Talk:War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine/Archive 16

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No quarter

On 24 March a fellow user added some contents and sources on "no quarter" [2], which were first freely rewritten [3] ("more precisely") and then, on second thoughts, entirely removed [4]. I opened a discussion No quarter order and EJIL:Talk! as reliable source. The sources were (and still are) excellent: in particular EJIL:Talk! is a prestigious academic outlet. No one joined the discussion and the text was not restored.

However, the OHCHR recently stated [5] (at para. 105):

OHCHR also documented three incidents where Ukrainian servicemen and one incident where Russia serviceman made public threats of giving no quarter to Russian prisoners of war, which would constitute a war crime.

I think we should publish the statement by OHCHR and also recover the old text, which is the following:

On 2 March, after the shelling of residential areas, Ukraine's Special Operations Forces announced that Russian artillerymen will no longer be taken prisoner, but immediately killed. Such a statement could be interpreted as a no quarter order, which is prohibited by customary international law. The killing of surrendered enemies would also be in violation of international humanitarian law.

Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:46, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

All you need to do is go to EJIL's About: submission guidelines page. It's self-explanatory. It's not the same as a peer-reviewed journal, but it's at least one expert's oversight of only credentialed contributors.

The quotations you provide are an excellent example of the frustrating subtleties of primary sources. The OHCHR text is ambiguous as to whether the threat of no quarter or carrying it out is a war crime, so it's important that the blog clarifies this. The archived discussion somewhat misses the point -- whether it's a Facebook post or written on a pig's butt doesn't matter if it's considered reasonable that some number of combatants from either side think it's a serious/legitimate order or threat. (A threat is a crime in laws of war typically because it provokes reciprocity, afaiu). SamuelRiv (talk) 00:23, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Again, this is just a ridiculous claim someone made in social media, even though it was mentioned later in a couple of other sources. Did anyone actually followed this idea? We do not know. Was it implemented on a large scale? No. Was it covered in many RS? No. This is precisely the stuff we should NOT include. My very best wishes (talk) 20:01, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

No, this is not suitable for this article and it is, once again an attempt to invent Ukrainian “war crimes” (sic) to “balance” the numerous, horrific and well documented war crimes committed by Russians. Volunteer Marek 02:06, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

How is a EJIL Talk (whose submission criteria I linked) post by Sajeed Bagheri anything but an RS on what is a potential war crime? I'm sorry, maybe he doesn't have nearly the immense qualifications of international law jurisprudence that a village mayor interviewed by a Sky News journalist has. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:31, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Did I say that EJIL Talk wasn’t an RS? No? Then why are you strawmanin’? Volunteer Marek 03:57, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

What's your issue then? Is it that nobody actually followed through on a "no quarter" order? You do realize that (somewhat uniquely) in international law actual injury is not necessarily required for something to be a war crime, and specifically for "no quarter" it doesn't have to be carried out (citation 130). Of course the interpretation of whether it's reasonably that a soldier on either side would take that "no quarter" declaration seriously as a threat is something that people who actually know this stuff should debate. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:26, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

In the last 24 hours:

• Videos of Russian soldiers castrating Ukrainian POWs emerge.
• Russia uses cluster munitions to attack civilians at a bus stop, murdering at least half a dozen.
• Russian forces massacre 40 Ukrainian POWs to cover up evidence of torture, murder and mutilation.

And this is just in the last 24 hours.

And you want to argue how some twitter comment or something from March by Ukrainians, about a thing that was never done, just absolutely must be included in this article.

