The road to prosecuting Russia for war crimes in Ukraine

May 12, 2023

Welcome back to Global Insider’s Friday feature: The Conversation. Each week a POLITICO journalist shares an interview with a global thinker, politician, power player or personality. This week, national security reporter Erin Banco talks to U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter about the next phase of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Follow Erin on Twitter | Send ideas and insights to ebanco@politico.com

The Conversation

Michael R. Carpenter speaks to the media.

Ambassador Michael R. Carpenter speaks to the media during a high-level meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Lodz, Poland on Dec. 2, 2022. | Michal Dyjuk/AP Photo

When Michael Carpenter first took up his post in Vienna as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security Cooperation for Europe in November 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin was already preparing to send troops into Ukraine in an attempt to seize land in the eastern part of the country and eventually march on Kyiv.

Since then, Moscow and Kyiv have both lost tens of thousands of soldiers. Millions of people have been displaced. And the fighting shows no sign of stopping. Russia and Ukraine are locked in a drawn-out, bloody battle of inches in cities such as Bakhmut where both sides have suffered significant casualties in recent weeks.

Ukraine is gearing up for a counteroffensive, and U.S. officials are expecting the fighting to drag on well into next year.

More bloodshed is also likely to worsen an already dire humanitarian disaster and could lead to new allegations of war crimes by Russia — crimes Carpenter and his team, in coordination with the United Nations, Ukraine and advocacy groups, have worked to document for more than a year.

As the top U.S. representative at the OSCE, an international organization based in Vienna that holds observer status at the United Nations, Carpenter works on a range of security issues, including resolving diplomatic and military conflicts, tracking human rights abuses and monitoring elections.

I spoke with Carpenter, who just returned from Ukraine where he traveled with colleagues from the Helsinki Commission and a group of lawmakers, about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plans for the counteroffensive, Russia’s alleged war crimes and whether Putin and his allies in Moscow will ever be prosecuted.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Kyiv has experienced heavy bombardment in recent days. What was the feeling of the city when you visited?

There was an air raid alert that went off literally as we were rolling into the presidential administration. The interesting thing about Kyiv is that the city is more or less going about its business. Life continues to flourish. They're sipping their coffees. They're going about their business. It's kind of sad, but they've become so accustomed to living under the threat of possible loss of life.

You arrived in Kyiv as Ukraine is gearing up for its counteroffensive. What was the state of mind of President Zelenskyy?

The best way to describe how he looked, how he sounded and how he presented himself was that of steely determination. He was absolutely focused on getting the assistance that this country needs to be able to prosecute the counteroffensive to be able to hold Bakhmut and to support his population.

Did he seem confident that Ukraine would be able to take back land previously lost to the Russians in the counteroffensive?

I think the Ukrainian side is confident but not overconfident. They understand the Russian invaders are numerous. The manpower that they have in the areas of Ukraine that they control is significant and they've built up their defenses over these last six months.

So, [the Ukrainians] understand that this is not going to be easy and that there's going to be significant loss of life on the Ukrainian side, which is why they are so determined to get as much military equipment as they can before they commence this offensive.

The U.S. and its allies in Europe have given billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Does President Zelenskyy think he has what he needs to be successful in the counteroffensive?

I think they feel like they could be getting more. Our task collectively in the international community is to go back to every single ally and every single partner to look back at their inventories and see what they can get. [The Ukrainians] may well be capable enough to use what they have now. But they could certainly use more. They will always need more capabilities.

For more than a year there have been allegations that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine. What are some of the crimes you’ve helped track?

There's a lot of movement to document what's happening and to expose it so that was the impetus behind OSCE Moscow Mechanism report on abducted and deported children. The headline out of that report was that what happened was conclusively a violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime.

I think the filtration process is reminiscent of what we saw in the 1940s during World War II. It is a process that is absolutely brutal and involves torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearances and mistreatment of all different types. I think there's going to be more evidence of that that comes to light.

The war crimes that were committed in Olenivka and Mariupol — a lot of the evidence was erased with these mobile crematoria that the Russians brought in to dispose of the bodies that they had of the people they killed to try to get rid of the evidence. It's hard for someone like me who is not a lawyer to pronounce on this. But I think eventually we're going to have experts from the Convention on Genocide take a look at whether all of these aspects — displacement of children, attempts to erase Ukrainian identity — whether this amounts to genocide. I’m not a lawyer. But I think that is a determination that is likely to be made in the near future.

Is anything being done to hold Russia accountable now?

The international community is now working, I would say not urgently enough, to help get some of these kids back. Every kid that can be returned, that's one less life that is potentially changed forever, albeit still traumatized by the experience.

And we're working with Ukrainians and some of our allies and partners to try to establish this internationalized [tribunal].There's still some back and forth on what exactly the legal basis is and what's the most effective way to prosecute people. I have no doubt that at the end of the day, we're going to arrive at a solution that works.

Another option you’ve mentioned would be the International Criminal Court. Couldn’t it take years for the ICC to act?

No, I actually think that they'll move quite quickly. The ICC has already indicted Vladimir Putin and his henchman Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. Both Putin and Lvova-Belovahave essentially admitted to what they're doing in public on Russian TV to millions of people. The big question is will will these individuals ever be apprehended and brought into a courtroom?

Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Andrew Howard.

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