OLEKSANDRA ROMANTSOVA: Peace in Ukraine hinges on Putin’s arrest

Oleh Hordiychuk was standing in the backyard of his home in Hostomel, Ukraine, making a phone call to a friend, when Russian soldiers forced their way in and without warning shot him in both legs. He was blindfolded, with his wife and grown-up son, and spirited away to Belarus and on to Russia. 

In March last year several hundred people, including women and children, were sheltering in a theatre in Mariupol when a Russian air strike hit the building, killing dozens and wounding many more. No accident of war, this was the deliberate targeting of civilians in an attempt to terrorise and subdue the Ukrainian people. 

These are just two of thousands of such stories that have unfolded in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. Over the past 14 months we have lived through a waking nightmare of violence. Every day more evidence emerges. More than 78,000 potential war crimes have so far been recorded by Ukraine’s prosecutor-general. These are not the actions of a few ill-disciplined soldiers, but rather a systematic policy of murder, violence and human rights abuses directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

I spend much of my time travelling, trying to gather support from the international community to protect Ukrainians from these terrible crimes. I meet people from all walks of life — politicians, lawyers, civil society leaders, campaigners and soldiers. And wherever I go someone will inevitably say to me, “You just need to talk to Russia. Peace will only come through dialogue. Why can’t you talk?” 

I understand this point of view. The war is hurting everyone. The economic pain, the food insecurity, the threat of nuclear disaster. The world desperately needs peace. Well, no-one wants peace more than Ukrainians. Every day our people are dying. But to those who say why can’t you just talk to Russia, I say this: imagine yourself in your home. Suddenly, a violent intruder breaks down your front door and forces his way inside. He pulls out a gun and shoots and kills your father. Then he grabs your sister and brutally rapes her. He douses the living room in petrol, lights a match and sets fire to the furniture. “The rest of your family are next,” he snarls.

What would you do? Sit down with him and chat? No, of course not. First, you’d need this madman to get out of your house.  You’d want him to pay for the damage he’s caused.  Finally, you’d want him brought to justice and held accountable for the crimes he has committed. In the simplest terms, this is what we want in Ukraine. Russia must first stop killing, raping and torturing our people, and withdraw its troops from our territory. Then it must pay reparations so we can rebuild our country. And we want those who have committed war crimes to be held accountable. Without justice there can be no lasting peace. 

The principal global mechanism to try war crimes is the International Criminal Court (ICC), and we support their efforts. We welcomed its decision last month to issue arrest warrants for Putin and his associate Maria Lvova-Belova, the so-called commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the president of the Russian Federation. They are directly responsible for kidnapping Ukrainian children, ripping them away from their families and taking them to Russia, with little prospect of ever seeing their parents again. 

But for now it seems far-fetched that these two criminals will see the inside of a cell in The Hague. For that to happen we need all those countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC) to agree to enforce the legally binding arrest warrants. Putin is due to visit SA in August for the Brics summit, and in terms of its international obligations the SA government is duty-bound to arrest him and hand him over to the ICC. 

SA international relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor said recently, “There are some who don’t wish us to have relations with an old historical friend. We have made it clear that Russia is a friend, and we have had co-operative partnerships for many years.” We in Ukraine do not insist that SA takes sides in the war, but we do hope that it complies with the law and allows justice to be done. 

Shadowy mercenaries

But the ICC alone cannot achieve justice, for it has no power to try Putin for his ultimate crime — that of aggression, without which none of the other war crimes would have been committed. There is now no international mechanism to hold a country’s leaders responsible for the illegal invasion of another sovereign state. That is why we are calling for the establishment of a special ad hoc tribunal with the power to do this, and we need the support of countries worldwide to make this possible — including SA. 

Russia’s attack on Ukraine may be the most egregious of Putin’s criminal foreign adventures, but it is far from the first. From  Georgia to Syria, Libya to the Central African Republic, whether it is Russian soldiers or shadowy mercenaries dealing out the violence the effect is the same — the suffering and death of innocent people. Every time these crimes have gone unpunished, paving the way for Putin to mete out more violence in yet another country. 

This must end now. The war in Ukraine has underlined how one dictator’s lust for power can cause an avalanche of economic, societal and security unrest globally. The principles of the rules-based international order, agreed by 193 countries and enshrined in the UN Charter, are lying in pieces. Territorial integrity, human lives and human rights mean nothing to Russia. If he is not stopped in Ukraine Putin will only be emboldened and, as he has shown so many times before, he will wage war again. 

I call on SA to help us in Ukraine to put a stop to this, to let justice be done and make the world a safer place for all. 

• Romantsova is executive director of the Centre for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian NGO that has been documenting crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine since 2014 and was awarded the 2022 Nobel peace prize. The author is part of a delegation of Ukrainian civil society leaders who are in SA seeking support to end the war.