By Carter Cormier
A war crime occurs when a country violates an established international rule of war. These rules include the treaties termed the Geneva Conventions. Certain weapons such as biological warfare and anti-personnel landmines are banned in these treaties. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has found sufficient evidence that Vladimir Putin has violated one of these treaties. Thousands of Ukrainian children have reportedly been illegally transferred to Russia. The commission’s report notes that Russia’s policies force children to take on Russian citizenship and be placed into foster families to “create a framework in which some of the children may end up remaining permanently.” The transfer of children was supposed to be temporary, but parents and children have met obstacles in establishing contact. The Ukrainian government believes approximately 16,221 children have been forcibly deported and taken away from their parents, yet some sources estimate that over 300,000 children have been unlawfully taken to Russia.
This is only the most recently reported war crime Russia has committed. According to a report by the United Nations, further war crimes have included raping, killings, and torture since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February of 2022. Moscow could be held responsible for “crimes against humanity” due to a series of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that began in October of the previous year. Evidence of mass burial sites has been discovered in several areas of Ukraine previously occupied by Russian troops, with some containing bodies of civilians showing signs of torture. In April 2022, over 400 civilian bodies were found in Bucha, a town near Kyiv, and in September 2022, mass graves in Izium, in the Kharkiv region, revealed 450 bodies, mostly civilians. President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that more than 400 war crimes were committed by Russian troops during the time they occupied the Kherson region from March to November 2022. Additionally, Russian forces carried out an airstrike in March 2022 on a theater in Mariupol that was being used as a refuge for children, and a hospital in the same city was also targeted in March of the previous year.