PLEASE DON’T CONFUSE THE CONFUSION

March 17, 2023 -Durt Fibo at Der Koolschrank

Beginning some hours ago, after today’s International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, some news sites are publishing their own statements of outrage that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN HRC) Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine (a different entity than the ICC), said during a press conference on 16 March that the Commission’s investigation into human rights violations in Ukraine has not found evidence that Russia committed genocide.

This is a peculiar approach for those outlets, since the report released on Wednesday (March 15) summarized the Commission’s findings thusly: “Russian authorities have committed a wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in various regions of Ukraine, many of which amount to war crimes”.

In fact, when asked about encasing the Ukraine inquiry in the single classification of genocide, the Commission’s Chair, Erik Møse said that “there are some aspects which may raise questions with respect to that crime…but we have not yet put in any conclusion here.” The “here” he speaks of is the Commission’s ‘Advance Unedited Version’ of its formal report, which consists of 18 pages detailing Russia’s war crimes quite comprehensively, and be can be read here: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coiukraine/A_HRC_52_62_AUV_EN.pdf