion of Soviet armies deployed to Stalingrad and other areas of the Eastern Front. While reliable detailed breakdowns by nationality of individual Soviet armies are difficult to locate, figures from the archives of the Soviet Ministry of Defence suggest that, proportionally, the contributions of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Soviet war effort were actually greater than the Russian republic’s.

For example, the Soviet census of 1939 indicated that Ukrainians made up 16.6% of the population of the Soviet Union. Soviet defence figures for 1944 indicate that Ukrainians made up approximately 22% of Soviet armed forces on two unidentified fronts. In comparison, the Soviet Union’s Russian population in 1939 was approximately 58.4% of the overall population, and ethnic Russians comprised approximated 58.3% of Soviet military forces on the same two fronts in 1944. While these figures represent only part of all Soviet military deployments, they suggest that Ukrainians were actually overrepresented in the Soviet armies that defeated Nazi German forces.

These figures are even more noteworthy when it is considered that for much of the war Ukraine was under the occupation of German forces, limiting the options for conscription. Ukraine also likely suffered a disproportionate number of casualties, both military and civilian, during the war. While actual figures of Soviet casualties across the war remain highly contentious, eminent historian Timothy Snyder has claimed that, in absolute terms, more inhabitants of Ukraine died during World War II than inhabitants of Russia. And others, such as Russian historian Vadim Erlikman, have clearly demonstrated that, proportionally, Ukraine experienced much higher casualties during the war than Russia.

Second, Putin’s continued propagation of the idea that Soviet forces saved Europe from Nazism during World War II also obscures the fact that for the war’s first two years, the Soviet Union was effectively an ally of Nazi Germany. Current Russian historiography and mythmaking appears hellbent of excising the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact from Russia’s collective memory. But the reality was that Soviet support for Nazi aggression in the period immediately prior to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union went much further than just a non-aggression pact. As outlined by historian Edward Ericson in his book Feeding the German eagle: Soviet economic aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941, the Soviet Union under Stalin maintained a robust trade relationship with Germany that sustained the Germans’ capacity to conduct offensives in western Europe right up to the date of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Third, while comparisons of Putin’s Russia with Nazi Germany are fraught and not necessarily defensible, the ideology and increasingly genocidal intent of Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine arguably make the current Russian leadership in the Kremlin a modern-day successor to Germany’s Nazi party. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given rise to a new term, ‘ruscism’, that signifies Russian ideology as a particular form of fascism. Furthermore, the letter Z, which has emerged as a symbol of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine and a lightning rod for Russian nationalist support for the war, has been associated with the Nazi swastika as a new symbol representing totalitarianism and modern-day fascism.

Putin’s speeches since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have contributed to the perpetuation of this view, especially as they have been littered with genocidal references foreshadowing the elimination of not only Ukrainian sovereignty but also the Ukrainian people. And, as amply demonstrated by Julia Davis’s Russian Media Monitor, Russian television has been inculcating the broader Russian population with Putin’s genocidal vision for Ukraine, fostering Russian support for the horrors that the Russian military is inflicting on Ukraine.

A concrete manifestation of Russia’s fascist and genocidal ambitions in Ukraine is the widespread deportation or forceable displacement of Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia, where they are subjected to the ‘de-Ukrainisation’ of their identity. Any territory annexed by Moscow either through military successes or as a result of a settlement to end the war will likely also be subjected to a deliberate campaign of genocide focused on the eradication of Ukrainian identity.

Putin’s use of Stalingrad as a symbol of Russian greatness and the inevitability of Russian victory in Ukraine fits with his tendency to use mythology and fabricated history to sustain his vision for the future of Russia.

But, ultimately, his choice of Stalingrad is both curious and flawed. Stalingrad represented a triumph of all the nationalities of the Soviet Union, not just of Russians. It also stood as a victory over an overwhelmingly militarily dominant power that had no compunction in leveling cities and exterminating entire populations in pursuit of its imperialist objectives.

In this regard, there are some parallels between the battle of Stalingrad and the current war in Ukraine. But in this case, Russia is playing the role of Nazi Germany, and the Ukrainian people will hopefully emerge victorious from the horrors of the Russian war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a global crisis. Putin could not let Ukraine chart its own political path or accept an independent Ukrainian identity. The invasion thus is not only about one country attacking another. It is about undermining the post–World War II liberal global order in favour of one in which great powers hold imperial spheres of influence. This war, the largest in Europe since World War II, has also resulted in a worldwide economic slowdown that is unlikely to abate. The war is far from over.

Yes, Ukrainian forces have had major successes in recent months, including the counteroffensive around Kharkiv and Russia’s forced withdrawal from the city of Kherson. Russia’s military overall has performed worse in the war than Western military analysts had anticipated. Some analysts also underestimated Ukrainians and their will to fight. But Ukraine has also suffered heavy losses. According to the latest US estimates, approximately 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured since the start of Russia’s invasion.

More to the point, Ukraine remains reliant on Western military and economic aid, the bulk of which comes from the United States. Ukraine cannot sustain itself without this aid, and Putin knows that. He remains committed to a war-of-attrition strategy and the long game of breaking Western unity on Ukraine, and to years of fighting with his neighbour. Last month, Putin signed a decree to establish a centralised electronic database of information related to Russian citizens’ military registration that is set to open on 1 April 2024. This example shows that he is thinking in years, not months. Conversely, while there’s evidence that Ukraine’s Western allies are reaching a point of fatigue regarding their own military stocks and what they are willing to transfer, they have not energised their industrial bases to offset this reality. Putin is also aware of this fact.

Recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans continue to support aid to Ukraine. But internal congressional disagreements, both from a minority of Republicans who seek to reduce aid to Ukraine and from Democrats who are calling for diplomatic engagement with Russia, suggest that next year’s approval process for US government aid to Ukraine will be difficult. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s energy sector is reportedly close to collapse as a result of Russia’s latest bombing campaign using Iranian-made drones and Russian missiles, and the spectre of what a cold winter might bring has already arrived.

Only Russia’s decisive loss on the battlefield will bring this conflict to a complete end. All wars are ultimately settled through diplomacy, but unless Russia undergoes a process of fundamental internal reckoning with itself, Russia’s elites will not let go of their imperial impetus to control Ukraine that originates in the very founding of the Russian state around 500 years ago with the military campaigns of Ivan III, the autocratic ruler of the Grand Dutchy of Muscovy. Indeed, the current war against Ukraine is not simply Putin’s war, even as he bears the bulk of responsibility for waging it.

Historically, countries that faced a reckoning with themselves only did so after a complete military defeat, such as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. If a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine occurs before the Russian military is defeated, that will only doom Ukraine to face another Russian attack years later, after the Russian military has had time to regain its strength.

Russia has certainly lost wars in the past, such as the Crimean War of 1853–1856 and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05, and those losses prompted internal reforms. But the losses were not substantial enough to prompt a fundamental re-evaluation of Russian decision-makers’ core beliefs. Instead, the Russian state built a myth of victory on the ashes of these defeats, like a dark phoenix rising out of the ashes.

The scale of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is far greater than anything the Russian state faced in Crimea or with Japan—wars that did not hold global implications. True, Russia unlike Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan has nuclear weapons—and never fails to remind the world about them—but the Ukrainians for their part remain committed to fighting, even as they would be the primary target of a nuclear strike. It would of course be irresponsible to dismiss Russia’s nuclear threats, but the chances that Putin will use them at the time of this writing remain low, and giving in to blackmail carries its own repercussions.

Russia is not impossible to defeat, and nor are the Russian people incapable of change. But free liberal nations need to remain committed to the long game of helping Ukraine win. To be sure, the West is not abandoning Ukraine. Yet it hasn’t sent a clear message that it aims to permanently change Putin’s strategic calculus. And while the war has seemingly prompted leaders of liberal nations to re-evaluate their core assumptions about Russia, it’s unclear if they internalised the costs of years of Russia’s unresolved conflict with Ukraine and the full implications of the post–World War II global order. This means that all liberal nations have to look beyond their national interests to the bigger picture. Indeed, the same self-deterrence of liberal nations that has empowered Putin in the past two decades will empower China’s Xi Jinping.

Anyone unconscious of the impact of high-tech war on children should look at an exhibition of children’s art running now at the Australian National University.

They are drawings spanning seven decades, from survivors of Nazi horrors in World War II Poland, and children in Ukraine still being subjected to Russian artillery fire and missile attacks.

The exhibition, ‘Mom, I don’t want war!’ 1939–45 Poland/2022 Ukraine, is a Polish–Ukrainian archival project brought to Canberra by the Polish and Ukrainian embassies. It has been shown across Poland and in many other countries around the world. The Polish drawings were held in Warsaw’s Central Archives of Modern Records.

The drawings carry chilling messages, and they are all breathtakingly sad.

Some appear simple at first glance, until you register that the Nazi soldiers who’ve invaded Poland are about to shoot an unarmed man tied to a large barrel.

By A. Kubale, 7th Grade, Sroda, Poland.

Others have an awful sophistication. Outlined in a violent red, a child clasps a hand over a bloodied chest wound. There’s a teddy bear in a pool of blood on the floor nearby.

By Marho, aged 14 years, Kyiv, Ukraine.

Another, in stark black and white, shows a house with a fence and a girl huddled in a candlelit basement deep underground as a formation of helicopters thumps overhead and tanks blast across open ground nearby. There’s a coloured thought bubble as she remembers tossing a ball with a friend under blue skies and sunshine.

By Sofiia, aged 15 years, Korosten, Ukraine.

From Polish children of long ago are drawings of women and children fleeing ahead of tanks, of soldiers shooting men and women in a town square, and of people being rounded up by armed men.

From Ukraine, there are fresher images from children of their families with mum, dad and the dog while a tank and an aircraft set the buildings around them ablaze, and of vivid explosions and apartment buildings with giant chunks bitten out of them by artillery shells and missiles.

By Mariia, aged 9 years, Kharkiv, Ukraine.

There’s a blank section in the exhibit for atrocities carried out by Russian occupiers in Poland. There are no such drawings because the Russians were in charge when the children were invited to sketch their impressions in 1946, a year after the war ended. Russian atrocities then were not included.

Welcoming guests, Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams, deputy director of the ANU’s Centre for European Studies, commented: ‘Normally when we look at children’s drawings, we smile a lot. Unfortunately, we will not be smiling much tonight.’

The inclusion of drawings from Polish children just after the end of World War II with those of children now suffering through Russia’s bombardment in Ukraine was particularly heart rending, she said. The images were strikingly, shockingly similar.

‘What seemed historical is still happening in the present day,’ Kwapisz Williams said. Seven million children were living the reality of a brutal war. ‘We have still not learned the reality that war is the worst thing.’

Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, described how, at one point, he and his family were in Romania. He explained to his young son that they were safe there because Romania was a NATO member country, and the Russians would not attack.

When Myroshnychenko brought his family to Canberra, the boy asked him if Australia, too, was a NATO country, or ‘will Russia attack us here?’