Russia’s alleged PoW execution may encourage others to do the same, says lawyer
Russia’s alleged execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war and continuing violations of international law could encourage other leaders to commit war crimes in a future conflict, a human rights lawyer has said.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties, told i that while she is yet to investigate allegations of six soldiers being executed upon surrender to Russian forces when they captured the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka last week, it “wouldn’t surprise me” if Russia had committed another war crime.
Russia has previously denied claims it has killed prisoners of wars (PoW), who are protected under the Geneva Convention.
The soldiers, some of whom were wounded, were allegedly killed when left behind at the Zenith base in the south of Avdiivka as Russian troops encircled the city, located in the separatist Donetsk region. This was despite a promise by Russia to evacuate them, Ukrainska Pravda reports.
“The enemy can’t kill them, it’s a basic rule,” Ms Matviichuk said, as Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, on Tuesday called for the United Nations and International Committee for the Red Cross to record the incident as a war crime and “clarify all the circumstances”.
The Centre for Civil Liberties, which won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, has been documenting Russian war crimes for a decade. In the past two years alone, the centre has collected 64,000 episodes of war crimes, Ms Matviichuk said.
She said there have been “numerous cases when Russian troops severely violate the third Geneva Convention and don’t provide appropriate treatment to Ukrainian prisoners of war which is guaranteed by this international treaty”.
“Russia ignores all provisions of international humanitarian law and all decisions of international organisations and this is a huge challenge because if a country with a strong military potential shows such ignorance to the rules-based order it will encourage other certain leaders in the world to do the same,” she added, ahead of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Saturday.
“The risk is that it undermines the power of law generally because it becomes visible that the UN system of peace and security, the whole architecture of international treaties and international organisations, can’t stop atrocities and can’t defend human rights.”
She said this made it visible to the world “that we live in an illusion” and that “our human rights and security guarantees depend not on international law but on whether or not we have a strong military potential in the country”.
Her comments come just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for world leaders to provide arms to Ukraine while claiming that a shortage of supplies has been giving Russia the upper hand in the conflict.
Ms Matviichuk, who has held conferences all over the world to expose Russia’s alleged war crimes and rally support for Ukraine’s cause, said dwindling international aid is to blame for the latest defeat in Avdiivka.
“We all know in Ukraine that the situation in Avdiivka happened because the international support to Ukraine was blocked,” she said.
“We can’t defend the country and our freedom without weapons and [with] our bare hands.”
