I agree, if it’s done with due process, based on a Ukrainian citizenship law that says individuals who moved to the area while it was occupied did not thereby acquire Ukrainian citizenship, and can be deported if they do not apply for some sort residency permit, once Ukraine regains control.
If this includes Ukrainian citizens without citizenship in another country, does anyone know what law, international or otherwise, precludes them creating stateless people?
Also, actual collaborators would be a matter for the Ukrainian judiciary system to give due process and punish appropriately. Not just “kick out”.
There is, but it’s only effective insofar as the parties involved agree to be bound by it, OR can make those decisions stick through force.
So someone like Uruguay claiming at the ICC that the US violated international law isn’t going to have much meaning, because the US isn’t agreeing to be bound by those rules.
Meanwhile, the first invasion of Kuwait in Gulf War I was officially sanctioned by UN Resolution 678, which empowered states to use “all necessary means” to take Iraq out of Kuwait. So that one stuck against Iraq primarily because the US was willing to go to war to make it happen.
Similarly, there was no real assent by the UN for the US to invade Iraq in 2003 but it didn’t really matter because who’s going to enforce a decision against the US?
I think the Ukrainians would likely be publicly advised not to do such a thing, but as long as they kept it pretty mild and just ejected the leaders of the pro-Russian factions, they’d just get finger-wagging and tsking by the West.
Parties to war and genocide need to be dealt with judicially.
The number of people who are quote, unquote, “Pro-Russia” is likely very small. Russia likes to pretend that Russian-speaking people in Ukraine are an aggrieved separatist minority, but that’s just not the case. That’s the playbook they ran in the Baltics, Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus Republics, etc to justify their invasions and coups.
In reality, Russian-speakers in Ukraine got along just fine, and faced the worst persecution from Russia flattening their cities and towns during the invasion. Few people want to be part of that hellhole.
I agree that Ukraine could get away with deporting the Russians that moved to Crimea or the Donbas after 2014. They were never citizens of Ukraine, and they were moved in for political purposes.
I think Ukraine could reasonably say, “Either apply for citizenship in Ukraine like everyone else, or you will be deported.” And that application process would look very carefully at their background to make sure they weren’t undercover Russia agents, etc.
The people who were pro-Russia but have been citizens of Ukraine since the USSR breakup are more difficult cases. But they might leave voluntarily. I don’t think that a reunited Ukraine would be a comfortable place for ex-Russian supporters.
But also, this is Ukraine and Russia. I’m not sure either side will play by ‘humanitarian’ rules or what the ICC has to say. I could see Ukraine cleaning the Donbas, Crimea, and Transnistria of any Russians who have caused any trouble at all, or made their pro-Russia views known.
I have to expect the number of Ukrainian residents who were pro-Russia in 2021 is different than the number now.
There may not be enough pro-Russians left in Ukraine to bother about. Crimea of course is a different situation; I’m speaking only about the rest of Ukraine.
What your posts says over and over is that there is no international law. There is instead U.S. hegemony over the western world.
Whatever happens in Ukraine will occur either with or against the full weight of U.S. interests. Probably with, even if the EU is violently opposed.
I’m tempted to say that whatever happens in Russia will occur either with or against the full weight of Chinese interests. Certainly, no international law will be considered at any point.
Maybe if the NATO countries had lived up to their military commitments, Ukraine wouldn’t have to lean on the U.S. so hard. As it is, the U.S. is by far the largest contributor outside Ukraine, even though Europe has far more to lose from a Ukraine loss. Maybe they should pick up the slack if they don’t like U.S. interests.
I think we’re quibbling over whether international law exists, and all I’m saying is that it only does, insofar as nations can and will enforce the penalties. Which isn’t often, considering that it often might involve going to war or doing ugly things to a country’s people. Which isn’t the exact same as saying there is no international law, but it’s close.
Basically the US is going to do what it’s going to do, and international law be damned, because nobody can enforce it, economically or militarily. But someone like say… Iceland, is far more likely to agree to those sorts of agreements and toe the line w.r.t. them, because it benefits them to be part of that group of agreeing countries, AND because they can have those decisions very easily enforced against them if they get out of line.
Even regular old intrastate(?) law works that way in a sense; the agreement of most people to abide by the law is what makes it work, and where people don’t abide by the law, there’s the state’s monopoly on force to compel them to do so. And in democracies, the state is acting in that capacity with the consent of the governed. But even there, if you get rich and powerful enough, that changes how things apply to you, and the law is not the same, even though the words are the same on paper.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, it would all come back to how willing the rest of the world would be to sanction and enforce said sanctions against Ukraine in the absence of Uncle Sam there to help. And I suspect anything that would sanction Ukraine would have big backlash for the rest of the world, considering how much Ukrainian grain and oil gets exported.
We’re saying the same thing. I’m just being deliberately cynical in my phrasing.
What there is not internationally is an equivalent to U.S. federal jurisdiction over the states. (Or, at a lower level, state jurisdiction over cities.) Intrastate agreements do exist just as countries have agreements with one another. Federal law supersedes state law, though, and there ain’t nothing the states can do about it, scream as loud as they want.
I was a letter carrier summers during college. We had to pass a driving course because we used right-hand drive vans. The instructor said that as federal vehicles, technically we had the right of way over all state-licensed vehicles, including emergency vehicles. He also said, colorfully - I’m paraphrasing - that if we tried anything that stupid he would shoot us.
That’s international law.
A little unfair, I think. At least partially. In the one year period between Jan 2022 and Feb 2023, the U.S. with its huge economy and military industry has dominated total aid by most objective measures. But subjectively it is #10 in support as a percentage of GDP. Countries like Poland and the Baltic states are absolutely pulling their own weight, it’s just they have far less weight to throw around. You can reasonably point a little bit of a finger at France, but not at Norway.
There is another consideration: Ukraine is a member of the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights (as it would have to be, if it wants to join the EU), which would give individual expellees the right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights for redress. It wouldn’t be a criminal prosecution, but it would also be a political lever: play fair by individuals or say goodbye to joining the EU.
Ukraine is already making use of the ECHR against Russia for political effect, so they could hardly deny them jurisdiction over their treatment of - what would it be: ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers (unlikely to happen in the first place, given the demographic mix in Ukraine), outright collaborators/participants (probably already allowed by existing law), or merely people expressing pro-Russian opinions (almost certainly a breach of the ECHR)?