Human rights activists working with Ukraine’s attorney general are preparing a war crimes case for the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing Russia of deliberately causing famine during the 19-month conflict, The Guardian reports, citing News.ro.

The aim is to document cases of Russian invaders using starvation as a weapon of war, providing evidence for the ICC to launch a first-ever prosecution that could once again indict Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yusuf Khan, a senior associate at the law firm Global Rights Compliance (GRC), explained that “the weaponization of food occurred in three stages,” starting with the initial invasion, when Ukrainian cities were besieged and food supplies were cut off.

Among the documented incidents is the death of 20 civilians in Chernihiv on the morning of March 16, 2022, when Russian cluster bombs exploded in front of 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 and starving civilians to escape.

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

Such attacks, Khan argued, were not “crimes of consequence, but crimes of intent” because “when you destroy objects that civilians need, such as energy infrastructure, in the dead of winter, your actions are predictable.” Cities such as Mykolaiv in the south of the country have been without drinking water since the start of the conflict after Russian troops seized the pumping station that supplied it. The rest of the residents were forced to rely on water brought in by cars every day to provide them with something to drink and wash.

The third element is Russia’s attempts to prevent or limit the export of Ukrainian food products. “Then we saw Russia attack grain facilities on the Danube and start imposing force positions in the Black Sea,” Khan said, referring to reports by Ukrainian officials that 270,000 were destroyed between late July and early August. tons of food. .

Putin risks bringing a new accusation to the ISS

New accusations that Russia tried to starve Ukrainians are even more sensitive because they are also illuminated by the history of the two countries: in 1932-1933, millions of people starved to death during the Holodomor, a forced famine. by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. But the accusations gained new emphasis after the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution in 2018 that condemned the use of hunger as a weapon of war, and after the revision of the Rome Statute governing the ICC in 2019 to expand the type of complaints that can be brought before the court.

The GRC is working with Ukrainian prosecutors until the end of next year to complete the case. The intention is to file a complaint under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, which allows third parties to send information about alleged war crimes to the ICC prosecutor. A prosecutor based in The Hague will be the one to decide whether to proceed. Part of the lawyers’ efforts will be to identify the perpetrators, including whether to seek the indictment of Putin, as happened in March when the ICC issued an arrest warrant on behalf of the president for overseeing the “illegal deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia from territories occupied during the war.

A similar argument can be made for starvation killings, Khan said. “Putin can be held accountable for actions taken directly, jointly with others, and/or through others,” he argued, as well as for failing to exercise adequate control over Russian military personnel or others accused of specific criminal acts.

The lawyers work with open-source intelligence experts to detail examples of war crimes and participate in damage analyses, gather relevant data such as the number of humanitarian aid convoys turned away, and examine statements by Putin and other leaders, down to the local level when they are trying to build their portfolio.

Denial of access to food to civilians is a frequent occurrence during conflicts. Recent examples include Syria, where Bashar al-Assad’s government has been accused of using a “kneel or starve” strategy to force opposition regions into submission during the country’s civil war, and Tigray, Ethiopia, where an estimated 2 million people have been affected by food shortages as of 2020 as a result of the government’s blockade of the rebel province.

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