The criminal case against Vladimir Putin

The criminal case against the current President of the Russian Federation is as extensive as it is watertight. He has committed a plethora of crimes against both domestic and international law. An astounding number of his critics have met very premature and very violent deaths.

When Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became President in 2000, he gave immunity from prosecution and civil suits to his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. How did Yeltsin want such immunity? It was because he was up to his neck in crimes. No serving or former Russian head of state has ever been put on trial. Even Tsar Nicholas II was not tried. He was shot without trial. As Yeltsin was a prolific criminal he must have had accessories. Who was Yeltsin’s last Prime Minister? It was one Vladimir Putin. In the unlikely event that Putin retires as president, he shall not doubt ensure that he receives immunity from both prosecution and civil suit. Putin will try to ensure that an acolyte takes over so that Putin can be sure he will never be called to account for his manifold crimes. The only way that Putin will ever stand trial is in the improbable scenario that he is ever tried before an international tribunal.

Putin has committed conspiring to wage a war of aggression, threatening to wage a war of aggression and waging a war of aggression, defalcation, tax evasion, acceptance of bribes, fraud, perjury, the theft of state property, abuse of power, electoral fraud, torture, kidnapping, the murder of his own citizens as well as foreign citizens.

President Putin is a gross violator of the Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and other international law and human rights instruments. He is also waging an illegal war of unprovoked aggression. It is the first war in history to have been adjudged illegal. It was ruled to be illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Russia’s antecedent state the USSR had a major role in founding the ICJ. Russia is voluntarily signed up to the ICJ and indeed is customarily guaranteed a judge on the ICJ. Therefore, it unquestionably behoves the Russian Federation to abide by the rulings of the ICJ. Furthermore, Russia has for decades been in material breach of the principle of the United Nations Charter which forbids sovereign states from interfering in the internal affairs of another.

Russia is in breach of the United Nations Charter which obliges states to obey the rulings of the ICJ. Moreover, Russia is legally obliged to obey the treaties that it has ratified. A core principle of international law is pacta sunt servanda.

Jus cogens dictate that customary international law is binding. The Russian Federation is in breach of many of such laws.

In breaching numerous norms of international law, the Russian Federation is going against lex gentium. The rampant criminality of the regime headed by V V Putin is unequalled in the world.

Some of the breaches of international law discussed herein can only be committed by sovereign states and not by individuals. As Putin is the head of the state of Russia, he is personally responsible for these breaches of international law even though he cannot be brought to book for them.

The gravamen of the case against Mr Putin is his flagrant and repeated gross breaches of international humanitarian law. Impunity for such outrageous offences against law and morality risks other tyrants committing such atrocities in future.

The bill of indictment

Crimes against international law: the murder of Russian citizens and foreign citizens abroad, interference in foreign elections, international terrorism.

Crimes against peace: the threatening, planning and execution of three wars of aggression the most recent of which is the first war in history ever to have been adjudicated by the International Court of Justice to be an illegal war. Therefore, all the acts of violence and destruction arising from the said war are crimes. But even if he had fought a lawful war, he is still guilty of war crimes in Ukraine as he is in Georgia and Syria war crimes.

To wit, the use of abduction, rape, torture and murder by his forces on an absolutely gross scale.

The wilful destruction of civilian infrastructure is not justified by military necessity with the objective of killing civilians. Namely, the bombing of hospitals, clinics, schools, bomb shelters, heating infrastructure and electricity infrastructure.

The placing of weapons in a nuclear power station.

Breaking his own truce in January 2023.

The use of outlawed chemical weapons in Syria.

There are numerous other crimes against humanity committed by V V Putin and his minions.

Domestic crimes

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Date of Birth 7 October 1952) was an officer of the Committee on State Security (KGB). The KGB was itself a criminal conspiracy against the Soviet people. Just as in 1945 the Gestapo and SS were proclaimed to be criminal syndicates so too should the KGB be declared outlawed. The KGB and its precursor organisations (the Cheka, NKVD, OGPU and MGB) were principally busily engaged in massive state terror against the Soviet people.

The KGB broke Soviet law every single day on a gargantuan scale. The Soviet Constitution guaranteed civil liberties to people in terms of the right to privacy, free association, freedom of conscience, freedom from torture, habeas corpus, security of person and the right to a fair trial. In practice, the KGB violated each one of these rights routinely. It was the spearhead of a racist campaign against ethnic minorities from 1917 onwards particularly Muslim minorities. Some of this was still going on when Putin joined the KGB in 1975.

Putin was posted to the so-called German Democratic Republic (commonly called East Germany) in 1985. There he helped to oppress the German people and deprive them of self-determination. In East Germany, Putin will have engaged in the oppressive measures that were forbidden under the East German Constitution. For instance, the East German regime shot dead people for trying to move to West Germany and this was against the laws of East Germany. But let us concentrate on things that V V Putin did personally. It is alleged that he met Red Army Faction terrorists and abetted them in their crimes.

In the 1990s Putin oversaw St Petersburg’s Foreign Relations Committee. The city was suffering from a severe paucity of comestibles in the early 1990s. Putin authorised a barter deal whereby St Petersburg was to receive tonnes of foodstuffs in return for metals. The food never materialised. Putin and his cronies pocketed USD 93 million. This was a staggering sum of money in early 1990s Russia. There are numerous documents relating to this deal that still exist and bear Putin’s signature. Several of the people who knew most about the case met violent deaths over the next 20 years. None of the murders was solved.

The St Petersburg Legislative Council investigated the food barter deal. It concluded that the deal had been a massive scale fraud against starving St Petersburgers. The St Petersburg Legislative Council recommended that Putin be sacked. However, he was a protégé of the only democratically elected of St Petersburg: Anatoly Sobchak. Putin remained en poste until 1996.

The numerous enormous defalcations committed by Putin are laid out in enormous granular detail in 2014 entitled Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha. Miss Dawish has amassed a wealth of evidence about how he amassed wealth. There is no need to rehash every particular here. But suffice it to say that there is proof positive that V V Putin stole tens of billions of dollars from the Russian public. The superabundance of probative evidence has not led to Putin or any of his cronies having their collars felt. Putin and his acolytes have robbed the public blind. Massive-scale speculation by Putin’s golden circle stands in stark contrast to the 15-year sentences awarded to people for telling the truth about Putin’s regime of rapacious robbery.

