Putin's arrest is possible, but the U.S. must play its part - former PM Brown

He wrote about this for the Guardian.

A new public movement asking for Russian President Vladimir Putin's trial for war crimes shows an increase in the need for justice for Ukrainians. Already, 2 million people have signed a petition demanding that the Russian dictator be prosecuted. Also, more than 500,000 people have already called on South African authorities to imprison Putin if he comes to their country ahead of the August BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in Johannesburg. 

Former British prime minister notes, Russia insists that Putin will attend the BRICS meeting, while a special government commission appointed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has concluded that Putin's presence would violate not only international law but also South African law, and it encourages the Russian leader not to attend.

Running the Arrest Putin campaign with the military counteroffensive increases the pressure on the leader and his entourage, who now know they are persona non grata on most continents and can be arrested if they leave Russia. 

Earlier this year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) presented the first evidence to justify the arrests, showing that Russia has abducted thousands of Ukrainian children. War crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated, including rape, torture, mutilation, and indiscriminate bombing of innocent civilians. The question is which charge will most likely result in a conviction. Evidence of war crimes must be acquired in a way that explicitly links Putin to the atrocities, which may require years of meticulous investigation.

“However, the charge of aggression is provable by reference to the clear evidence of the decisions made to occupy Ukrainian territory. While the ICC does not have the power to charge Putin with this foundational crime, a special tribunal, modelled on the court set up at Nuremberg to try Nazi war criminals, could do so,” the former UK prime minister reported. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week proposed two options for creating a special tribunal to bring the crime of Russian aggression to justice: a tribunal based on a multilateral treaty under which a group of countries, such as the Council of Europe, accept to act together; or a special hybrid court based on both Ukraine's domestic crime of aggression and international law.

Such a tribunal, which Russia would reject in the UN Security Council, might be constituted by a majority vote of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly, which could accuse Putin of preparing the invasion of Ukraine since 2014, when his soldiers occupied Crimea.

August will be a turning point, Brown assumes. Putin either attends the BRICS summit, risking arrest, or stays away, exposing his fear of arrest. Whatever happens, a line will be crossed.

“The next stage of the campaign to put Putin behind bars will then require upfront American engagement. Joe Biden has said he favours Putin’s arrest but the US still shies away from bringing a special tribunal into being. We have to remind them that it is not enough to will the ends: we have to will the means,” Gordon Brown concluded.