CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

PETR VÁLEK CYIL 14 (2023) Federation as a result of its aggression against Ukraine. The other relevant international organizations have been unable to take such decisions either for legal obstacles (UN), or political reasons (OSCE). Second, there are not many precedents in history when a member of an international organization had been expelled. 6 The closest example is perhaps the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations following its invasion of Finland in 1939. Third, such expulsion has never before happened in the history of the Council of Europe itself. The closest this organization got to such a moment was after the colonels’ coup d’état in Greece on April 21, 1967. However, at the historic session of the Committee of Ministers on December 12, 1969, Greece prevented its suspension and possible expulsion by announcing its withdrawal. 7 It remains to be said that the Russian diplomacy failed to demonstrate the “procedural smartness” of the Greek colonels’regime, as it submitted a note verbale claiming withdrawal only on March 15, 2022, when the procedure of Article 8 of the Statute of the Council of Europe had already been triggered. 2. Process Leading to the Establishment of the Register of Damage As for the legal consequences of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, it has been clear from day one of the invasion that there are two main lines of responsibility. The first one is the individual criminal responsibility of the Russian political and military leadership for the crimes under international law. The central role in an effort to put this responsibility into practice has the ICC when it comes to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. The investigations is still ongoing, but the ICC finally issued, on March 17, 2023, the first arrest warrants against Mr. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, and Mrs. Maria Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, for war crimes of unlawful deportation and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation 8 . The majority of these crimes, however, will be most likely prosecuted before the domestic courts of Ukraine. The most pressing question from my point of view is, how to deal with the perpetrators of the crime of aggression against Ukraine. This includes not just the political and military leadership of the Russian Federation, but also the one of Belarus, since - based on Article 8bis para. 2(f) of the Rome Statute (as amended in Kampala) 9 - they also bear their share of responsibility for this crime of aggression. Unfortunately, the ICC has no jurisdiction over this case. During my informal discussions with different legal advisors on this subject, I have heard an opinion - following the issuance of the arrest warrants by the ICC – that it will suffice, if Mr. Putin appears one day before the ICC for war crimes. The justice would be thus achieved, in a similar way, as in the case of Al Capone who was in the end not convicted for 6 For the Czech and Slovak readers, it is worth noting that Czechoslovakia was compelled to withdraw from the International Monetary Fund in 1954. The process leading towards the “compelled withdrawal”, i.e., de facto expulsion, is described on the website of the International Monetary Fund: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/ display/book/9781451939118/ch03.xml?language=en. 7 LEUPRECHT, P. The Greek crisis – 1967–1969, Fighting a dictatorship in the “homeland of democracy”, in: Europe: A Human Enterprise, 30 Stories for 70 Years of European History 1949-2019 , Strasbourg 2019, pp. 31–36. 8 See the website of the ICC: https://www.icc-cpi.int/situations/ukraine. 9 Article 8bis para. 2(f) of the Rome Statute: “(f) The action of a State in allowing its territory, which it has placed at the disposal of another State, to be used by that other State for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third State;”. This part of the Kampala Amendments came from the UNGA resolution 3314 (XXIX), Definition of Aggression, adopted on December 14, 1974.

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