In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow and became deputy head of the Presidential Administration Property Management Department. During this time a lot of public money went missing. There were kickbacks from repair and decoration jobs on state property.

In 1997 Putin successfully defended a thesis on economics which is a subject he had never studied. The thesis was later found to be an academic fraud since 15 pages of it were directly translated from a US textbook. This is not only intellectual property theft. Every time he was given a job partly on the strength of this qualification, he was committing fraud. It is also a measure of the man. Almost his whole life is a lie. Nor is he prudent or conscientious about covering up his mendacity.

In July 1998 Putin was appointed Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB). This was odd as he has resigned from its predecessor organisation the KGB in August 1991.

Malfeasance of Putin is not restricted to theft.

As Alexander Litvinenko revealed the FSB under Putin was hiring itself out as hitmen. The FSB would assassinate a businessman’s rival for the right fee.

On 9 August 1999, Putin was appointed one of three deputy prime ministers. Later that same day he was appointed prime minister. He was so little known that when this was announced in the Russian Parliament that day his name was said wrongly. 70% of Russian parliamentarians approved the appointment. He was the 5th prime minister in 17 months!

When Putin became PM of Russia there was peace with Chechnya. Chechnya had defeated Russia in the 1994-96 conflict. Russia had grudgingly been forced to accept the unofficial independence of Chechnya.

Within weeks of Putin becoming PM, several apartment blocks in Russia were blown up by bombs inside them. From 4 to 16 September four apartment blocks were blown up. The attacks occurred in three different cities: Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk. Over 300 civilians were killed and several times that number were wounded.

The FSB planned and executed these atrocities. FSB agents entered apartment blocks and planted the bombs. In one case there were arrested after doing so but released upon showing their FSB identity cards. In another case, the residents of the apartment block found out that strangers had been in the basement and left behind bags. The building was evacuated, and the bomb was defused.

The Russian Government could not get its story straight. They contradicted themselves about the failed apartment block bombing. It said a real bomb had been defused. Then it claimed that there was only a dummy bomb and the whole thing was a security exercise. However, this is illegal under Russian law.

Russia still had free media in the 1990s. There were talk shows in which people gave chapters and verses on what happened in the apartment block bombings. Some of them were later intimidated into recanting. Others were mysteriously murdered, and their killers were never apprehended.

On 13 September 1999, the Russian Parliament an apartment block bombing in Vologdonsk was announced. But no building anywhere near that city had been blown up. On 16 September an apartment block in Vologdonsk was blown up just as the announcement had said 3 days earlier. The FSB had planned the atrocity and even written a press release in advance. But they had bungled by getting the dates mixed up. The incompetence of the FSB was staggering. The FSB was no good at covering its tracks. Having a politician announces a bombing that had not occurred they did not cancel the attack.

An FSB agent tried to blow up a railway line. His bomb went off prematurely and his body was found there on the railway. He was identified by his FSB ID card. Putin was the head of government and ultimately in charge of the FSB. It is inconceivable that the FSB would have murdered hundreds of Russian civilians without his express order. Alcohol-addled Yeltsin was not compos mentis. Putin was already effectively head of state in September 1999. Yeltsin was about to resign.

In Blowing Up Russia Alexander Litvinenko detailed precisely how the FSB carried out the apartment block bombings. Litvinenko was himself in the FSB. He had joined out of genuine patriotism and a desire to serve the public. He was horrified when he discovered that the FSB had become co-opted by criminal syndicates.

The Russian State Duma voted to prevent a parliamentary investigation into the bombings. Why? Because the government knew that it would be proven that the order of V V Putin carried out the murders. The State Duma voted that all materials related to the apartment block bombings be sealed for 75 years. Why were the government ministers so keen to hide the truth until all those behind the bombings were safely dead? A free country would want to get to the bottom of the crime and catch the guilty. In Russia, the Putin Government wished to conceal its culpability and blame the innocent.

The irrefragability of evidence proving that the Putin regime carried out several large-scale massacres of its own civilians has not changed public opinion in Russia much. Total control of the Russian media has enabled the Kremlin to gradually brainwash people. Russia so often projects its own vices onto others. Small wonder that the Kremlin has taken such pains to convince Americans that the 9/11 atrocities were committed by the US Government.

The purpose of the apartment block bombings was to start a conflict against Chechnya. Why would the Chechen separatists carry out such atrocities when they already had what they wanted? The Chechen separatists had wilfully killed civilians prior to 1999 and had always boasted of it. The 1999 apartment block bombing campaign was the only time they ever disclaimed responsibility for an attack.

CHECHNYA

There was a wave of fury against Chechens after the apartment block bombings. Putin had President Yeltsin order the invasion of Chechnya. This time the Russian Army had learnt from its mistakes. The 1999 campaign was a little more successful than its 1994-94 campaign. There was a patriotic fervour behind Putin.

The Russian campaign in Chechnya was ultimately successful after several years. The Russian Army committed numerous massacres and carried out torture on a wide scale.

Putin said in 2000 ‘’Russia does not negotiate with terrorists: she destroys them.’’ However, Putin persuaded the Chechen nationalist leader Kadyrov to tergiversate. He became Putin’s man in Chechnya.

Putin has often railed against Islamist extremism. But under the Kadyrovs, Putin presides over his own Islamist extremist state inside the Russian Federation.

Journalists who told the truth about the Chechen conflict are frequently harassed and intimidated. Anna Politkovskaya fearlessly and unflinchingly told the truth. She reported crimes committed by the Russian Forces and by the Chechen rebels. She wrote her renowned Chechen Diary.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have recorded numerous war crimes committed by the Russian Armed Forces. The Russian Armed Forces operate with virtual impunity. Even a massacre of civilians will almost never result in even a reprimand.

When Yeltsin resigned as President of the Russian Federation on 31 December 1999, Putin became acting president as well as the remaining prime minister. In 2000 he was elected president. He was therefore commander in chief. He oversaw discipline in the armed forces. He was culpably liable for the many war crimes committed by his armed forces even when he did not order them to commit these war crimes. His failure to bring his soldiers to account for their war crimes amounts to an accessory shop.

