Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed many deliberate attacks against civilian targets, massacres of civilians, torture and rape of women and children, torture and mutilitation of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas.
On 2 March 2023, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a full investigation into past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed in Ukraine by any person from 21 November 2013 onwards, set up an online method for people with evidence to initiate contact with investigators, and sent a team of investigators, lawyers, and other professionals to Ukraine to begin collecting evidence. Two other independent international agencies are also investigating violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the area: the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 March 2022, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, deployed by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The latter started monitoring human rights violations by all parties in 2014 and employs nearly 60 UN human rights monitors. On 7 April 2022, the United Nations suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. By late October, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's office had documented 39,347 alleged Russian war crimes, identified more than 600 suspects, and initiated proceedings against approximately 80 of them.
On 17 March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over allegations of involvement in the war crime of child abductions during the invasion of Ukraine.
Documenting war crimes
Under numerous treaties the International Criminal Court investigates war crimes and genocide. In 1949, the Geneva Conventions defined war crimes. In the late 20th century the Rome Statute added additional war crimes applicable to civil war.
ICC prosecutors have issued warrants for Vladimir Putin and a Russian official responsible for adoptions in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children into Russia. Investigators have submitted evidence of many breaches of the Geneva Convention in Russia's war in Ukraine.
Moscow has denied any involvement in war crimes, a response Vittorio Bufacchi of Cork's University College says "has bordered on the farcical," and its contention that the images coming out of Bucha were fabricated "a disingenuous response born by delusional hubris, post-truth on overdrive, (that) does not merit to be taken seriously." Even the usually fractured United States Senate came together to call Putin a war criminal. One of several efforts to document Russian war crimes concerns its repeated bombardment of markets and bread lines, destruction of basic infrastructure and attacks on exports and supply convoys, in a country where deliberate starvation of Ukrainians by Soviets the Holodomor still looms large in public memory. Forcible deportation of populations, such as took place in Mariuopol, is another area of focus, since "(f)orced deportations and transfers are defined both as war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol II and Article 8 of the Rome Statute—and as crimes against humanity—under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. As both war crimes and crimes against humanity, they have several mechanisms for individual accountability, the International Criminal Court and also, at the individual state level, under universal jurisdiction and Magnitsky sanctions legislation.
Abduction and deportation
The International Criminal Court recognizes abduction and deportation as a war crime and the forced resettlement of children as a form of genocide.
Abduction of Ukrainian children
According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian forces have also kidnapped more than 121,000 Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia's eastern provinces. The parents of some of these children were killed by the Russian military. The Russian state Duma has drafted a law which would formalize the "adoption" of these children. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that there was a "blatant threat of illegal adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian citizens without observing all the necessary procedures determined by the legislation of Ukraine.” and called on United Nations bodies to intervene to have the children returned to Ukraine.