WP:UNDUE was created *exactly* for these kinds of situations. Volunteer Marek 17:42, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

In order to apply WP:UNDE we should construe war crimes as "viewpoints", which is questionable: whose viewpoints are they? a viewpoint of... the minority, a "fringe" war crime? it doesn't make sense. However, even if we were to apply WP:UNDUE here, it would imply that we shouldn't give this incident as much of or as detailed a description as more widely reported war crimes. Which is reasonable: we shouldn't report this incident in the lead section, and we shouldn't write an overly-detailed description of it. But WP:UNDUE cannot justify the suppression of a "point of view", that is, delating a war crime which is described as such by reliable independent secondary sources just because "compared to the things the Russians are doing, that war crime is not that important". War crimes in Ukraine are a notable topic and this incident falls within the scope of the topic. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:02, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I see absolutely no relevance in your statement to the actual issue. Oh! And today we have the Russian Embassy in UK openly advocating for murder of Ukrainian POWs, in plain sight. Why aren’t you arguing to put that in? Volunteer Marek 22:46, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Please provide a source or directly edit the article instead of enquiring about my motives. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:15, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I’m not asking for your motives I’m asking you why you aren’t following the WP:UNDUE policy. Volunteer Marek 00:26, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what you are asking me, but I know what I've just asked you: could please provide a source? "Russian Embassy in UK openly advocating for murder of Ukrainian POW". Thanks Gitz (talk) (contribs) 01:10, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

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@Volunteer Marek, other editors are not omniscient and aware of everything happening all over of the world at once. If you find something worth of appearing on an article, do please add it. AdrianHObradors (talk) 09:56, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Do you even have the slightest concept of why the threat of "no quarter" is such a serious war crime? If you can't detach your feelings of what should be a crime from what is, then maybe either rely completely on expert RS or just walk away from articles like these. SamuelRiv (talk) 01:22, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I’m sorry but I have no idea what you’re going on about. Volunteer Marek 10:02, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

• (Speaking only on the 1st comment on the top of this thread). I do not think anyone argue that the threat of "no quarter" is not a war crime. Of course it is. But such threat has never been officially made by the Ukrainian government. If it were, that would bring a storm of reports in numerous mainstream RS. There are no such. This is just another "fake" created by propaganda during this war. I am sure that the guys who posted this somewhere on Facebook were Ukrainians, and probably connected to Ukrainian military. But still a "fake". My very best wishes (talk) 01:35, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  What do you mean by "fake" created by propaganda? Russian propaganda or Ukrainian propaganda? Also I don't understand why do you expect that a threat such as this were officially made by the Ukrainian government. Governments have other business to attend. No quarter orders are usually given by military officials rather than by the civil authorities. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 01:41, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

In this case I mostly mean Ukrainians making propaganda. They made this Facebook post (if I remember correctly). There was a large number of various posts in social media by individuals whose claims mean nothing, but were mentioned in a few other sources for various reasons. My very best wishes (talk) 01:48, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

But do you understand that it's still a war crime? If it's propaganda for the enemy, that's a war crime. If it's propaganda for Ukrainians, that's a war crime. If it's serious, that's a war crime. If it's nobody follows it, it's still a war crime. The first jurisdiction is always domestic, however, so it's up to the Ukrainian army to prosecute. For perspective, U.S. law requires that a soldier have "effective control over subordinate groups", in which case such a threat carries a potential life sentence. (There's no sentencing guidelines for international criminal law other than mostly domestic precedent). Also, think critically here: who would it serve as propaganda for? If it were a fake, who would it serve? Same question to ask with other videos here -- lots of this stuff is poorly trained poorly supplied scared soldiers doing stupid stuff (that happens to be a serious war crime). SamuelRiv (talk) 02:40, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