The resignation of Yeltsin was accompanied by Putin granting Yeltsin and his family immunity from prosecution. Why did Yeltsin want this? It was because he had stolen so much from the public. Putin was therefore complicit in these crimes.

In 2000 the Russian Army came close to Grozny. They told the people of Grozny to leave by certain corridors and go through Russian Army filtration centres. Chechens were loath to do so because they knew this usually meant torture and sometimes murder. Russia said that people must leave Grozny by such routes ‘’or be treated as terrorists.’’ This underscored yet again the Putin regime’s eagerness to murder civilians.

The Kadyrov crime family has ruled Chechnya since Russia regained control. Ramazan Kadyrov is the current Chechen president. His reign of terror has included numerous forced disappearances, the widespread use of terror, honour killings of women who fall in love with men whom their families do not like, the murder of homosexual men and the murder of Chechen dissidents abroad. Putin knows what is done under his authority because Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, sections of the Russian media and Western governments have all told him this. Russia is run by subinfeudation. Putin has allowed Kadyrov to create his version of Saudi Arabia within the Russian Federation. Putin is therefore culpable because he has for over 20 years to take no action to prevent crimes committed by a president subordinate to him. He has frequently excused Kadyrov and given him a subvention. Kadyrov publicly issues death threats against anyone who criticised Putin.

In 2004 the Russian Spesnatz unit killed dozens of Russian civilians by using gas in a supposed rescue attempt at a hostage incident in a Moscow theatre. The Kremlin would not say what the gas was. If they had some of the stricken people could have been saved.

DOMESTIC POLITICS

The Russian Constitution explicitly prohibits censorship. But Putin has reintroduced it by banning anything that he says rehabilitates fascism, spreads disharmony and discord, insults public officials, hurts religious feelings, diminishes the glory of the Red Army, encourages the use of drugs, promotes non-traditional sexual relations even among adults, is extremist and on and on and on. It would be shorter to list the things that one IS permitted to say.

Putin has banned opposition parties saying they are extremists. He is an extremist. There is nothing more extreme than the mass murder of civilians. Civil society groups are outlawed on the basis that they are undesirable. It is undesirable for Putin that civil society monitor what he is doing and assert the rights of the Russian people that are supposedly guaranteed to them by the constitution.

Peaceful protestors are regularly beaten off the street. Torture of dissidents is commonplace.

Putin cheats extensively in elections. In the 2018 election, the election monitoring group Golos captured CCTV footage from most of the polling stations in Russia. Polling officials looked to see that no one was coming and then put lots of bogus votes into ballot boxes. About half the votes cast for Putin were false. This was electoral fraud on a truly epic scale.

The Putin regime deprives people of their freedom of conscience and religious liberty. Evangelism is criminalised. Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned. Some of them have been imprisoned for years for practising their faith.

Torture, neglect and rape are common in Russian prisons.

In 2010 Wikileaks published thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables regarding Russia. This revealed the candid opinion of the US Government. Washington DC correctly dubbed Russia ‘a mafia state.’ The intelligence agencies, organised crime and big business are all enmeshed. All three organisations are happy with this arrangement.

UKRAINE

In 2004 Putin was anxious because democracy in Ukraine was succeeding. Ukraine had free media just as he was depriving Russians of their constitutional rights to free media. Ukraine had free and more or less fair elections. This was troubling for Putin because Russians might demand the same. There were Ukrainians who did not believe that Ukraine should automatically follow Russia. Some of them aspired to join the European Union. The Ukrainian language had been raised to a dignified status. As Putin is an aggressive chauvinist this rankled.

Victor Yuschenko was the Ukrainian President. In 2004 Yuschenko was poisoned. He was flown to Austria where doctors managed to save his life. But he was scarred for life. The FSB was behind the attempted murder of the Ukrainian head of state. It was an act of war.

Russia is a signatory to the international convention against chemical weapons. But Russia has them in abundance. It also uses them to murder civilians. Russia also has biological weapons which have also been ruled illegal and are also a breach of a convention that Russia freely ratified.

Victor Yanukovich was Putin’s preferred presidential candidate. Yanukovich’s well-documented and extensive cheating in the 2004 election was not sufficient to win him the election. Yanukovich spent several years in prison in the USSR. Despite his law-and-order image, Putin is very keen to promote Mafiosi.

Yanukovich eventually became president several years later. In 2014 Yanukovich’s police shot dead dozens of armed protestors. Yanukovich later fled to Moscow where he remains to this day. It is said that the Putin regime considered reinstalling him as their marionette in Kyiv and had they succeeded in March 2022 this is what they probably would have done.

In 1994 Russia signed and ratified the Budapest Memorandum. This guaranteed Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity.

Until 2014 even Russian acknowledge that the Crimean Peninsula was legally Ukrainian sovereign soil. Nor did Russia lay claim to an inch of Ukraine’s easternmost regions such as the Donetsk Region and the Luhansk Region.

In 2014 Russia invaded Ukraine. This was in breach of the Budapest Memorandum. It was a violation of the borders of Ukraine.

When Russian-speaking men in Russian Army uniforms (insignia removed) with Russian Army issue weapons arrived from Russia in Crimea the Russian Government denied, denied, and denied that these men were Russian soldiers. Lie after lie after lie after lie has been unblushingly told by Putin and his disciples. Until then Putin and his motley mob boasted that these men were Russian soldiers. Who is stupid enough to trust a single word that spills from the sinful slavering maw of V V Putin?

Russia staged a referendum in Crimea and then claimed Crimea as a Russian sovereign territory. This is in breach of the UN Charter. Land cannot be acquired by force of arms. Russia has broken international law by assailing the oneness of Ukraine and its independence.

Russia Forces attacked Ukraine in the east. The Russian Government lied about this for years. The Russian Government claimed that the Ukrainian Conflict was internal despite a mountain of probative evidence that Russian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine. As Russia had not declared war these combatants were fighting illegally.

Russian Forces in east Ukraine shot down a KLM plane killing 300 civilians. This was murder. It is true that those who destroyed the plane did not intend to shoot down a civilian airliner. But as they were fighting illegally this was a crime. It was transferred malice. The Kremlin lied about it incessantly and continues to lie about it despite the superabundance of evidence proving that it was pro-Moscow militias that shot down the plane.

