Ukraine War, March 17, 2023: The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicts Valimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine; The horrendous human cost of the war

Developing. We are publishing this article as it is being written. Please check back for updates

To see a list of previous articles, enter “Ukraine” in the Search Box on the upper right, and you will see a list in chronological order.

To understand the broad context within which current developments in Ukraine should be considered,see

“Ukraine War, October 26, 2022: The context for analysis of current developments; The “dirty bomb” as a Russian propaganda distraction from current war crimes,” The Trenchant Observer, October 26, 2022.

Dispatches

1) James Kilner, “Ukrainian commander reveals true scale of losses – and pays the price; commander says all 500 of the original soldiers in his unit have been either killed or injured as he calls for better training,” The Telegraph, March 17, 2023 (5:11pm);

2) Daniel Michaels, Jess Bravin, and Isabel Coles, “Russia’s Vladimir Putin Faces Arrest Warrant by International Court; International Criminal Court’s move is linked to forced deportation of children from Ukraine, Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2023 (updated at 5:47 pm ET);

3) Julian Borger and Pjotr Sauer, “ICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes; Arrest warrants issued for Russian leader and his children’s rights commissioner for ‘unlawful deportation’ of Ukrainian children,” The Guardian, March 17, 2023 (20.58 GMT);

4) Mark Landler, “Arrest Warrant From Criminal Court Pierces Putin’s Aura of Impunity; A highly symbolic move by the International Criminal Court, which accused President Vladimir V. Putin of war crimes, carries moral weight,” New York Times, March 17, 2023 (Updated March 18, 2023, 1:20 a.m. ET);

5) Charlie Savage, “The U.S. has long been wary of the I.C.C., but relations have been thawing; Many democracies have joined the court, which investigates war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, but Washington has been concerned that the tribunal could someday try to prosecute Americans,” New York Times, March 17, 2023;

Analysis

The Trenchant Observer

***

A selection of the best articles from The Trenchant Observer is published on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the Trenchant Observations newsletter on Substack.

You may subscribe here,

About the Author

James Rowles
"The Trenchant Observer" is edited and published by James Rowles (aka "The Observer"), an author and international lawyer who has taught International Law, Human Rights, and Comparative Law at major U.S. universities, including Harvard, Brandeis, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Kansas. Dr. Rowles is a former staff attorney at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States OAS), in Wasington, D.C., , where he was in charge of Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and the United States, and also worked on complaints from and reports on other countries including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. As an international development expert, he has worked on Rule of Law, Human Rights, and Judicial Reform in a number of countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Russian Federation. In the private sector, Dr. Rowles has worked as an international attorney for a leading national law firm and major global companies, on joint ventures and other matters in a number of countries in Europe (including Russia and the Ukraine), throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Japan. The Trenchant Observer blog provides an unfiltered international perspective for news and opinion on current events, in their historical context, drawing on a daily review of leading German, French, Spanish and English newspapers as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other American newspapers, and on sources in other countries relevant to issues being analyzed. Dr. Rowles speaks fluent English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and also knows other languages. He holds an S.J.D. or Doctor of Juridical Science in International Law from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Law (J.D.) and a Master of the Science of Law (J.S.M.=LL.M.), from Stanford University. As an undergraduate, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, also from Stanford, where he graduated “With Great Distinction” (summa cum laude) and received the James Birdsall Weter Prize for the best Senior Honors Thesis in History. In addition to having taught as a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, Dr. Rowles has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs (CFIA). His fellowships include a Stanford Postdoctoral Fellowship in Law and Development, the Rómulo Gallegos Fellowship in International Human Rights awarded by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and a Harvard MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. Beyond his articles in The Trenchant Observer, he is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles on subjects of international and comparative law. Currently he is working on a manuscript drawing on some the best articles that have appeared in the blog.