The consequences — and clarity — of calling Putin a 'war criminal'

"Survived Hitler. Murdered by Putin."

So tweeted Ukraine's foreign minister, describing the death of Borys Romanchenko, a 96-year-old survivor of four Nazi concentration camps, killed when his apartment building caught fire after being shelled by Russian forces in what the diplomat called "an unspeakable crime."

This crime — and so many other atrocities in Russia's illegal, immoral invasion of Ukraine — are indeed unspeakable. But some, including President Joe Biden, are finding their voice about the perpetrator, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Biden recently called a "war criminal."

That appellation is "unacceptable and unforgivable," Putin's spokesman said, apparently missing the fact that it's Putin's brutality in Ukraine — and before that, in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, let alone within Russia — that the world should find unacceptable and unforgivable.

Unfortunately, however, Putin's crimes have generally been accepted and forgiven with relatively feckless sanctions that amounted to slaps on the wrist, creating an environment where invading Ukraine looked like a logical risk for Putin, even if it meant possible war crimes.

Biden was "speaking from his heart, and speaking from what he's seen on television," Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said after Biden's off-the-cuff comment.

Off-the-cuff doesn't mean off-the-rails, however. This wasn't the gaffe-prone president, but a leader profoundly affected like everyone else by uncensored images of the slaughter of innocents on the street, in maternity wards, and in theaters with the word "children" written in Cyrillic on top, among scores of other "unspeakable" crimes that must not go unspoken.

"It's important to understand this horrific bombardment and destruction is seen on people's phones and television screens; Americans from all walks of life are watching the destruction of Ukraine right now by the Russian military," said Daniel Balson, Amnesty International USA's Europe and Central Asia advocacy director. "When world leaders speak, they respond to public pressure and international opprobrium. That's what's really driving this set of circumstances we're seeing here.

"It's critical that world leaders, the U.S. and its allies, as well as other countries that are not American allies — by simply the standards of human suffering in Ukraine — speak out and say these types of crimes cannot be tolerated" and "require justice."

But justice is a complex process when it comes to international institutions. And sometimes it doesn't come at all, or too late to address the crimes in real time. Just Tuesday, for instance, the State Department officially accused Myanmar of committing genocide against its Muslim Rohingya population. It's the right call, but the brutality peaked previously, and while there's still repression and reason to proceed, its impact is tempered by the timing.

And despite the ample evidence already available in real time in Ukraine, holding Putin and other Kremlin criminals to account is far from automatic, according to an analysis from the Economist, which states that both the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Human Rights Council are opening investigations, and a case has already reached the U.N.'s Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice. (The Russian government recognizes the ICJ, but not the ICC.)

There "are reasons war-crimes trials take years," said Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the International Crisis Group's U.S. Program. Before joining the think tank, Finucane worked with the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, tasked at times to analyze potential war crimes. "These statements by the executive branch do not represent a decision by a court. But they can be at least useful in clarifying the views" of it.

Yet the clarity clearly comes with risks.

"I think we all feel a moral outrage of what's taking place in Ukraine," Finucane said. "The question is whether or not these statements are likely to be helpful or harmful on balance, and there's a risk that such terminology could reinforce Russian perceptions that the U.S. is pursuing regime change, which could increase the risk of escalation of the conflict."

Targeting civilians deliberately, Michael E. O'Hanlon, the senior fellow and director of research in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, said, "is a war crime," adding that "Putin has almost surely authorized that within Ukraine." Biden, he said in an e-mail exchange, "may even have concrete signals intercepts documenting it."

But O'Hanlon doubts that the administration is "in a position to prove that he committed war crimes in a specific, criminal sense." And, he ominously added, "Things could get much worse with the use of chemical or even nuclear weapons. I'd probably have held off on the war crimes accusation, since this is still a person whom we likely need to negotiate with, and since what has happened to date, however tragic, is not nearly as bad as what it could become."

O'Hanlon said that Biden's blunt assessment "could be interpreted as signaling a harder line in Washington and a greater proclivity to help on the part of the United States. After all, we still debate whether we should have bombed the Nazi death-camp railroads or stopped the Rwanda genocide. When you start throwing around terms like war criminal, it changes expectations."

Linguistic and legal precision are predicates for holding war criminals to justice. No one knows that better than Dr. Ellen Kennedy, the executive director of World Without Genocide at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, who has dedicated her career to advocating for justice for victims of atrocities wherever they occur. An expert in the intricacies of international justice, Kennedy concurs with scholars like O'Hanlon and Finucane on the potential strategic consequences of accusing Putin. But she also thinks there's room for the moral clarity of calling out perpetrators in real time, in real words, as Biden did.

"I believe that these words have great power," Kennedy said. "Not only in demonizing appropriately the perpetrators of those crimes but honoring in some way the victims and the victims' survivors by saying, 'We see you, we understand the enormity that's there.'"

There, in Ukraine, to be sure. But also, the enormity of the problem worldwide, which often doesn't galvanize global attention the way Russia's invasion has. Referring to the Rohingya and the Uyghurs in China among other victims, Kennedy said that "we are so, so globally shamed by our failure for all these atrocities that have gone on."

And yet "We have to begin to take a stand somewhere," Kennedy said. "I'm fully embracing the global mandate that we must stand up for Ukraine. Perhaps this will inspire people who are standing up for this atrocity to being thinking about some of the other atrocities as well."

That's happening at the State Department. Monday's designation of genocide in Myanmar was followed by Wednesday's official declaration that "war crimes have been committed by Putin's forces in Ukraine."

In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited "credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities" that left "thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded."

Including one Borys Romanchenko, who escaped the 20^th century's worst dictator only to fall victim to one vying to be this century's worst.

John Rash is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. The Rash Report can be heard at 8:10 a.m. Fridays on WCCO Radio, 830-AM. On Twitter: @rashreport.