Torture has been commonly used in Russian-occupied Ukraine. The illegally Russian-occupied zones of east Ukraine were dubbed by Russia the People’s Republic of Donetsk (DPR) and the People’s Republic of Luhansk (LPR). Many people were illegally detained there and some of them were without even an unfair trial.

Russia kidnapped some people in east Ukraine and took them illegally across the border into Russia. There they were charged with various crimes.

The Russian Military and the administration that it installed in the illegally militarily occupied territories have kidnapped children. The children have in some cases been taken to Russia without parental consent. This is a gross breach of an express provision of the Geneva Convention. It is also international child abduction. Some of the children have been issued Russian passports which is another crime: changing a child’s nationality without parental permission. Some children have been adopted despite having two living parents who are perfectly capable of raising the children.

Moscow has long tried to meddle in internal Ukrainian affairs. Russia has attempted to dictate language policy in Ukraine. That is notwithstanding Russia ferociously guarding its own independence. Anyone Russian human rights activist or anti-corruption campaigner receiving funds from abroad must register as a foreign agent, go through an extensive audit and disclose that he or she is a foreign agent on all the items that he or she publishes.

In 2021 Russia began a massive military build-up on the Ukrainian Border. This was a bid to intimidate Ukraine. Putin’s spokesman said this was no threat to anyone. At the same time, the Russian Foreign Minister threatened war or as he put it ‘’military-technical measures’’ against Ukraine if Ukraine did not comply with Moscow’s demands. Threatening war is itself a war crime. It was prohibited by the Pact of Paris of 1928.

In the days prior to the invasion, the Kremlin emphatically denied that it had any intention of invading Ukraine. His underscores yet again the utter and infamous mendacity of the accursed Putin regime.

In February 2022 Putin falsely accused Ukraine of committing genocide. Under the Genocide Convention that the USSR helped to frame it is a crime to make a bogus allegation of genocide.

The Putin regime advanced specious grounds for its war of aggression against Ukraine. The casus belli was that Ukraine had forbidden the Russian language, that the democratically elected Ukrainian Government was a Nazi regime made up of drug addicts and that Ukraine’s Defence Forces were an existential threat to Russia. There is no ius ad bellum.

The objectives of Putin’s war were demilitarisation and the so-called denazification of Ukraine. Both are illegal grounds for war because these are meddling in Ukraine’s domestic affairs. Ukraine has the unquestionable right to a military. No one doubts Russia’s right to a military. The democratically elected Ukrainian Government is not remotely Nazi and has outlawed Nazism in all its manifestations. However, any attempt for Moscow to dictate the composition of the Ukrainian Government is unlawful.

Even the Putin regime never claimed that a single Ukrainian soldier cross the border into the Russian Federation. Even the Kremlin did not pretend that Ukraine had fired a shot across the border into Russia before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And even Russia never said that Ukraine had laid claim to a single inch of Russian soil. Therefore, there were absolutely no legal grounds for Russia to launch its war against the Ukrainian State and Ukrainian people. The Putin regime claims it was forced to fight this war despite advancing no corroborative evidence at all that would even suggest that that is true. Who was killed? When? Where? By whom? How? No particulars were advanced. No images or communication intercepts were provided. Bogus accusations are a breach of the Genocide Convention that the USSR helped to draw up. This is the boy crying wolf. It makes real accusations of genocide less likely to be believed. There were no casua interventionis.

Days into the war the International Court of Justice adjudicated that this war is contrary to international law. The ICJ’s ratio decidendi that Russia was fighting this war in a direction in contravention of the UN Charter. The UN Charter which the USSR signed and ratified explicitly provides that international disputes be settled pacifically and by the United Nations. Moreover, the ICJ said obiter dicta that Russia’s justificatory arguments for the war were entirely without foundation. The ICJ found that Russia’s war was contra legem because it was in breach of other treaties such as the Budapest Memorandum and other international norms that meet the general acceptance of civilised nations. Russia was also in breach of the Belazheva Accords which dissolved the USSR. Russia had long recognised Ukraine as a sovereign state. The forming of diplomatic relations proved that.

There has been no ius in bello in Russia’s illegal war of unprovoked aggression. Russia’s war has been characterised by the indiscriminate slaying of civilians and the use of illegal munitions such as cluster bombs.

In Russia’s illegal war of unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces have committed myriad war crimes. Putin stated that Russia was deliberately targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. This was done to deprive Ukrainian civilians of heating and electricity in winter. This undoubtedly caused the deaths of civilians.

The Russian Military had wilfully attacked hospitals and clinics on scores of occasions. This is reprising a tactic used in Syria. This is a war crime that breaks one of the cardinal principles of the Geneva Convention.

Destruction of the property when it is not justified by military necessity is a war crime. This criminality is aggravated when the intention behind the wilful and wanton destruction of property is to cause the death of civilians. The Russian Armed Forces have purposively attacked clinics and hospitals on hundreds of occasions.

The Armed Forces of Russia have kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian civilians and taken them across the frontier into Russia. This is a breach of an express provision of the Geneva Convention. Abduction is illegal in all circumstances. Taking people across an international border against their will is an additional crime.

There are numerous cases of rape that have been committed by Russian soldiers. The Russian Army is not known to have investigated allegations, tried any defendants and certainly has not imposed the slightest penalty on its soldiers for their heinous felony.

Pillaging by Russian soldiers is widespread. Some of these might be starving conscripts simply commandeering food from supermarkets. But in other cases, this is outright theft when soldiers steal valuables to take them home to the Russian Federation. The Russian Armed Forces have not imposed any sanctions on soldiers for looting. This is from an army that is extremely harsh to its troops.

During Putin’s war of illegal unprovoked aggression against the Republic of Ukraine, Russia purchased rockets and missiles from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). This is a direct breach of the United Nations Security Council Resolution Sanctioning North Korea for its development of nuclear weapons. Russia has long allowed North Korean labourers to be used in Russia again in direct contravention of the UNSCR sanctions that Russia approved. These North Korean workers are exploited by being paid below the minimum wage.

The numerous large-scale massacres committed by the Russian Armed Forces at Bucha and elsewhere are tantamount to genocide. The murder of Prisoners of War is also a war. The few who have been exchanged attested to being subjected to the most monstrous tortures.

