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Summary: This source is detailing how once in a time tactics that were used in war was ones that won wars. But as this war is being highlighted and expanding, we see these tactics be used but are now classified as war crimes. These crimes are being seen and Russia is being held responsible for their part in performing these tactics.

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A hideous contradiction is playing out in war-torn Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians are starving in cities besieged by Russian forces. Meanwhile, the country's grain stores are bursting with food, and the government is begging for international assistance to export Ukrainian grain to world markets.

Freeing the wheat will blunt the world food crisis, which is an urgent imperative. But it won't stop belligerents around the world from using starvation as a favored weapon.

Not just a tactic for dictators

Starvation is one of the oldest weapons of war. Romans used it to defeat and destroy Carthage in 146 B.C. The tactics have changed little over time. They include destroying food, farms and water supplies and cutting off besieged enemy populations.

It's tempting to think that only totalitarians would use food as a weapon. Russia's war on Ukraine today echoes the Holodomor, dictator Josef Stalin's subjugation of Ukraine by starvation in 1933.

Adolf Hitler's " Hungerplan" starved 4.2 million Soviet citizens to death in World War II. In 1977, Cambodia's Pol Pot used mass starvation as a tool of titanic social reengineering in his Year Zero effort to turn his country into a purely agrarian nation.

But liberal states are not innocent. The Lieber Code of 1863, which President Abraham Lincoln issued to instruct the Union army on the limits of hostilities, provided that it is "lawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed," specifying that fleeing civilians could be driven back into a besieged location "so as to hasten on the surrender." The U.S. Department of Defense did not formally renounce this legal position until 2015.

This was not merely a paper doctrine. The Atlantic powers used mass starvation as a weapon in both world wars, employing comprehensive maritime blockades as a favored tactic.

The U.S. went so far as to call its effort to encircle the Japanese homeland in 1945 Operation Starvation. Britain used the same phrase for its mass civilian relocation program designed to defeat communists in Malaya in the 1950s.

When the Geneva Conventions, key treaties governing warfare, were drafted after World War II, the U.S. and Great Britain successfully resisted efforts to prohibit such methods, ensuring that starvation of civilians would remain permissible in war for several more decades.

Starvation as a war crime

The first significant steps toward outlawing starvation tactics came after war-driven famines in Nigeria's breakaway Biafra region in the late 1960s and Bangladesh in 1972 and 1974. In 1977, nations adopted two additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions, each of which included the prohibition of "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare." Those protocols have been ratified by 174 and 169 states, respectively.

In 1998 the International Criminal Court Statute codified starvation methods as a war crime in international armed conflicts. A 2019 amendment expanded this doctrine to cover noninternational armed conflicts - conflicts between states and organized armed groups, or between organized armed groups. In addition to food, the legal definition of starvation also includes deprivation of water, shelter and medical care.

Hunger tactics

Despite these legal advances, starvation crimes have been evident in recent or current conflicts in Ethiopia, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and now Ukraine.

The effects have been devastating. From 2020 to 2022 the number of people who urgently require food assistance in situations of armed conflict rose from 99 million to 166 million. This includes nearly two-thirds of the population of South Sudan, with almost 1 person in 4 living in a full-blown humanitarian emergency there.

The people of Yemen, isolated by a Saudi- and Emirati-led blockade on one side and subject to confiscation of food and medicine by the Houthis on the other, have endured years of what remains one of the gravest humanitarian crises in the world.

In a 2021 report, the United Nations-affiliated Independent International Commission on Syria described "modern day sieges in which perpetrators deliberately starved the population along medieval scripts." The commission described the Syrian regime imposing "indefensible and shameful restrictions on humanitarian aid" destined for civilians in cities such as Aleppo, Homs, Daraa and Eastern Ghouta.

Perhaps the most extreme case is Tigray in Ethiopia, where the Ethiopian government has besieged the region for more than a year and a half, closing down banking and trade and restricting humanitarian aid to the tiniest of trickles. This tactic has been used alongside a campaign of destruction, pillage, rape and killing that has wrecked the economy of a region of 7 million people.