There were thousands threats by various individuals in social media during this war, some of them claiming to represent various "organizations"; some of them have been discussed in news reports. So unless this is an official threat by Ukrainian government (as reflected in multiple RS), I do not think this passes the bar for inclusion. Same with incidents "documented" in a single video of unknown authorship on YouTube, or arguably in a single intercept by Ukrainian services. "Who would it serve as propaganda for?". Well, in this case, obviously, for the enemy to frighten. There could be other explanations. Maybe that was a posting by a Russian agent to discredit Ukrainian government. Who knows? Not a stuff to be included here. My very best wishes (talk) 02:55, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Congratulations on completely missing every single point. You've had ample opportunity to read up on this online in the meantime -- aren't you even the least bit curious why this is so serious and not simply one threat among "thousands"? If not, maybe this article isn't for you. SamuelRiv (talk) 03:07, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, you’re going to have to go ahead make the effort on explaining these “points” because snarky condescension only works where there’s some real substance to back it up, and I’m not seeing any of that here. Volunteer Marek 04:27, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Apparently you don't understand that your argument "WP:UNDUE prevents us from publishing Ukrainian war crimes unless they are exceptionally serious and widely covered by multiple secondary sources" - your argument is not convincing, and it's not based on policy but on an idiosyncratic reading of WP:UNDE that cannot be accepted. By the way, this is a talk page, sources matter and we need to get the facts right, so if you don't have a source about "Russian Embassy in UK openly advocating for murder of Ukrainian POW", please strike through your comment here above. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 16:19, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

First, I would appreciate it if you stopped it with these attempts at constructing strawman arguments. Just stop trying to tell me what my “political views” are or “rewriting” what my “argument” is. Second, my understanding of WP:UNDUE is perfectly fine. Here we have a comment on twitter made months ago that was of no consequence and quickly retracted and hasn’t received any coverage in sources in months. On the other hand we have horrific things like mutilation, castration, torture, murder of POWs, all well sourced. But some editors insist that we include that off hand retracted inconsequential comment that no source has discussed in months as a “Ukrainian war crime” and remove the actually horrible stuff done by Russian soldiers. YOU in particular have advocated for removal of the text on the castration of Ukrainian POWs and another editor, that *always* backs you up, has recently removed text about the murder of 40+ Ukrainian POWs murdered in a Russian prison. It’s just messed up. It’s WP:TENDENTIOUS with an exclamation mark or five.

here’s a source for the Russian embassy tweet [6]. Note that I am not saying this should go into the article. What I’m saying is that this is far worse than the off hand comment from several months ago that you want to include in the article. Volunteer Marek 17:19, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

With respect to the embassy tweet, take a look at the U.S. law example I linked above (cited for customary IHL) and tell me if you think it's in the same ballpark as the no quarter threats in question. Orders of no quarter are banned for both military and humanitarian reasons (as is the case with most rules of combat). The first modern forms of international law included protection for taking POWs. Part of the military justification is intertwined with how essential reciprocity is to enforcing the rules of war (p.120 e.g.) (see also WW2 example of no-quarter reciprocity). The other part is simply that in general militaries all agree it's better overall to take prisoners than not, and one recent threat of no quarter can make an enemy more hesitant to surrender, hence both actionable orders and threats are banned by militaries worldwide. And with regards to severity, this is defined as a grave breach of IHL ("All war grave breaches are war crimes, but not all war crimes are grave breaches.") SamuelRiv (talk) 19:24, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

YOU in particular have advocated for removal of the text on the castration of Ukrainian POWs is false. Everybody can read my comments [7] and [8] in the thread here below Talk:War_crimes_in_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Castration_of_Ukr_POW. Had I wanted to remove the section, I would have undone your edit. It's very easy because you just need to press the "undo" button in the upper right corner of the page with the diff. I'm sure you know this well because yesterday you pressed that bottom four times, plus a couple of manual reverts (User_talk:Volunteer_Marek#3RR). I say "perhaps we'd better wait a couple of days before publishing stuff about unverified videos and in any case we should say that it's unverified"; you revert and revert and revert again stuff backed by OHCHR and first-quality sources because "UNDUE". Gitz (talk) (contribs) 20:54, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

References

Castration of Ukr POW

With regard to this edit by @Volunteer Marek [9] WP:RSBREAKING says that "It is better to wait a day or two after an event before adding details to the encyclopedia, than to help spread potentially false rumors." The source says "Yahoo News cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video" so at the very least we should say the same thing, but maybe it would be better to just follow RSBREAKING and wait a couple of days when the info, which is probably genuine, will be confirmed by RS. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 11:00, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

