Assuming the war eventually ends in Ukraine’s favor, with all of Ukraine being back in rightful hands, is there any aspect of international law that would prevent the government from expelling those that are pro-Russian? Given Russia’s willingness to use pro-Russian sentiment as a justification for war, I would think that doing so would be an imperative for national security.
I moved this question to its own thread as it was not breaking news at all and likely to hijack the breaking news thread.
Ethnic Cleansing, even in the interest of national security, is frowned upon.
International law doesn’t really mean anything, sadly - it all boils down to practical consequences. I could see Ukraine’s allies reducing aid to Ukraine as leverage.
Apparently, part of the UN definition of “genocide” is the forced removal of a particular group or ethnicity.
(Personally, I feel like there should be some murder involved to get the “genocide” label but, I suppose, forced marches had a high enough death rate that it seemed reasonable to include, when you look back at history.)
Yes. Fair point. Didn’t think this question all the way through before I posted.
Whether an event is officially considered a genocide and steps taken against it depends entirely on how sympathetically the victims are viewed.
There is a lot of leeway for those that aided and abetted Russian troops in anyway.
So it is partially possible I would think.
Actually, I can’t find that definition in the Genocide Convention… Maybe I was conflating it with ethnic cleansing, or there was a followup to the Convention (?). At any rate, there’s this:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention/Fourth_Geneva_Convention#Article_49
There’s also Article 7 of the Rome Statutes:
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/icc-statute-1998/article-7
Like it or not Ukraine has a minority who identify as Russian. To start expelling people after winning a war, that would be one way for the EU and NATO to rethink their relationship with Ukraine.
Think if Israel started outright expelling Palestinians (or Arab Israelis). They’d be a pariah state.
Edit: Another real-life example is how the world reacted to Myanmar’s naked treatment and expulsion of their Muslim Rohingya population; Myanmar is an isolated/rouge state and Wikipedia has it listed as a Genocide.
Russia has been deporting Ukrainians in occupied territory. Children are sent to Russian families
I’m not sure how many Ukrainians are left in Donbas. It may be a very bad strategy for Ukraine to act as occupiers and expell Russians.
The OP never mentioned genocide, or removing anyone of Russian ethnicity.
The said “pro-Russia”.
Try to come up with a practical way that this would actually play out in real life, and accept those consequences, and you have arrived at a 100% understanding of how wartime atrocities are justified.
Yes, but:
- In practice all the deported would end up having Russian ethnicity.
- Deporting people for their political opinions is still wrong, even if it’s not “Ethnic” cleansing.
There are precedents: Poland, Czechoslovakia and the USSR all expelled ethnic Germans in the immediate aftermath of WWII.
Article 7 is the most directly applicable and it specifies:
“Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds”
That said, it also specifies:
“For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”
Ukraine could, conceivably, lock up Russian soldiers and prosecute them, so long as it can make some sort of argument that they’re soldiers. But they would still be limited to POW rules.
But if Russia encouraged Russian citizens to move into the region, during the occupational period, then those people are are civilians and that runs foul of ethnic cleansing rules. (Of course, it also runs foul of illegal immigration rules. Ukraine could make an “illegal immigrant” claim and deport them, denying any retributionist intention.)
It’s an ongoing issue in the Baltic states, because of the numbers of Russians who moved to them during the Soviet occupation:
Guess what. It’s happening now.
Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute).
Putin is acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him. That’s totally fair. The law doesn’t apply to him. Russia doesn’t recognize the ICC.
There is no international law. If there were, the United States - and most other major powers - would have violated it ten thousand times. The entire global economy would be subsumed by the millions of lawyers necessary to prosecute a million simultaneous cases. The rest of the population would need to be police officers and prison guards.
In the real world, losers lose. Anyone taken down by a coup or a war is susceptible to - horrors - a fair trial after a long period of evidence gathering, should they live long enough to let the process work out. If the major powers decide they want a trial. If the major powers aren’t shielding the perpetrator in exile. If a lot of things.
Never read science fiction. It’s full of world governments and global agreement. That sort of otherworldly nonsense can warp impressionable minds.
It should be noted that neither does the USA.
Seems that shipping the Russians that moved to Crimea at the urging of the Russian Government [Hey, move here, free land!] would be legitemate to ship back to Russia [no not by cannon, Mythbusters demonstrated you can’t launch a human with gunpowder and have them live] but the ones that moved there back when it was still the USSR can’t be shifted.