Russian forces in Ukraine have engaged in an ever-lengthening list of starvation tactics, besieging entrapped populations, attacking grocery stores and agricultural areas and granaries, deploying land mines on agricultural land, blocking wheat-laden ships from leaving Ukrainian harbors and destroying a critical grain export terminal in Mykolaiv. Moreover, although the U.S. and E.U. exempted fertilizers from sanctions (Russia and Belarus are two of the world's largest producers), Russia has decided to withhold fertilizers from the market.

Responding to the crisis

In line with the International Criminal Court, many countries now prohibit starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in their national war crimes codes. Some of these states have opened investigations into alleged war crimes in Ukraine and Syria. Among others, these countries include France, Germany, Norway and Sweden.

Criminal punishment alone will not end starvation in armed conflict. That would require an effort that also includes reconstruction, reparations, support for displaced communities and targeted humanitarian action. However, in our view it is time to make accountability a central component of the response.

To that end, we urge investigators to focus on starvation methods in their extraordinary efforts to document war crimes in Ukraine. At the same time, it is important to recognize that Russia's tactics are not anomalous. Those with the relevant jurisdictional authority should devote equivalent attention to the criminal use of starvation tactics elsewhere, such as in South Sudan, Syria, Tigray and Yemen.

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Starving civilians is an ancient military tactic, but today it's a war crime in Ukraine, Yemen, Tigray and elsewhere

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A hideous contradiction is playing out in war-torn Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians are starving in cities besieged by Russian forces. Meanwhile, the country's grain stores are bursting with food, and the government is begging for international assistance to export Ukrainian grain to world markets.

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Summary: This article deeply tells us what to expect when it comes to Russia being tried for their crimes. The crimes and why they are being looked into so deeply for their magnitude.

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PolitiFact - War crime prosecutions in the Russia-Ukraine war: What to expect

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As the Russian military continues to pound Ukraine, evidence of war crimes keeps mounting. Could perpetrators be held to

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"Prosecutions of captured officers could begin as early as next year, according to the statements of the International Criminal Court prosecutor and Ukraine’s prosecutor general," said Hannibal Travis, a law professor at Florida International University."

This gives us specifics on when actual trials can begin to prosecute the crimes of Russia. These crimes can be conducted when officers or officials are able to be captured.

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Summary: This article is describing the numerous sights and investigations into the war crimes Russia is committing. Crimes of attacking and killing civilians trying to flee and survive but cannot because of them. Needing to define what a war crime is and list the ways Russia has done these in.

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How Would Those Accused of Ukraine War Crimes Be Prosecuted?

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What constitutes a war crime and what options exist for justice? Part of our investigation of potential Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the AP.

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Summary: This article details how Ukraine can change prosecuting war crimes based off what has happened to them in their country. The crimes against people are important and targeting them is what Russia has been doing and they must be held accountable for their actions.

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Ukraine Can Change the Future of Prosecuting Crimes of Aggression

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The right to life trumps the right to fight, and knowledge of a war’s damage trumps belief in its justice.

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Summary: This article details the atrocities that Ukraine is having to experiencing against Russia. Crimes against civilians and showing that Russia has no care in the world to stop these attacks on defenseless people. This details Russia's inability to have any strategy and perform horrible things to these people of this land they wish to gain from fear and intimidation.

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The brutal war crimes being documented in Ukraine are a warning Americans should heed.

Let us talk about war crimes.

Let us talk about the atrocities the Russian military is committing in Ukraine, yes, but let us also talk about what they mean for us. Because if we assume that we could not commit such crimes ourselves, we are wrong-and we need to think about what it takes to prevent our own military from doing so.