There is almost certainly going to be a separate article on this event, given the sources, probably before I manage to finish this edit. Separately from the event itself, the viral reactions to the video are clearly notable:

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/29/video-appears-to-show-russian-soldier-castrating-ukrainian-prisoner - The Guardian - refers to Amnesty International and Bellingcat comments
• https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-castrate-torture-video-1728988 Newsweek
• https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/07/29/graphic-footage-appears-to-show-russian-fighter-castrating-ukrainian-prisoner-of-war-a78442 The Moscow Times

Whether this qualifies to be mentioned in this article gets back to editorial consensus and the issues being debated above about the wide and narrow definitions of "war crimes". It's rather difficult to see how a castration could be seen as being a military action or being unavoidable collateral damage from a proportionate military action: we don't need a source to state that. Boud (talk) 16:38, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Kyiv Post states in plain English that the event is a would-be war crime if genuine: Human rights activists emphasize that cutting off organs is the most obvious example of torture and is condemned by the world community and prohibited by the Geneva Convention. If genuine, the video and photographs are evidence of war crimes. The sentence in this article seems justified (though sources like those here are needed rather than Yahoo), and the specific article on the event, once someone creates it with proper sources and structure, is very likely to be notable and will survive any AfD. Boud (talk) 17:02, 29 July 2022 (UTC) Sorry, here's the URL for Kyiv Post + archive. Boud (talk) 17:06, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Omg, I’m not even gonna consider the argument that this isn’t a war crime or that it’s a fake video seriously. I. Just. Can’t. It’s going into this article. Period.

The things that go on this page are just mind blowing. Volunteer Marek 17:39, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I personally don't doubt that the video is genuine. However, WP:RSBREAKING is a reasonable guideline: in a few days, we'll be able to write a more accurate and "stable" description of what happened according to RS. To make one example: all the sources here above quoted have the following point in common: "the Guardian has been unable to independently verify the authenticity of the footage", "Newsweek has not independently verified the footage", "The Moscow Times is unable to independently verify the authenticity of the video", "Yahoo News cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video". What shall we write? At the very least, we should write "As of 30 July, the video has not been independently verified". I myself would add this text, but I'm already disgusted by the foreseeable reactions: "ah, the pro-Russian POV pusher!". The things that go on this page are just mind blowing. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 23:55, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Bellingcat says it appears to be authentic. As quoted by the Guardian. In English. I am going to refrain from a compare and contrast, but Bellingcat is an expert opinion, and you know the Guardian quoted them correctly Elinruby (talk) 00:51, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Danish volunteer's testimony

In regards to this edit- Volunteer Marek, what do you mean by "suitable" and "confirmed"? The citation clearly talks about the events described as in the context of a war crime. I don't see why it wouldn't be suitable for this page. Dunutubble (talk) (Contributions) 21:56, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

”Some anonymous guy said something which he heard about from someone” isn’t suitable for this article. Volunteer Marek 22:39, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

It's "a Danish soldier" interviewed by a Danish mainstream source, about his own experience. I don't see "witnessed" in the source text (disclaimer: I don't read Danish), and the Danish soldier doesn't seem to say that he saw the 18-year old being killed, but instead implies that the 18-year old was executed since they were talking the day before the 18-year old died. TV 2 (Denmark) appears to be a mainstream Danish media source.

