During the first Ukraine Law Day, participants discussed how Russia can be made to pay for its war. But fears were also voiced that justice could be traded away as part of any peace deal
Could justice be traded off in a Trumpian deal to end the war in Ukraine? The grim possibility was raised early at the inaugural Ukraine Law Day, a gathering of experts held on 28 April organised by the Bar Council to discuss the legal aspects of Ukraine’s reconstruction – and how Putin’s Russia can be made to pay for the destruction it has wrought.
‘In the past couple of months, it has looked at times that justice might not be done; it looked like civil justice would be part of the trade for finishing this war,’ former attorney general Victoria Prentis KC said in a keynote speech. ‘That is very troubling.’ But the barrister and former MP, who is currently helping to train Ukrainian judges to prosecute, defend and try war crimes cases, was the first of a series of distinguished speakers to commit to securing justice through a multiplicity of channels.
The challenge is formidable. Since Russia’s invasion, 160,000 war crimes have been documented, Prentis said. Some 14,400 civilians have been killed and 850 suspects identified. At least 20,000 cases of forced displacement of children have been documented. ‘We think there may be more,’ Prentis added. Other documented crimes include environmental offences – including ecocide – cyber-attacks and widespread sexual violence. ‘There is evidence of systematic sexual abuse against prisoners of war,’ she said.
While ‘99.9% of war crimes cases will rightly be prosecuted in Ukraine by Ukrainian prosecutors in Ukrainian courts’, international efforts will be vital – particularly over the crime of aggression, Prentis said. At the moment, no mechanism exists for prosecuting the ‘troika’ of individuals responsible for the war: ‘We need a special commission on the crime of aggression to close this gap.’
When it comes to civil claims over war damages, the event heard of several efforts to make Russia – eventually – pay. One is the Council of Europe’s Register of Damage Caused by the Aggression of the Russian Federation Against Ukraine (RD4U). The register is paving the way for claims ‘on a mass scale for millions and millions of people and thousands of entities’, lawyer Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, director of RD4U, said.
‘In the past couple of months, it has looked at times that justice might not be done; it looked like civil justice would be part of the trade for finishing this war. That is very troubling’
Victoria Prentis KC, former attorney general
In a novel approach to digital claims management, the register allows Ukrainians to file claims via the government’s digital administration portal, through which more than 70 more conventional government services are handled online. Nine categories of claim are currently open, including ‘loss of life’, ‘torture’ and ‘sexual violence’, along with the more familiar ‘personal injury’. More than 27,000 claims have so far been submitted, Kliuchkovskyi said. The register is also working on a channel for businesses and other legal entities, for example to claim for loss of assets in occupied territories.
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