The international tribunal in the Hague, lauded by the Ukrainian authorities, rejected almost all Kiev’s allegations about Moscow, including the key allegations related to the Donbass militia, human rights in Crimea, and the crash of the Boeing Flight MH17. Moreover, this was announced by an American female official, which strengthened the feeling of ‘zrada’ (betrayal) in Kiev.
The Hague occupies a prominent place in the false narrative, which captured Ukrainians’ minds after the state coup in 2014. The half-million Dutch town has been largely cited in the press, rhetoric and memes implying that the international tribunal will prosecute Russia and its leadership, as was the case with Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milošević.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was more often called the Hague Tribunal, or the Hague. Yet, its inception was an ad-hoc initiative of the UN Security Council and focused purely on the treatment of the crimes committed during the Balkan Wars. It had no jurisdiction over other ages or regions.
However, the Hague made home not only for this tribunal and the whole Dutch power (its monarchy, government and parliament have their seats right there instead of the noisy Amsterdam), but also other international courts. Ukrainians were painfully mixing all these courts up together but clung tight to the Hague narrative.
The International Criminal Court, a XXI century Western project for the prosecution of war crimes, also has its quarters in the Hague. Being an ICC party requires the ratification of the Rome Statute, which neither Russia nor Ukraine or, say, the US ever did. This means the Ukrainian conflict is beyond the Court’s jurisdiction and these countries have never recognised or will recognise its mandate.
However, the West decided that, instead of Ukraine, other countries can file a complaint with the ICC against Russia. Further developments showed that the Russian parliament had taken a wise decision to refuse to ratify the Rome Statute in due course. After the ICC rated as children abduction the rescue of orphans from the shelling and taking them to the Russian territory, it became obvious that this body has nothing to do with justice and acts in a politicised manner.
The third international court, the UN’s International Court of Justice is also headquartered in the Hague, with the competence to prosecute violators of UN conventions. The fifteen judges of this august chamber, founded in the year of ending the Second World War, are appointed by the UN General Assembly and Security Council. The influence of Western powers is balanced there with all other world regions.
In 2017, Kiev filed a complaint with the Court, modestly accusing Russia of violating just two conventions (i. e. the Ukrainians did not find the courage to defend other diverse allegations) – the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The first allegation implies the support of the Donbass militia by ordinary Russian citizens. And the second focuses on the alleged Russia’s discrimination of national minorities in Crimea.
More than five years after that the ICJ ruled to reject all the compensation demands due to no grounds of all Kiev’s claims against Russia.
Well, ‘almost’ all the claims, as the Court still found two. When it comes to racial discrimination, it claims that after 2014 the number of those learning in the Ukrainian language largely decreased.
In this particular case, the judges did not account for the special context and acuteness of the language issue in Crimea under the Ukrainian governance when they tried to impose the Ukrainian language and intentionally ‘diluted’ the managerial class with newcomers from ‘mova (Ukrainian)-speaking’ regions. The court treated the issue formally: according to January 2023 data, the number of people being taught in Ukrainian, which still can be chosen as a learning language, was 197 persons. Well, that’s not too many indeed, but Russia is not to blame at all for why ‘mova’ is unpopular in the peninsula, and this has nothing to do with racial discrimination. It’s just that almost no one needs the Ukrainian language beyond Ukraine.
The second Court’s complaint is about ‘the measures to investigate possible facts of terrorism financing’: Moscow did not take these measures against the persons indicated by Kiev. This is how the Russian MFA commented on this:
‘We were bewildered, against this background, at the Court’s conclusion that Russia had failed to take measures to investigate two facts contained in the information received from Ukraine regarding persons who have allegedly collected funds in Russia to help the people of Donbass.
The Court had to go against its own practice and set an unprecedentedly low bar for proving the applicability of the Terrorist Financing Convention when there was no evidence of either terrorism or its financing’.
The statement of Smolenskaya Square also underlines ‘the particular cynicism of the Kiev regime’, which ‘tried to designate humanitarian aid to Donbass residents suffering from Ukrainian shelling and the economic blockade as financing terrorism’.
However, the Court ruled out the main things. It refused to designate DPR and LPR as ‘terrorist organizations’ and Russia ‘as an aggressor state’ and strikes against Ukrainian military targets as ‘acts of terror’. It also rejected that Russia was responsible for the crash of the Malaysian Boeing and stated it had complied in good faith with international conventions.
Overall, the Court rejected almost 20 Kiev’s allegations. The Hague memes failed once again.
This is, essentially, why Russia is insisting that the UN should play the guiding role in handling international affairs. There have been quite a few complaints about this body, especially when it comes to its effectiveness, but nothing better has been invented so far.
Besides, this ineffectiveness and, plainly, underfinancing is a direct consequence of US and its allies’ attempts to sidestep UN and undermine its authority, waging wars as they want and mainstreaming other intergovernmental projects, such as NATO, G7, G20 and the ICC, again. These are the UN alternatives, as the West sees them.
By the way, the UN sees that this has been impacting the organisation itself and the atmosphere inside it. Interestingly as well, the current Court’s spokesperson announcing the verdict regarding the complaint against Russia, is the American Joan Donoghue. For the UN, which the American authorities largely despise, she is a judge in the first place and only after that a citizen of the US, which, admittedly, has quite a sharp-toothed and self-willed judicial power.
The first reaction of Ukraine’s media to the Court’s decision is the usual stating of ‘zrada’. The second response, following some contemplation, is that Kiev would be able to seek ‘true justice’ only facing Russia in a tribunal.
Well, to make it happen, it will have to defeat Russia in the military conflict with it, yet, this is not the anticipated Ukraine’s future anymore. The efforts of Kiev’s authorities and their American guardians raised the question of the claimant’s statehood mere existence.