Over the past several days, reporters and social-media users have documented what appear to be some truly horrific outrages perpetrated on the Ukrainian people by occupying Russian forces. The Biden administration says that these atrocities are aligned with the broader Russian policy aim of terrorizing the Ukrainians into submission. And this may well be true.
Franklin Foer: The horror of Bucha
But Russia's military has not yet proved an ability to competently execute any strategy in Ukraine, so I am dubious that Russian policy objectives fully explain the bulk of the crimes we are witnessing.

What we are seeing is likely something much more familiar, and much more universal: These sorts of crimes occur when military organizations are committed into combat without clear, achievable objectives, and without a professional noncommissioned-officer corps to enforce discipline within the ranks. They are what happens when military organizations are not held to account for their actions; when soldiers, after seeing the deaths of their friends in the face of unforeseen resistance, resort to savagery; and when the guardrails to prevent such a descent into inhumanity are absent.

In retrospect, looking back on two decades of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is remarkable how few crimes U.S. troops committed against civilian populations. Civilians in both countries suffered greatly, make no mistake, but the incidence of tactical units committing heinous crimes was lower, despite the duration of those wars, than that among Russian troops in a few weeks in Ukraine.

There are several reasons for that disparity. First, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are mostly led, at the tactical level, by a professional noncommissioned-officer corps-something Russia's army largely lacks. I asked a friend who led a brigade in Baghdad during the surge of 2007 why we did not see more war crimes then, despite the intensity of the combat. "That's all down to the junior officers and noncommissioned officers who led the infantry platoons and squads," he replied. "Those young men didn't allow it."

Second, the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan was-often to the detriment of its war aims-quite isolated from the populations themselves. U.S. troops lived in remote outposts, which hamstrung their efforts to defend the populations from insurgents but also reduced the kind of contact between occupying soldiers and civilians that has led to crimes of intimacy in Ukraine: looting on one end of the spectrum, rape and murder on the other.

Third, the U.S. military prosecuted many of its war criminals. Convicted war criminals such as Clint Lorance and Eddie Gallagher were turned in by their own men before being tried and convicted in the military justice system. The military moved, before others could move it, to enforce discipline within its own ranks.
Leon Aron: A neutral Ukraine is a dangerous idea
Of those three reasons, the last is most important, because it reflects an organizational culture that holds leaders responsible for their own actions as well as for the actions of their men.

Some have attempted to argue that Russian culture is somehow to blame for the crimes Russia's military has committed, and although this is inaccurate and perhaps even bigoted, it is fair to say that Russia's military culture and organization is to blame for the crimes in Ukraine-and for the fact that Russia's military seems to commit similar crimes in every conflict it fights.

Russia's military, as we have seen these past five weeks, is a mess: Seemingly leaderless in Ukraine, it cannot even effectively maneuver against its opponent, much less carry out a coherent terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians.

Our own military, by contrast, is much better led. It is better organized too, and we recruit, train, and equip our troops with more thought and care than the Russians do.

But we're lying to ourselves if we think that our troops cannot commit the same heinous crimes Russian troops are committing today. On an individual level, an American is no more morally perfect than his or her Russian counterpart. The difference is how each military organization responds to criminality.

Our military's culture of accountability took a blow when then-President Donald Trump pardoned both Lorance and Gallagher and was then cheered on by a morally loathsome minority of veterans and military fanboys who elected to side with Lorance and Gallagher against the many others in uniform who had testified against each man.

As Americans look at what is taking place in Ukraine, they should condemn Russia but also reflect on the efforts of a reactionary minority to excuse similar behavior in our own ranks. That we kept our military engaged in combat for 20 consecutive years without facing horrors on the scale that we are witnessing in this relatively short conflict in Ukraine is truly remarkable. But ensuring that will remain the case in future conflicts will take hard work and vigilance.

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The Russian Military Has Descended Into Inhumanity

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The brutal war crimes being documented in Ukraine are a warning Americans should heed. Let us talk about war crimes. Let us talk about the atrocities the Russian military is committing in Ukraine, yes, but let us also talk about what they mean for us.