The Putin regime has attempted the deracination and lobotomization of the Ukrainian nation. In illegally occupied Ukraine the Russian administration has redesignated Ukrainian as a dialect. The Russian Government claims that Ukraine is not a nation at all despite formally recognising it as a sovereign state. This is the sort of doublethink that pervades Russian official discourse in a truly Orwellian style.

Most galling was the claim by the Russian Foreign Minister in January 2023 that Western nations donating weapons to the beleaguered Ukrainians who are fighting to save their people from massacre is equivalent to the massacre. It was a foul calumny even for someone as utterly dishonourable and mendacious as Sergei Lavrov. It was ironic that he should try reductio ad Hitlerum as his regime committed genocide in Ukraine. Moreover, the USSR whose reputation he defends was an ally of the Third Reich and was its co-belligerent in 1939.

The Russian Federation even stooped so low as to exploit Holocaust Memorial Day as a reason to continue its genocide. In 2023 the Russian Foreign Minister had the temerity to use the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz to cite the Shoah as a ground for Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion in which Russia has deliberately slain so many thousands of civilians.

The United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Union and other organisations have compiled evidence of the war crimes committed by the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that some of the Russian actions in Ukraine are probable war crimes. The prolificacy and severity of the Russian war crimes in Ukraine is without precedent in any conflict for several decades.

When Guterres was in Kyiv missiles struck. Was this even an attempt to kill the UN Secretary-General? Russia is at war against the world.

POLITKOVSKAYA

Mrs Politkovskaya continued to report the truth in Russia. She was threatened by pro-Putin goons. Death threats were made to her constantly. The police made no effort to solve these crimes. She recorded how one army officer threatened to rape her and said that she should regard it as flattery. On an Aeroflot flight, she was served poisoned tea. She was rushed to the hospital and the physicians succeeded in saving her life.

On Putin’s birthday in 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building. Her killer was not apprehended. The motive must have been her courageous truth-telling reportage. No money was stolen and there was no sexual assault. The murder was the FSB’s birthday present to the president.

SERGEI MAGNITSKY

Mr Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer. He exposed the largest tax fraud case in Russian history. The largest tax rebate request in Russian history was submitted on Christmas Eve. Russia is notorious for the glacial pace of its bureaucracy. But the largest tax rebate in Russian history was approved within hours.

Some months after the tax fraud, Mr Magnitsky proved how police officers had forged documents using stolen seals to claim the tax rebate. Magnitsky was then arrested and charged with the very crime that he had exposed. If Magnitsky had stolen hundreds of millions of USD where had he put the money? His persecutors had no answer. If he was a multi-millionaire, why was he living in a modest two-bedroom flat?

Magnitsky was tortured in prison and later murdered for trying to prevent money from being stolen from the Russian public.

President Putin was totally unperturbed about hundreds of millions of dollars being stolen from the exchequer. Putin presided over the most farcical injustice. After Magnitsky died he was put on trial for tax fraud! A court case was held. The defendant is kept in a cage in the courtroom. The cage that ‘held’ the non-existent Magnitsky was guarded by police officers. How did Magnitsky plead? You can guess the verdict. He is currently serving his sentence. The acquittal rate in Russia is under 1%.

Chapter and verse on the enormous tax fraud scheme can be attained by reading Red Notice by Bill Browder. Mr Browder was the founder of Hermitage Capital. Sergei Magnitsky was Browder’s lawyer. The murder of Magnitsky led to the Magnitsky Act in the United States and numerous other jurisdictions.

ALEXEY NAVALNY

In 2021 the FSB attempted to murder Mr Navalny. The Russian lawyer was an indefatigable and gallant anti-corruption campaigner. He was not even pro-Western and often addressed ultra-nationalist rallies.

In 2021 he drank tea whilst waiting to board a flight. He then got onto an Aeroflot plane. The same method was used in a bid to murder Anna Politkovskaya. The plane performed an emergency landing and Navalny was saved by physicians. Later he went abroad for medical treatment. He then returned to Russia where he was imprisoned. He is now in very poor health in prison. It is probable that an otherwise healthy 40-something will die in prison. Russian doctors were gallant enough to sign a petition in 2023 asking Putin to stop ‘abusing’ Navalny in prison.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN SYRIA

The Putin regime supported the Assad tyranny in Syria. In 2011 the Assad regime responded to peaceful protest by shooting dead hundreds of unarmed people. The Putin regime lied for Assad and denied that these atrocities had been committed.

In 2013 the Russians provided the Assad regime with poison gas. The illegal chemical weapon was used against civilians in rebel-held areas. The Assad regime and the Russian military have used poison gas on civilians on dozens of occasions.

The Putin regime blames attacks with Russian-made poison gas on the people who suffer such attacks and have no access to the poison gas. Why would the insurgents gas their own people? Moscow claims it is to make Russia look bad. But the Russian State already has an appalling reputation for its countless crimes against humanity. This specious argument is always trotted out by the Kremlin and its polezny idioti.

There was never a chemical weapons attack in Syrian history until the Russians started fighting there. Since then, there have been many such attacks. It is only rebel-held areas that ever such attacks. Government-held areas are never subject to such attacks. There is no evidence that ISIS or any other protagonist other than Russia and the Baathists has chemical weapons. Why would ISIS gas its own supporters? To make Russia look bad we are told. The Russian State has long been known to be one of the most savage in the world. Which is more credible: that a hundred mothers gas their children or that a tyrant should tell a lie?

The Russian Federation’s antecedent the USSR signed and ratified the Convention Against Chemical Weapons in the 1970s. Therefore, even possessing these weapons never mind using them is against Russia’s own domestic law. It is also against international law. The possession and usage of such weapons is yet more proof of Putin’s rampantly criminal behaviour.

PUTIN AS AN INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST

Putin’s intelligence services have carried out numerous murders abroad. These are often foreign citizens.

The Russian intelligence community had long wanted to murder Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko told the truth about the myriad crimes committed by the intelligence services in the UK and abroad. He became a British citizen in 2006.

In November 2006 Russians put poison in the tea of Alexander Litvinenko in London, UK. Andrei Luguvoy was one of the Russian men most involved in the plot. He met Litvinenko hours before Litvinenko fell fatally ill. The poison that killed Litvinenko was traced back to the hotel that Litvinenko stayed in and the plane he flew on. After the murder, Luguvoy was honoured by being elected an MP for Putin’s United Russia Party.

