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Topic:

Crimes Against Humanity

Country:

Russia

Issue:

Escalation

Article ID:

81

Title:

Putin’s latest war crimes risk all-out war with Nato

Author:

Tom Sharpe

Date:

September 30, 2024

Source:

The Telegraph (UK)

Reference:

Summary:

Quotes:

During a recent Nato exercise off the coast of Bulgaria, allied aircraft reported sightings of more than 100 mines in the Black Sea. With his navy now driven back into the eastern Black Sea, Vladimir Putin is attempting to use mines to restrict or cut off Ukrainian grain exports. In a flagrant violation of international law, he is using drifting mines: and worse still, he cavalierly risks violating the territorial waters of Nato nations... The Hague Convention in particular states that drifting mines must render themselves safe after no more than one hour adrift and moored mines must render safe if they break loose from their mooring. In general, mines, like other classes of weapon, must not be used in indiscriminate attacks on civilians and/or neutrals: this often means that if you lay a field of mines you have to announce where it is. Unfortunately, however, these rules only apply to us. None of our adversaries, potential or actual, cares one jot for them. Russia didn’t sign up to the Hague Convention and is highly unlikely to accept the Chatham House notion that it has “acquired the status of customary international law thus making it binding on all states”. Enemies like Iran and Russia deploy mines freely, including purpose-designed long lived drifters, deny they’ve done it, and then watch the results come in from a safe distance... Russia’s Black Sea mining campaign is not just a war crime: it isn’t just a vicious attempt at weaponising starvation by cutting off one of the world’s major suppliers of grain, though it is both those things.

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