As Kharkiv suffers deadly strikes, Ukraine says Russia is committing war crimes by targeting civilians. However, the International Criminal Court announced on February 28 the opening of an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes once morest humanity committed in Ukraine.
After coming up once morest Ukrainian resistance, the Russian army intensified its attacks by intensively bombarding the city of Kharkiv, where the central square was struck on Tuesday March 1. In Kiev, where the TV tower was hit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of acts of “terrorism”, reports The Guardian. “This strike once morest Kharkiv is a war crime”, he said in a video message posted on Facebook.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also denounced the bombings on Tuesday. “absolutely disgusting” in the country’s second city.
Ukraine had already accused Russia of war crimes on Monday, reported The Daily Telegraph, “following the indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities that may have killed dozens of civilians, including three children ‘cremated alive’”.
Moscow is also accused of having used a thermobaric missile – or “vacuum bomb”, a devastating weapon – and of having used cluster bombs in densely populated urban areas, adds the British newspaper.
An investigation “as quickly as possible”
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Karim Khan, rightly announced on February 28 that he would open an investigation “as fast as possible” on possible war crimes and crimes once morest humanity committed in Ukraine since 2014.
Former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in 2020 that she had enough evidence from the conflict in Donbass and Crimea to launch an investigation, but the judges of the Court did not give their approval. , remember The Guardian. Karim Khan says in his press release:
I have concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes once morest humanity have been committed in Ukraine, with respect to the events already examined […]. In view of the expansion of the conflict in recent days, I intend to also include in this investigation any new alleged crime […] committed by any side of the conflict, anywhere in Ukraine.”
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Gabriel Hassan