The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK. In fact, an unrelated woman was killed by the novichok poison which is of Russian manufacture. Although the woman who died from the poisoning was not the intended target of the assassination nevertheless this is murder under the doctrine of transferred malice.

Two Russian Military Intelligence serving officers flew into the UK days before the murder. They were caught on CCTV. They travelled to Salisbury the day before planting the poison. They were in Salisbury on the day of the poisoning. They flew out very soon afterwards. They travelled on passports with false names and false dates of birth and with serial numbers that were one digit apart. The passports were therefore issued at the same time. Russian intelligence is not intelligent! It is no good at covering its tracks. Does it even try? Does it want to make it blatant that they carry out these murders? The identities that they used to travel to the United Kingdom were bogus. Bellingcat exposed the true identities of the murderers. Russia finds Bellingcat so effective that it has falsely accused Bellingcat journalists of terrorism. Its death threats have forced Bellingcat journalists to move out of Vienna, Austria where they were headquartered.

As President Putin is commander in chief of the Russian Armed Forces, he is ultimately responsible for the actions of his troops. The Salisbury murder was the murder of a British citizen in Britain. It was also a breach of the chemical weapons convention. It was committed with malice aforethought because it required preparatory work and meticulous planning. Such an egregiously provocative action must have been ordered by President Putin personally. Anyone who orders a crime expedites a crime or encourages a crime is guilty of the accessory shop and is just as culpable as the principal. As was decided at Nuremberg and other international criminal tribunals a leader can be found guilty of murder even if he did not order that individual slaying. It is sufficient that the leader set in training the overall policy that led to a particular murder.

A Chechen dissident who was a Georgian citizen was shot dead by a Russian man in Germany.

Russian dissidents in Turkey have been murdered.

Russian dissidents in Sweden have suffered attempted murder.

There have been numerous suspicious deaths of people from the former USSR in the United Kingdom. The apparent suicide of Boris Berezovsky is one. He took his life despite being a multimillionaire, happily married and in good health. But it is not proven that he was murdered.

A Georgian billionaire in the UK died in the UK of a sudden heart attack. But this could be a natural death.

A British lawyer who helped Russian dissident oligarchs died in a helicopter crash in decent weather even with a superb pilot.

Since the Ukraine War began several prominent Russian dissident millionaires died suddenly. In India, two of them died at the same hotel in two days.

We will not get to the bottom of this until after the fall of the Putin regime. Only then will the archives be unsealed in the SVR, FSB and GRU.

LIBYA

The Putin regime supported the Gaddafi regime in Libya. In 2011 Russia voted in the UN Security Council for the mission to protect civilians in Libya.

The Libyan people overthrew Gaddafi. The international community recognised the new Libyan Government. Russia then backed the Libyan National Army (LNA). LNA fought against the lawful government of Libya. LNA carried out several atrocities. Its leader Khalifa Haftar was brought to Moscow to be feted.

As the LNA is an illegal group and is fighting against a legitimate and democratic government it must befall that the LNA is a terrorist organisation. Russia is openly abetting it.

WAGNER GROUP

Wagner is a mercenary organisation founded in 2014. Mercenaries are illegal in Russia. But Wagner existed openly and shared bases with the Russian Military. Wagner named itself a ‘private military company.’ Mercenary organisations and activities are against Russian law. But the Russian State has permitted Wagner to operate openly for years. In 2023 Wagner was so brazen as to register as a legal entity in St Petersburg and say its activities are hiring planes and vehicles. In fairness, it does this. There is just the small matter of international terrorism as a side hassle.

Wagner fought in Libya, the Central African Republic, Syria, Mali, Mozambique, and Ukraine. Many Wagner mercenaries have been withdrawn from other zones and dispatched to Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin is known as Putin’s chef. The caterer made a fortune through restaurants but also through Wagner. Prigozhin spent several years incarcerated in the USSR for robbery. They say you can tell a lot about a man by the company that he chooses. Once again, this former hotdog salesman is the sort of man that Putin promotes despite Putin’s courts awarding extremely harsh sentences of 9.5 years for misdemeanours such as the possession of a small amount of medically prescribed cannabis oil.

Wagner has carried out several massacres of civilians. Prigozhin even boasted on TV that when one of his men deserted and was caught the man was beaten to death with a sledgehammer and the murder was filmed. The film has been broadcast. Wagner Group was so proud of this ritual murder that it sent a video documenting its brutality to the European Parliament. This is the sort of man whom Putin chooses as a friend.

Mr Priogozhin was filmed in Russian prisons seeking to recruit criminals to Wagner. He also said on Russian TV that this is what he is doing. There is no limit on what sort of man will be released in return for military service. If a man is in prison for murder, rape, burglary, torture or kidnapping it is no surprise that he commits these crimes when released and armed by Wagner Group which is effectively a branch of the Russian Military only without discipline.

The very existence of mercenaries is contrary to international law. That Russia has allowed the mercenary activity to take place on its territory is a breach of international law.

Mr Prigozhin is a prime example of the sort of shady character whom Putin likes to associate with. Prigozhin won the contract to provide St Petersburg schools with food. Many children suffered food poisoning from the meals he served. But the city council did not dare take the contract away from him. It is unhealthy to irk a mafia down with a private army at his back.

Prigozhin has provided ration packs to the Russian Army. Some of them were issued in 2022 and expired in 2015. Soldiers either went hungry or got food poisoning. This is a domestic crime. It also made it even more likely that hungry Russian soldiers would steal food from Ukrainian civilians.

Wagner Group is an example of the blatant and shameless lying by the Russian regime and its acolytes. For years the Russia State said it had no connection with Wagner despite a mountain of irrefragable evidence proving otherwise. Mr Prigozhin also publicly said that he never had any connection with Wagner Group whatsoever. But in 2022 he went on television to boast that he is in fact the head of Wagner Group.

Prigozhin ran the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg since at least 2016. This interfered in the US election by spreading misinformation. Yevgeny Prigozhin later bragged on TV that he had done this.

