Stephen Raab, the former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, says Russia must be held accountable for the devastation it has wreaked in its year-long war in Ukraine.
“The use or threat of force is illegal, except in self-defense,” Raab told CBS News in an interview on Friday. “And here it clearly happened.”
“This is a scale not seen in conflict since World War II.” Raab said. He noted that Ukraine had suffered an estimated $127 billion in damage – homes, schools, public buildings, businesses and infrastructure – not to mention the “horror experienced by civilians or civilians targeted for torture, rape and detention”. He noted that if there is no “some kind of accountability,” the international community will give Russia a kind of “slope” to carry out more aggression.
This week Raab was part of a panel of three international legal experts, a kind of “people’s court” in The Hague, who reviewed evidence and heard testimony from survivors and members of the military against Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression in Ukraine.
Citing evidence of the mass destruction of civilian and government targets, Raab said the commission – which has no legal authority – confirmed an indictment of aggression against Putin.
“In this case, the character is brutal, completely violating the laws of war. The range is enormous – on the order of 2,000 kilometres, 1,200 miles,” Raab said. And the severity of it includes the loss of thousands of civilian lives, tens of thousands of soldiers, tens of billions in destruction — over $100 billion, I think, close to $200 billion in infrastructure.
Raab, who successfully led the prosecution against former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes in Sierra Leone, acknowledged that prosecuting Putin would be difficult. The most likely venue, he said, would be the International Criminal Court, or perhaps an international tribunal set up specifically to deal with crimes in Ukraine.
“We will need to create a special court,” Raab told CBS News. “Create an international tribunal of judges from around the world that could try him and others. It could include the leaders of Belarus for allowing their land to be used in this invasion.”
As part of a CBS News investigation last year, Raab noted that Putin wrote his Ukraine book years ago, in Syria, when his longtime ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, cracked down on the pro-democracy movement. More than 250,000 civilians have been killed in the decade-long conflict that followed the Arab Spring movement in 2011.
Raab said Putin has not faced any meaningful accountability for Russia’s actions in Syria, and the lesson Putin has drawn is that no one will stop him.
“You can kill your way out of it,” said former ambassador Raab. And this is the lesson that Russia has learned as well because it is committing these crimes in Ukraine.
With the Ukraine war now entering its second year, Raab expects Putin to take more aggressive action this year.
“I don’t expect the Russians to improve their tactics. I expect them to be as brutal, if not more so,” Raab said.
As for China’s 12-point proposal for peace in Ukraine, Raab said that given Beijing’s human rights records, “I don’t think it can be taken at face value. Knowing the Chinese and when they’ve been involved in different situations, their idea is to put [aside] accountability or justice.”
Grace Kazarian contributed to this report.
Catherine Herridge
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