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Summary: This story looks to highlight the resilience of these soldiers fighting but even more/also highlight the civil war crimes that Russia is doing to civilians. This details how Ukranian soldiers will continue to hold on and fight even after all of the lives lost from this war.

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Zelenskyy vows not to retreat from Ukrainian city of Bakhmut

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CHASIV YAR, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed Monday not to retreat from Bakhmut as Russian forces encroached on the devastated eastern city they have sought to capture for six months at the cost of thousands of lives.

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"Each day searing stories pour out of Ukraine: A maternity hospital bombed in Mariupol. A mother and her children killed as they fled Irpin in a humanitarian corridor. Burning apartment blocks. Mass graves. A child dead of dehydration in a city under siege, denied humanitarian aid."

This evidence explains the horrible mistreatment of women and children. They cant flee nor can they be treated like basic human beings who have needs. They are instead treated like soldiers and are dying because of such. Russia has no regard for their wellbeing even as humans and this is evident.

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"It is harder to collect evidence and testimony in an active war zone. However, with Russian forces having recently redeployed away from the Kyiv region, that area is considered stable enough for war crimes investigators to be sifting through evidence and interviewing witnesses."

This evidence breaks down to why they can't prosecute right now because the war is still going on. With their troops moving back more evidence will show of their crimes against Ukraine and its civilians.

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" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed Monday not to retreat from Bakhmut as Russian forces encroached on the devastated eastern city they have sought to capture for six months at the cost of thousands of lives."

This evidence helps to break down the resilience the president hopes to hold strong to the people. The massive time frame that has allowed people to die at the hands of Russia's horribleness.

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"Deliberately targeting civilians and nonmilitary objectives is a war crime, whereas the crime of aggression covers the totality of the attacks and all of their killings, including the killings of Ukrainian soldiers. All those involved should be held liable for aggression."

This evidence helps to specifically tell why and what Russia is doing. These crimes of attacking people with no care is a crime of war. They have no objective in this war that deals with anything specifically related to civilians being harmed forwardly.

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"In line with the International Criminal Court, many countries now prohibit starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in their national war crimes codes. Some of these states have opened investigations into alleged war crimes in Ukraine and Syria."

This evidence connects to my point because it brings attention the method that Russia is performing that hurts people and this uncivil act of action is war is unpermitted. A court in and of itself has verified that such actions have started an investigation into such.

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"“The bottom line is this is medieval warfare in the Ukraine. It’s precisely the sort of warfare that the laws of armed conflict were designed to prevent,” said David Crane, a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations. “The world’s strongmen are watching like crocodiles. … We have to show tyrants around the world that rule of law is stronger than rule of gun.”

This helps to get the point across of how law needs to be seeing winning in this case. These crimes cannot go unchecked and holding Russia and officials accountable is the most important thing right now because justice must prevail.

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"When the Geneva Conventions, key treaties governing warfare, were drafted after World War II, the U.S. and Great Britain successfully resisted efforts to prohibit such methods, ensuring that starvation of civilians would remain permissible in war for several more decades."

This evidence illustrates how such memos were trying not to be permitted for years now. This shows how Russia has gone against such things that were thought to be established. This convention was supposed to help strop such a horrible way of war that would be starving civilians in war.

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" Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said that in the first month of the war, Ukraine launched investigations into more than 2,500 war crimes cases and identified 186 suspects, including Russian government officials, military leaders and propagandists."

This evidence establishes a baseline for just how bad Russia is doing right now. Ukraine has been able to see this much evidence and will be coming after everything Russia has going for itself.

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"The effects have been devastating. From 2020 to 2022 the number of people who urgently require food assistance in situations of armed conflict rose from 99 million to 166 million. This includes nearly two-thirds of the population of South Sudan, with almost 1 person in 4 living in a full-blown humanitarian emergency there."

This evidence shows the severity of which such tactics does to people and the fallout from such. With Russia doing what they are doing they are only adding to these numbers and creating more world problems. Hunger in the last things people in war should have to worry about but Russia is forcing these people to have to go through this.

