Reply To: Gruesome Evidence Points to War Crimes in Ukraine

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#2076489
Avram in MD
Participant

ujm,

“The ICC has no jurisdiction to indict or request extradition of any parties or state nationals, that committed any gruesome acts outside any jurisdiction not party to the ICC.”

Your statement is factually incomplete. The ICC nominally has jurisdiction only in respect to its signatory nations, but a nation that is not part of the court can still grant the ICC jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute potential war crimes committed within its own territory. Ukraine has done so, and the ICC has already opened an investigation. And yes they can in fact indict Russian citizens. Now, Russia and the US maintain that even if indicted the ICC has no jurisdiction over their own citizens, unless it is authorized by the UN Security Council, where of course both the US and Russia hold veto power. So it’s unlikely that any indictments from the ICC will have much effect on Russian civilians, but that’s quite different than what you are saying.

And again, all of this is an irrelevant smokescreen, because whether or not the ICC can successfully prosecute someone for a war crime does not affect the definition of a war crime.