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WillowOne's Positions

Russian War in Ukraine

My Positions

  1. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and its earlier annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas in 2014, constitute clear violations of international law, specifically the UN Charter's prohibition on the use of force against the territorial integrity of another state.
  2. The responsibility for initiating hostilities lies unambiguously with the Russian state and with Vladimir Putin personally.
  3. Ukraine has the right to defend its sovereignty and territory, and the international community has a duty to uphold territorial integrity and oppose unlawful aggression, including by supplying Ukraine with the means to defend itself.
  4. The outcome of the war matters beyond Ukraine. If a nuclear-armed state can seize territory from a neighbour by force and be rewarded for it, every other state with a powerful neighbour has learned that only nuclear weapons guarantee its borders. This is the opposite of the lesson the Budapest Memorandum was supposed to teach.
  5. The arguments offered in Russia's defence (NATO expansion, "denazification", the protection of Russian speakers) do not survive examination and are, in any case, not grounds on which international law permits invasion.

Notes

  • UN Charter, Article 2(4) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Russia's invasion breaches this foundational principle of international law. Russia's claim to be acting in self-defence under Article 51 has been rejected by the UN General Assembly and the International Court of Justice.
    https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-1
  • The Budapest Memorandum (1994). Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom gave assurances of Ukraine's sovereignty and existing borders in exchange for Ukraine surrendering the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal, inherited from the Soviet Union. The annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine violate this agreement.
    https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf
  • War crimes. The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, the massacre at Bucha, the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the use of sexual violence have been documented by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the OSCE, and others. These acts constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and violations of international humanitarian law. The deportation of children may constitute genocide under Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention.
  • Sham referendums. Russia held referendums in occupied Ukrainian territories (Crimea in 2014; Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia in 2022) under military occupation, without independent observers, and with reported turnout and results that no free vote produces. These votes have no legitimacy under international law, and the General Assembly has declared the attempted annexations invalid.
  • UN General Assembly resolutions (ES-11/1, 2 March 2022, 141 votes to 5; ES-11/4, 12 October 2022, 143 to 5) have overwhelmingly affirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity and condemned Russian aggression. The five states voting against were Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea (ES-11/1) and Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Nicaragua (ES-11/4).
  • The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on 17 March 2023 for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children, together with a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's Commissioner for Children's Rights. Further warrants have since been issued for Russian military commanders over attacks on civilian infrastructure.
  • On the "NATO expansion" argument. NATO is a defensive alliance that states apply to join; it does not conscript members. The states of eastern Europe joined because they feared exactly what Russia has now done to Ukraine. Ukraine was not on a path to membership in 2022. Finland and Sweden, which had stayed neutral for decades, applied to join within months of the invasion, which is the clearest possible demonstration of what causes NATO to expand.
  • On "denazification". Ukraine's president is Jewish and was elected with 73 per cent of the vote. Far-right parties won around 2 per cent in the 2019 parliamentary election and hold no seats. The claim is propaganda aimed at a domestic Russian audience for whom the Second World War is the central national myth.

Sources

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