Has Russia committed these crimes in Ukraine?

The United States government believes so. In his statement Saturday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States undertook a “careful analysis of the law and available facts” to determine that Russian officials and military forces had committed crimes against humanity. He pointed to “execution-style killings of Ukrainian men, women, and children; torture of civilians in detention through beatings, electrocution, and mock executions; rape” and the deportation of “hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, including children who have been forcibly separated from their families.” He added: “These acts are not random or spontaneous; they are part of the Kremlin’s widespread and systematic attack against Ukraine’s civilian population.” The designation is not one the United States makes lightly, the statement said, and it reflects the “staggering extent of human suffering” that Russia has inflicted on Ukrainians. Atrocities allegedly carried out by Russian forces against civilians in Ukraine have been widely documented throughout the war, with images of toddlers’ lifeless bodies after Russian missile attacks and the harrowing accounts of rape survivors stirring anguish and outrage across the world. In her speech at the Munich Security Conference, Harris referred specifically to an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol in March and to atrocities in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian occupying forces left hundreds of bodies — some mutilated or sexually abused — in their wake. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European lawmakers have previously accused Russia of crimes against humanity. And the International Criminal Court opened an investigation in March into alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed in Ukraine from late 2013 onward.

Could the U.S. accusation lead to prosecutions?

At this point, not directly. The U.S. government lacks the legal authority to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity in domestic courts — a gap in U.S. law that Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. ambassador for global criminal justice, has called on Congress to address. But Saturday’s announcement shows the commitment of the Biden administration to pursue justice for violations of international law in Ukraine, even though the United States has been historically hesitant to cooperate with international justice mechanisms for fear of being held to account for its own conduct in foreign wars. “Particularly as we hit the anniversary of this invasion, it helps send the signal out to the world — but most importantly, to the victims — that the U.S. government hasn’t forgotten about what has happened, that it’s still paying attention,” said Rebecca Hamilton, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. The ICC is an obvious forum for any eventual prosecutions of crimes against humanity, Bosco said. The U.S. assertion raises questions about whether the United States might be providing the court with intelligence about the communications of Russian officials or commanders, he added. One major drawback of the ICC: The court cannot put people on trial in absentia — so top Russian figures can avoid prosecution if they stay in Russia or other sympathetic countries. Ukrainian courts could prosecute crimes against humanity, and they have put Russians on trial in absentia . But under international law, they lack the authority to try Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials, Hamilton said. Still, evidence gathered by Ukrainian and international investigators today — potentially with the help of the United States — could prove useful down the line, she added. Slobodan Milosevic , a former president of Yugoslavia, was put on trial for crimes against humanity by an international tribunal years after the atrocities, including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, were carried out. He died in his cell in The Hague in 2006 before the trial could be concluded. “While it feels impossible right now that you would have some of the most senior leadership on trial, I think we need to take a longer timeline as we think about that,” Hamilton said. In the meantime, Biden pledged Tuesday to maintain robust sanctions against Russia, “to hold accountable those who are responsible for this war” and to “seek justice for the war crimes and crimes against humanity continuing to be committed by the Russians.”

World

What are crimes against humanity?

The United States has accused Russia of committing them in Ukraine.

By Claire Parker

Updated February 21, 2023 at 12:57 p.m. EST|Published February 18, 2023 at 1:36 p.m. EST

Marianna Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. Vice President Harris cited this as an example when she accused Russia on Saturday of committing crimes against humanity in its war in Ukraine. (Mstyslav Chernov/AP)

6 min

President Biden on Tuesday accused Russia of committing “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine, a legal designation that implicates high-level decision-makers in widespread atrocities as Moscow’s war in Ukraine nears the one-year mark.

“They’ve committed depravity, crimes against humanity without shame or compunction,” he said in a speech in Warsaw. He accused Russia of “targeting civilians with death,” using rape as “a weapon of war,” stealing Ukrainian children and targeting civilian sites including schools and maternity wards.

Biden’s remarks followed a formal determination by the State Department and an announcement by Vice President Harris over the weekend that “members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials have committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.”

Here is what you should know about the term and what the U.S. accusation could mean.

Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict

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