So the wording should probably be more careful, but the source seems valid and the information seems notable. Boud (talk) 22:42, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

It’s an anonymous person relaying hearsay. Unless you can fill out some details and provide more sources, this isn’t going in. Volunteer Marek 22:44, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

The Danish soldier's identity is known to TV 2 (Denmark). Someone who understands Danish may be able to clarify if this is hearsay or if the Danish soldier is talking about his own direct knowledge. Boud (talk) 22:46, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Minimum, and let me emphasize that, minimum, here, would be to find other reputable sources. Not saying it would be sufficient, but would def be necessary. Volunteer Marek 23:11, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek, this is the statement of a Danish soldier fighting for the Ukrainian side, confirmed by a reliable source. Unless you argue that TV 2 is not a reliable source, your condition seems a bit arbitrary. You seem to be against the inclusion of the content and keep changing your argument. AdrianHObradors (talk) 10:24, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

It’s an anonymous guy relating hearsay. Seriously, are there ANY other sources here? Cuz if not, it’s obvious this is cherry picking and UNDUE. (and please don’t misrepresent what I’m saying). Volunteer Marek 10:29, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek, it is an anonymous confirmed Danish soldier fighting for Ukraine talking about his own experience as an volunteer in the Ukrainian war. Not hearsay. If anything you could argue that it is primary source information (relayed, but not verified, by a secondary source). That is an actual argument you could use. I would encourage you to think well of your arguments before posting them to minimize the time that is wasted by other editors. Also I'm sorry if I misrepresented what you're saying, could you clarify what? Thanks. AdrianHObradors (talk) 11:54, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

One more time. Is there any OTHER source here? And yes he’s reporting hearsay, and yes he is anonymous (no idea what “anonymous confirmed” is suppose to mean or why it should matter). My arguments are fine, and I would encourage you not to make condescending insulting comments which waste MY time. Volunteer Marek 17:23, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

By "anonymous confirmed" I believe AdrianHObradors means that TV 2 confirmed he was a Danish volunteer but hid his name to protect his privacy. Dunutubble (talk) (Contributions) 19:31, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek, excuse my lack of knowledge, but could you link me to the Wikipedia policy which states that multiple sources are needed and that one RS is not enough? And calling the Danish volunteer "anonymous" seems dishonest. His identity is protected by TV2, but he is a confirmed Danish volunteer of the Ukrainian army. Also I'm sorry that you felt insulted, wasn't my intention. AdrianHObradors (talk) 22:50, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

WP:REDFLAG for one. If you can find one and only source on something extraordinary and that one and only one source is an anonymous dude reporting hearsay… yeah, we’re not putting it in. Volunteer Marek 22:55, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek, thanks. I can see your point. Also, I've seen the same soldier claims to have killed in battle near 100 Russian soldiers, which makes me doubtful of his testimony. AdrianHObradors (talk) 23:17, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Really? Um, yikes. Well, that illustrates the point nicely. Volunteer Marek 00:44, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek: and @AdrianHObradors:, my understanding of the article in reference is that he never himself had said that he had killed 100 soldiers, but rather this is the statement of the Ukrainian ambassador to Denmark. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dunutubble (talk • contribs) 14:27, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't speak Danish, but the title from that article translates to Danish marksman claims to have killed close to 100 Russians in Ukraine, and later says he himself says that he has taken the lives of a number of Russian soldiers who are "in the good end of the double digits". Unless I'm missing something with the translation, it does seem to imply that he has killed close to 100 people during that war (and as of early April). AdrianHObradors (talk) 17:12, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

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Thanks Dunutubble, that is exactly what I meant. I have changed the bolding of the sentence hoping it makes it more clear. AdrianHObradors (talk) 22:43, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

References

On the scope of this article, again

We've been discussing this for ages and we never came up with a fully agreed solution. Let me try to restate the issue again using a different and more "scholarly" approach.

According to the best available academic sources there are two notions of "war crimes" circulating in international humanitarian law. The fist one comprises all acts constituting a violation of the laws or customs of war, irrespective of whether the conduct is criminal (Schwarz); all violations of international humanitarian law, regardless of whether they are criminal (Werle and F Jessberger). Let's call it "war crime lato sensu". It's the notion that we encounter in the US Army Military Manual, § 499, FM 27–10 (1956):

The term “war crime” is the technical expression for a violation of the law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. Every violation of the law of war is a war crime.