In January 2023 Wagner Group formally registered itself as a public limited stock company in St Petersburg. That a mercenary organisation can openly proclaim itself speaks volumes about the arrant lawlessness of Putin’s criminal regime. Moreover, Wagner Group had the effrontery to say its activities are only about ‘training, management consultancy, leasing road vehicles and aircraft.’

As President Putin has allowed Wagner to exist and paid for its services from Russian Government funds, Putin is accountable for the crimes committed by Wagner.

Wagner Group has killed its own men without trial for allegedly deserting in Ukraine and refusing to fight there. This is murder even under Russian law.

GEORGIA

Russia under Putin has illegally occupied two regions of Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia launched a war of aggression against Georgia in 2008 under President Dmitry Medvedev. Putin was prime minister at the time and therefore bears some responsibility. The illegal occupation and intermittent fighting persisted during the presidencies of V v Putin. The Russian illegal occupation forces were touted by the Kremlin as peacekeepers. This was a flagrant and absurd lie since peacekeepers can only be authorised by the UN Security Council. A criminal cannot be a police officer.

The invasion and occupation of Georgia is a crime against peace. Russia has aggressed Georgia. Individuals can be found guilty of the crime of aggression as they were in Nuremberg.

MOLDOVA

Under Putin, the Russian Federation has illegally occupied Transnistria which is Moldovan sovereign soil. Transnistria is a huge criminal entrepot.

FAMILY

Putin’s son-in-law was able to buy a state company for an infinitesimal fraction of its true value.

CORRUPTION

V V Putin has always had a modest salary. He has been shown to wear watches worth several times his annual salary. His unexplained wealth is proof in itself of corruption. How else can he have amassed such riches? If these watches were gifts, they were not disinterested. Who would give a president an extremely expensive watch altruistically? Moreover, President Putin has a palace by the Black Sea which is formally owned by the FSB. Hundreds of millions of USD were spent on it but it exists for him. One of his pet oligarchs decided to take one for the team and claim to own it. V V Putin also had hundreds of millions of USD stashed away in bank accounts in Panama held under the names of his cronies such as a well-known musician.

The anti-corruption movement in Russia labelled Putin the tsar of corruption. The Anti-Corruption Foundation so enraged Putin that he had it legally designated a ‘terrorist organisation’ despite not being able to link it to a single act of violence. It is richly ironic given that the Putin regime is itself perhaps the largest terrorist organisation in the world. The head of the now-defunct Anti-Corruption Foundation, Alexey Navalny, is gravely ill in prison serving a lengthy sentence on trumped-up charges. It is probable that he shall die from wilful neglect if not poisoning.

BELARUS

President Lukashenko’s dictatorship has survived chiefly thanks to support from the Putin regime. Cutting the price of oil and gas kept the sanctions-struck regime alive. The FSB has assisted the Belarusian KGB. Putin is therefore complicit in the widespread use of torture by the Belarusian Police and KGB against peaceful demonstrators.

The Lukashenko regime is guilty of the abetment of the illegal war against Ukraine.

The Russian Stated backed Belarus’ hijacking of a Ryanair flight in 2021.

CONCLUSION

The applicability of international law to V V Putin is patent. The malignity of the regime and its ultra-aggression cannot be tolerated. The Russian Federation gratingly and sanctimoniously asserted in the noughties that adherence to international law was the core of its foreign policy. Russia’s wanton disregard for international law is therefore hypocrisy of the very highest order.

The notion of trying a head of state is not novel. King Richard II was tried. King Charles-I was put on trial. King Louis XVI stood trial in 1792. All three of these monarchs were found guilty. However, they were all tried by their own people.

The Treaty of Versailles called for the Kaiser of Germany to be arraigned before an international tribunal ‘’for a supreme offence against international morality’’. In the end, the Netherlands gave him asylum and he lived out the remainder of his life in peace and luxury.

Other heads of state have been indicted for the same crimes that Putin has been accused of. Several former heads of state have stood trial for such crimes, and some have been convicted. Hissein Habre, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Herman Goring and Charles Taylor have all stood trial. They were all (except Saddam Hussein) tried by international tribunals. It may be observed that these heads of state who have been tried by national or international tribunals down the centuries have hailed from Europe, from Africa and the Middle East. This is indicative of the broad international acceptance of the legal principle that a former head of state can stand trial.

Now President Putin can invoke sovereign immunity. This is partly why he is so eager to cling to office. He realises that relinquishment of the presidency will probably result in even his handpicked successor turning against him. There are countless Russians who have every reason to lust for vengeance against Putin. However, some heads of state have been arraigned whilst still claiming to be current heads of state. These include King Charles I, King Louis XVI of France and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

It was the Soviet jurist Aron Trainin who suggested creating the crime of aggression. Therefore, obeying international law is incumbent on Russia more than any other country. As Russia is waging an aggressive war under the presidency of V V Putin this means that President Putin and his acolytes are guilty.

In 1943 the Moscow Declaration was issued by the USSR and other sovereign states. It proclaimed that condign justice would be meted out to war criminals. It is by Moscow’s own standard that the Putin regime may be brought to the bar of international justice.

Russia’s precursor state the USSR voted for the creation of the Nuremberg International Military Criminal Tribunal. Indeed, the USSR was only one of four countries to have judges on the same. The USSR had a role in creating the International Military Criminal Tribunal for war crimes in the Far East. Moreover, the USSR conducted such trials in areas of Eastern Europe that it occupied. It also voted for the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Tribunal for Rwanda. Therefore, it is logical and just that the same principles be applied to Russia that it applied to the citizens of other states.

Such laws most certainly apply to Russia because Russia played such a major role in shaping international law in this area. In the 19th century, it was at the instigation of Russia that international conferences were held to frame conventions about the laws of war. It, therefore, behoves Russia above all to adhere to the laws that Russia itself had such a major part in fashioning. Moreover, the Soviet Union was one of the prime movers behind the second Geneva Convention of 1949. The Geneva Convention is written in Russian, English and French will all three languages being equally authoritative. The Russian Federation wraps itself in the Soviet Flag. The Flag of the USSR is prominently displayed at Victory Day celebrations in Russia. Russia underscores that it is the principal successor state of the USSR. It jealously guards its position on the UN Security Council which the USSR previously held. Therefore, the Russian Federation is indisputably bound by the conventions that the USSR signed and ratified.

