Russia continues to demonstrate to the world that, for it, international humanitarian law is not a framework for behaviour but an obstacle that it cynically disregards. In the temporarily occupied territories, these violations have become part of everyday life.
Among such crimes is the forced recruitment of civilians from the occupied territory into the armed forces of the occupying state. This is a direct violation of human rights and international humanitarian law:
- The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War — Article 51 expressly prohibits the occupying power from forcing civilians to serve in the armed or auxiliary forces of the occupying state. Such actions are classified as a grave breach, which is equivalent to a war crime.
- The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court — Article 8 (2)(a)(v) recognises the coercion of persons under protection to serve in the armed forces of the enemy as a war crime.
In other words, forced mobilisation in the temporarily occupied territories is not only a violation of the principles of warfare, but also a criminally punishable offence of an international nature!
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Historical precedents: how international tribunals have documented and tried similar crimes
To understand the scale and consequences of such actions, it is worth referring to well-known examples where the international community has recorded and punished similar violations:
- The Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (1945–1946). This was an international court established after World War II to bring the leaders of Nazi Germany at that time to justice. In the last century, Germany mobilised the inhabitants of the occupied territories en masse into labour battalions, auxiliary structures and even military formations. The tribunal recognised this as a violation of the 1907 Hague Convention, international customary norms and a war crime. In particular, the tribunal condemned forced labour for the needs of the army, the violent deportation of men to military camps, and the mobilisation of civilians from Poland, France, the USSR and other occupied regions. The verdicts specifically emphasised that the occupier had no right to use the human resources of the controlled population for its own military purposes.
- International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). These are international criminal proceedings conducted by the tribunal in The Hague concerning crimes committed during the wars in the Balkans (1991–2001). They repeatedly considered situations where military formations of the Serbian and Republika Srpska security forces, Croatian or Bosnian units forcibly mobilised persons under their control in the occupied territories. This crime was classified as: persecution on political or ethnic grounds; unlawful imprisonment, forced labour; unlawful involvement of civilians in military operations. At that time, the court recognised that a person under occupation cannot be considered a volunteer if their choice is limited by the threat of repression, the detention of relatives, direct violence or deprivation of means of subsistence.
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Contemporary context: forced mobilisation in the occupied territories of Ukraine
We are currently observing Russia systematically repeating practices that international tribunals have already recognised as war crimes. Following its full-scale invasion, it has:
- forms “military commissariats” in temporarily occupied territories;
- forces men to join the occupying armed forces;
- uses mobilisation as a method of controlling and assimilating the population.
According to the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, more than 46,000 Ukrainians have already been forcibly mobilised by the Russians in the temporarily occupied territories. Every sixth captured Russian soldier is a Ukrainian who was conscripted under pressure in the occupied territories.
However, as we can see, historical experience shows that the fact of prolonged occupation does not exempt the aggressor from responsibility, and tribunals always take a particularly harsh view of forcing civilians to participate in war. That is why it is extremely important to effectively document such crimes. This should include:
- collecting evidence from victims and witnesses;
- identification of officials who make decisions on mobilisation;
- analysis of documents of the occupation administration;
- use of satellite and digital evidence;
- international coordination with the ICC and other legal structures.
Such mechanisms were previously key in Nuremberg and the ICTY — and remain key today.
I would like to emphasise that the forced mobilisation of the population of occupied territories is one of the most clearly defined war crimes under international law. Therefore, we reiterate that the occupying state has no right to use the inhabitants of the occupied territories in its own military operations. And those who make decisions about such mobilisation can and should be held internationally criminally responsible!
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