Secondly, we have the stricto sensu notion of war crimes, which is the one we encounter in our article War crime and which is - so to say - the purely legal notion of war crimes, the notion that most legal scholars follow: "a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility".

We need to choose between stricto sensu and lato sensu. So far we have followed the stricto sensu notion (with a few not fully justifiable exceptions). Had we adopted the lato sensu notion, most of the contents that you find in this sandbox would still be included in the article. Please have a look.

Once we have agreed on the notion of war crime, we need to agree on the threshold of verifiability. But that's for another discussion. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:52, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• I think such approach would be contrary to WP policies and goals. Just as on all other pages, we should not include something poorly documented (so that no one knows what had really happen, for example the video with "Torture of Russian soldiers in Mala Rohan"), and something that best available RS explicitly say was not identified as a war crime. My very best wishes (talk) 19:50, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused by the sandbox article. Why is torture or mistreatment of POWs in lato sensu?

Also, again, we absolutely should not be judging what is and isn't a war crime, but we should be able to make an editorial judgement as to who is reasonably qualified to make such distinctions (as well as to filter out WP:NONSENSE). And Mvbw -- I already showed you above that you misrepresented the source by saying "did not conclude", by linking you directly to the source, so I don't know why you keep repeating nonsense. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:50, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

The sections in the sandbox about Russian and Ukrainian POWs don't deal with torture but with ill-treatment and exposure to public curiosity. We have plenty of legal experts arguing that those episodes amount to violations of IHL; no one says that they qualify as war crimes stricto sensu. Exposure to public curiosity is not a stricto sensu war crime and torture consists in infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain - here we don't have reliable sources alleging that it was torture.

In my view the issue is: do we have good reasons for choosing the stricto sensu notion over the lato sensu notion? Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:25, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we're getting this distinction correct at all, and really it's not worth it for us to fine-grain analyze something as ridiculously nuanced as international law which has virtually zero case history (and stricto sensu seems require an estimate of whether a person is likely to be internationally prosecuted and convicted, which is simply hilarious.) Humiliating and beating up POWs is a war crime -- lato/stricto doesn't depend on severely you beat them (with one asterisk depending on something like if you're publicly caught). Now beating up your own citizens who speak Russian and are helping Russian troops? I think that could be under the territory of good ol' fashioned political purges, hate crimes, and ethnic cleansing -- possible international law violations, but afaik (could be wrong) not war crimes. (It is definitely a war crime if you harm foreign nationals of enemy states living in your country however.) SamuelRiv (talk) 00:50, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

• Re I'm not sure that we're getting this distinction correct at all, the distinction you mention is another one, different from the one I explained. I quoted the source that draw a distinction between a narrow and a broad sense of "war crime"; if you want more information on this, I'm happy to copy and paste text from the sources I quoted.
• Re stricto sensu seems require an estimate of whether a person is likely to be internationally prosecuted and convicted, there's a misunderstanding: "stricto sensu" war crimes are those that give rise to individual responsibility, and that's a normative (or legal) concept, not a predictive (sociological) concept. If you want to know what "stricto sensu" war crimes are, you just have to read Article 8 of the ICC Statute (or an analogous source of law).
• Re Humiliating and beating up POWs is a war crime it's true if you adopt the "lato sensu" notion: violation of IHL. While the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering is a "stricto sensu" war crime (torture), infliction of moderate pain and exposure to public curiosity are forbidden under IHL but arguably don't qualify as war crimes (and we don't have a source claiming that they are war crimes).
• What you say about the relevance of citizenship is not fully accurate: the war in Ukraine is not only an international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but it is also a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) between the government and the separatist forces. The ICTY in its "Tadic" judgment ruled that allegiance to a party to the conflict rather than nationality may be regarded as the crucial test in NIAC, and this doctrine is accepted by the "ICC Elements of Crime" [10], that state With respect to nationality, it is understood that the perpetrator needs only to know that the victim belonged to an adverse party to the conflict. Therefore I believe that the killing of Volodymyr Struk is a stricto sensu war crime. However, as I don't have a RS on this, I've never tried to publish it in this article. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 07:40, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