The Russian Federation is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that founded the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC would therefore not have jurisdiction over him. However, other courts would be the apposite forum in which to try him.

The Russian Federation has ratified the Paris Pact for the Renunciation of War (1928). This is also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. The USSR was the state that signed it, but Russia inherited the Soviet jurisprudential patrimony. Russia has never renounced this. It was for breaches of the Kellogg Briand Pact that several Nazi war criminals were found guilty of the crime of aggression at Nuremberg.

The Soviet Union helped to draw up the London Statute which created the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. The USSR was so keen to be involved that the court’s official headquarters was in Soviet-controlled East Berlin even though the trials were actually held in the US-controlled zone of Germany. As the USSR was eager to participate in the trial it is right that the state that boasts of its succession to the USSR is adjudged according to the principles laid down at Nuremberg and in the London Statute.

The Statute of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal defined the crime of genocide. The USSR had a major hand in framing this definition. Therefore, it behoves the Russian Federation almost more than any other state to abide by its own avowed legal standards. There is also a UN convention that Russia has signed and ratified prohibiting the crime of aggression and providing for the punishment of the said crime.

There was some doubt about the Nuremberg Trials. Were matters of war and peace justifiable? It has been universally accepted that they are. Russian judges in the ICJ and other courts have ruled that such issues come within the purview of the international courts. It was argued nulla poena nullem crimen sine lege in 1945. But it is now universally accepted that international law expressly provides against the threatening, planning, preparation and waging of an aggressive war. There can be no argument of no ex post facto anymore. The Russian State launched its war of aggression with the foreknowledge of the criminality of the said war.

The Nuremberg Charter stated that individuals and not sovereign states would be held accountable for breaches of international law. Once again, the doyens of the Russian State shall be held to the same standard that have held others to. Its applicability is unarguable. The said charter was declaratory of crimes against humanity being crimes which can be judged by an international tribunal even though they are already crimes according to domestic law. Since the German State broke its own laws but failed to bring its leadership to book so an international tribunal can perform this duty when the German courts showed a dereliction of this prerogative.

The Nuremberg Trails proved that acts of state can be illegal. It is no defence to say that a crime was committed pour raison d’etat. The bench at Nuremberg held that conspiracy to commit crimes against peace is a crime in and of itself. This was used to convict industrialists and propagandists. The Russian media has been co-opted as part of the Russian war machine.

As with Nuremberg various organisations can be declared to be criminal. These would include the Wagner Private Military Company which should be illegal under Russian law anyway since it is a mercenary outfit, and such entities are explicitly prohibited under Russian criminal law. Moreover, the GRU (Main Intelligence Administration) could be declared criminal. The GRU is military intelligence and it carried out the murders of Russian dissidents abroad and foreign citizens abroad. The FSB (Federal Security Service) should also be branded illegal inasmuch as it has committed numerous murders and countless acts of torture in Russia as well as terrorism in Russia’ and near abroad. The SVR (External Intelligence Service) would also need to be proclaimed an illegal and criminal organisation for its crimes abroad. The SVR is the least criminal as its activities are principally espionage and seldom slaying. However, it expedites the commission of crimes by the other criminal bodies detailed hereinbefore.

The gravamen of the case against Putin and his confederates is that they knowingly, illegally levied an aggressive war against unoffending sovereign states. As was held at Nuremberg, a ‘’war of aggression contains the accumulated evil of the whole’’. That is because it is through such a war that war crimes and crimes against humanity principally occur.

At the opening of the Nuremberg Trial, US Chief Prosecutor Robert H Jackson reminded that court that throughout history even the most bellicose nations ‘’recognised some limitation to the savagery of warfare.’’ Therefore, the USSR and now the Russian Federation is legally limited in what they can do in a war.

The Nuremberg Trial also established that propaganda for war is also a war crime. The Russian regime has almost total control of the media in Russia. For decades Moscow has propagandises its wars of aggression against Moldova, Georgia and now Ukraine. Much of the media in Russia have acted as enablers and evangelists for Russia’s war crimes.

The USSR took part in the International Tribunal for the Far East (commonly called the Tokyo War Crime Trial). Soviet judges sat on the bench, voted on guilt and helped to award sentences. Russia has therefore inherited this legal legacy and shall be judged by its own avowed standards.

The Tokyo War Crimes trial found that command responsibility exists. Some of the Class A war criminals were convicted on the basis that when they became cognizant of men under their command committing war crimes on a large scale, they took no action to prevent, punish or deter these crimes. These men were found guilty despite it not being averred that they ordered these felonies to be committed. Moreover, when a man was found to have been ordered to commit a crime and he did, so this was not held to be exculpatory.

The United Nations including the Soviet Union passed a Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This is most certainly applicable to the Russian Federation. As Russia is slaying huge numbers of civilians on purpose because of nationality, ethnicity and language this most definite genocide.

The United States of America has legislation that permits the prosecution of people who commit crimes that take place in the US of A even if the accused has never set foot in the country. President Putin has been to the USA on several occasions. Putin’s crimes such as defrauding the American people in relation to the 2016 election took place in the United States even though some of the criminous activity took place in Russia. There are numerous other crimes that he can be charged with in the US in relation to the theft of money from the Russian people that was then used to buy assets in America.

Belgium, Spain and several other countries have had statutes since the 1990s allowing for international jurisdiction with regard to crimes against humanity. Legal proceedings in absentia could be initiated against Putin and his co-conspirators.

Many of the crimes that Putin has committed cannot currently be proven to a criminal standard. That is because Russia suffers under a grossly oppressive and unjust government. It criminalises telling the plain truth. The regime tells the most barefaced lies almost incessantly. It takes great pains to conceal the truth; the prevent access to documents and other materials. Putin has induced terror in his population through the murder of tens of thousands of his opponents in Russia, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden.

Mr V. V. Putin ought to be branded hostis humani generis. His crimes against humanity are egregious for their profligacy, grossness and shamelessness. He is surely the worst international war crime of recent decades.

Putin ought to be tried before an international tribunal for the supreme offences against domestic and international law. As the death penalty is not recognised in international law then the only fair sentence would be reclusio perpetua.

The author is a political analyst from the UK and the views expressed in this article are his own. He can be watched on YouTube: George from Ireland