Here’s what the ICC can actually do about Putin’s war crimes
Vox – The ICC may offer a path to hold Russia accountable, but it has plenty of limitations“… The bombing of a train station in Ukraine where many were gathered to evacuate. The murder of countless civilians in Bucha and other areas. As evidence of Russian atrocities against Ukraine builds, so do calls to bring the perpetrators to justice — including from US President Joe Biden, who recently said Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes. “You saw what happened in Bucha,” Biden told reporters on Monday.
“We have to gather the information … and we have to get all the detail so this can be an actual, have a war crimes trial,” Biden said, calling Putin “a war criminal.” While it’s possible to try war crimes in national courts, investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) are already working in Ukraine to gather and vet evidence, and a number of nations have already referred the case to the global court, signaling a strong push to bring such crimes to trial.
But it’s not as simple as filing a case at a courthouse; there are practical and political limits to what the ICC can do in any of the crimes it investigates and prosecutes. Among those challenges, in this case, is the fact that neither Russia nor Ukraine is a party to the ICC, although Ukraine recognizes the court’s jurisdiction, so the court can prosecute those responsible for atrocity crimes committed in Ukraine…”
Kremlin supporters claim WWIII has been triggered by the sinking warship as brutal revenge is launched
Russians have claimed World War III has been triggered by the sinking of its Black Sea warship as it launches brutal revenge for the Ukrainian victory.
Facial Recognition Goes to War - The New York Times – “Services that put a name to a face, including Clearview AI, are being used to identify Russian soldiers, living or dead, and to verify that travelers in Ukraine are who they claim…Identifying dead soldiers and notifying their families is part of a campaign, according to a Telegram post by the Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov, to break through to the Russian public the cost of the conflict and to “dispel the myth of a ‘special operation’ in which there are ‘no conscripts’ and ‘no one dies,’” he wrote. Images from conflict zones, of slaughtered civilians and soldiers left behind on city streets turned battlefields, have become more widely and instantaneously available in the social media era. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has shown graphic images of attackson his country to world leaders in making his case for more international aid. But beyond conveying a visceral sense of war, those kinds of images can now offer something else: a chance for facial recognition technology to play a significant role. Critics warn, however, that the tech companies could be taking advantage of a crisis to expand with little privacy oversight, and that any mistakes made by the software or those using it could have dire consequences in a war zone…”
I’ve featured storm chasing photographer Mike Olbinski’s work here on kottke.org pretty frequently. His latest video celebrates a decade of capturing haboobs (dust storms). Here’s a haboob primer