• I think one of problems here is an attempt to combine the alleged war crimes by two sides in the same page. We usually do not do that, i.e. we have something like German war crimes or Japanese war crimes. Just rename this page to Russian war crimes during the invasion of Ukraine. That would also help to make this page more focused and reduce its size. In fact, I could split this page in a few minutes, although starting 2nd page, i.e. Ukrainian war crimes during Russian invasion of Ukraine would be WP:POINTy (I would rather avoid creating any page which could be an immediate target of an AfD). My very best wishes (talk) 21:30, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

So, what would be the title? Russian war crimes during invasion of Ukraine? Someone should formally suggest it as an RfC. I do not like 2022. This is going to be beyond 2022. My very best wishes (talk) 21:51, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I think this is a productive advancement of the debate. You are basically proposing that we should stop reporting about war crimes allegedly committed by the Ukrainian army and we should deal exclusively with "Russian war crimes". I remember @Volunteer Marek expressing the same view on a couple of occasions. You're also maintaining that an article on "Ukrainian war crimes" wouldn't be notable. I suggest that you try to build a consensus on that propositions of yours (RfC is an excellent idea) and in the meanwhile you stop blocking other editors from updating the article, as you have done since the beginning of March, because that's not a collaborative attitude. Until the article's topic changes, you should let us work on the topic. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:24, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

No, you are misinterpreting my suggestion. I started new thread below to clarify it. This is just an idea at this point, and you can convince me that I am wrong (in the section below, not here). My very best wishes (talk) 00:52, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Removing faulty and incorrect text from an article is as much “working on the topic” as adding text to it. There’s no “I get to add whatever I want to an article if I call it “working”” rule on Wikipedia. Volunteer Marek 22:38, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

But the problem is that you and MVBW only add text that fits your political views (also faulty and incorrect text, [11] [12] [13]) and only remove text that doesn't fit your political views (e.g. today [14] [15]). I understand you yourself feel at unease with this way of departing from our policies and guidelines, and therefore would like to make things right by changing the topic of the article to "Russian war crimes only". But couldn't you work toward that goal opening a RfC instead of preventing others from working on an article that until now has a different subject? Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:13, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if you refrained from falsely characterizing my edits as “faulty and incorrect”, although I guess that’s a step up from outright lying about my edits (in particular those very ones you link). Volunteer Marek 00:22, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I would also appreciate it if you stopped trying to tell me what my “political views” are, trying to psychoanalyze me or trying to read my mind. Stick to content, not editors please. Volunteer Marek 00:24, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Another source on the subject of this thread:

There is also practice which does not contain the adjective "serious" with respect to violations and which defines war crimes as any violation of the laws or customs of war.[5] The military manuals and legislation of a number of States similarly do not require violations of international humanitarian law to be serious in order to amount to war crimes.
— "Customary IHL - Rule 156. Definition of War Crimes". ICRC, Customary IHL Database. Retrieved 2022-08-01.

Gitz (talk) (contribs) 08:11, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea what this is suppose to address. You’re linking to a definition of “war crime”. Great. Thanks. And? Volunteer Marek 22:57, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Did you read the title of the thread you're commenting in? Gitz (talk) (contribs) 23:30, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Another source on the subject of this thread:

The concept of ‘war crime’ may be understood in both a broad and a narrow sense. In a broad sense, it encompasses all criminal acts committed in a ‘war’ or an armed conflict, notwithstanding their character as war crimes in a narrow sense (i.e., IHL violations converted into ‘war crimes’)1 or other international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.2 In this chapter we deal with war crimes stricto sensu
— Ambos, Kai (2014). Treatise on international criminal law. Vol. 2. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-19-965792-6. OCLC 810946816.

Gitz (talk) (contribs) 01:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

References