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" Ukraine’s chief prosecutor announced a criminal investigation into what appeared to be Russian troops’ execution of an unarmed Ukrainian prisoner of war. A video circulating on social media showed a uniformed Ukrainian soldier standing and smoking. The soldier recites Ukraine’s battle cry, “Glory to Ukraine!” then a volley of gunshots hits him, and he falls into a shallow hole dug into the ground."

This evidence shows the sadistic ways that Russia have broadcasted a crime of war. Killing an unarmed soldier for propaganda on video has led people to see how horrible Russia has been to their opposing sides.

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"But the importance of the right to fight is being overtaken by a human rights perspective arguing that the human right to life is more salient. The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee stated in 2018 that lives taken as part of a war of aggression represent violations of the right to life."

This evidence brings into question the rights that soldiers alike have while in war. Aggressions in war that are not permitted to war are not to be allowed and who have committed them should be punished and looked into for such actions.

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"It is smart to be "pursuing cases in all three" of these courts, said Courtney Hillebrecht, a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Nebraska. And Ukraine is doing just that, with some of the cases dating back to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, a region of Ukraine."

This evidence details just how hard Ukraine is going in order to get the justice they want for their people. These cases and such crimes have been done in the past and are coming to the light again which proves their case even more in the eyes of the law.

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"Just war theorists traditionally argue that, if anyone is to be judged for waging a war of aggression, it’s only the military leaders on the aggressive side..."

This evidence helps to find who is responsible the most for these acts of aggression when it comes to these war crimes that are happening. The soldiers play a part, but they are following orders that are given to them by their leaders and these leaders know what they are doing and must be held accountable for their horrible job and way of leading these man and women to committing war crimes.

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"Over the past several days, reporters and social-media users have
documented what appear to be some truly horrific outrages perpetrated on the Ukrainian people by occupying Russian forces. The Biden
administration says that these atrocities are aligned with the broader Russian policy aim of terrorizing the Ukrainians into submission."

This evidence helps lock in on why Russia is committing these crimes. They are trying to use fear as a tool to win this war in Ukraine, but in doing this the crimes they commit along the way are showing the savagery that they are ok with doing.

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"These sorts of crimes occur when military organizations are
committed into combat without clear, achievable objectives, and without a professional noncommissioned-officer corps to enforce discipline within the ranks. They are what happens when military organizations are not held to account for their actions; when soldiers, after seeing the deaths of their friends in the face of unforeseen resistance, resort to savagery; and when the guardrails to prevent such a descent into inhumanity are absent."

This evidence explains to how Russia is able to do these crimes. With them not having objectives they are clear to act however they see fit with no consequence which include them able to kill whoever they want regardless of if they are innocent or not.

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"That we kept our military engaged in
combat for 20 consecutive years without facing horrors on the scale that we are witnessing in this relatively short conflict in Ukraine is truly remarkable. But ensuring that will remain the case in future conflicts will take hard work."
and vigilance.

This evidence greatly gets the point across about how we have to be mindful of the future. This war is showing the crimes are being committed and how we need to look and thing on ourselves but also what Ukraine is going through right now.

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"Outrage over the video quickly sparked a flurry of social media posts, including by Zelenskyy, of “Glory to Ukraine!” In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said: “I want us all together, in unity, to respond to his words: “Glory to the hero! Glory to heroes! Glory to Ukraine!” And we will find the killers.”

This evidence shows the resolve that Ukraine and the president himself must have for his people because such a video of a crime has been shown online.

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" Possible war crimes that have been reported in Ukraine: widespread destruction of people’s homes, firing on civilians as they evacuate through safe corridors, targeting hospitals, using indiscriminate weapons like cluster bombs in civilian areas, attacks on nuclear power plants, intentionally blocking access to humanitarian aid or basic needs like food and water."

These examples and actions of Russia is seen specifically to be breaking laws that have been established. They care not for the laws and rules set in place of war but instead to so called "win" by any means they see fit to.