This editorial considers the support currently being supplied to Ukraine following Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022. Western states have provided significant aid to Ukraine in the form, inter alia, of modern weapons and training. This editorial asks whether that support is in itself a use of force in prima facie violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and customary international law. A related question that is also considered is whether NATO member states (and others) are currently exercising the right of collective self-defence in relation to their support for Ukraine.

The concept of holding commanders responsible for the behavior of their subordinates is as ancient as it is contentious. It is natural to refer to the Chinese strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu for one of the earliest expressions of the impact a commander has over the conduct of subordinates, dating back to the fifth century BCE: "When troops flee, are insubordinate, distressed, collapse in disorder, or are routed, it is the fault of the general. None of these disorders can be attributed to natural causes." The Roman statesman Cicero resounded the assertion that a commander must bear some responsibility for the transgressions of subordinates as far back as the first century BCE. Historically, various theatres of war have put to the test the question of command responsibility for crimes committed by subordinates, and judicial bodies subjected its legal implications to vehement discourse. This does not come as a surprise when one considers the high stakes involved in such criminal legal discourse where commanders face trial—and the potential loss of life or liberty—for atrocity crimes attributed to them, despite those crimes not being directly committed by the commander.

This article argues that both Russia and China will re-invigorate and expand their international espionage activities. Russia's renewed vigour in engaging in aggressive espionage campaigns is due to the current setbacks that it is facing as a result of its ill-fated invasion of Ukraine. The sanction-induced prohibitions that limit access to state-of-the-art technologies will unleash renewed enthusiasm to obtain these latest technologies by covert means, be it HUMINT and/or cyber espionage. The future robustness of China's aggressive espionage activities is projected to be fuelled by its systematic 'de-coupling' from those nations leading in science, engineering and technology,such as the United States, as well as the growing opposition to the use of developmental institutions such as the Confucius Institute and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as intelligence collection platforms. This article predicts that as Russia and China become 'outsiders', they will becoming increasingly aggressive in their espionage campaigns as pragmatic states acting in survival and developmental mindsets, and it elaborates on some of the more relevant forms of espionage employed.

This April, UN member state delegates gathered in New York to start considering the Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity at the UN General Assembly's Sixth (Legal) Committee. The meeting represented an important step in the path towards the development of an international treaty specifically on crimes against humanity. The Draft Articles were adopted by the International Law Commission (ILC) in 2019 already, after six years of discussion, but further action by states was blocked since by geopolitical wrangling in the Sixth Committee. This only changed in late 2022. It does not seem far-fetched that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier that year contributed to renewed interest in this topic and the desire to move forward.
Crimes against humanity refer to those crimes sufficiently grave as to "deeply shock the conscience of humanity" (preamble to the Draft Articles). They include, among others, murder, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, torture, persecution, rape and other forms of sexual violence, and apartheid, when knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systemic attack against a civilian population, during peace or wartime.

The decision by the United Kingdom (UK) in March 2023 to transfer depleted uranium tank shells to Ukraine provoked a fierce reaction from senior Russian political and military officials. President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would "respond accordingly, given that the collective West is starting to use weapons with a 'nuclear component'."Sergei Shoigu, Russia's Minister of Defence, claimed that the decision left "fewer and fewer steps" before a potential "nuclear collision" between Russia and the West. Given the heated rhetoric, this post assesses the legality under the law of armed conflict of the use of depleted uranium shells as a means of warfare, as well as the compatibility of the UK's decision on transfer with its obligations under international law, including disarmament law.

Russia is well known for employing hybrid warfare tactics, including the use of lawfare to achieve its aims. Those same tactics are now being used by Ukraine in its pursuit of global sanctions against Putin. This week the International Criminal Court at The Hague (ICC), the world's first permanent criminal court, issued an international arrest warrant for Russia's president Vladimir Putin and Ms Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belov, a Russian politician and the Russian Commissioner for Children. The arrest warrant alleges that both are responsible for war crimes, namely the "deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation." Such acts qualify as war crimes under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the ICC's Statute, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This development is significant in terms of its potential legal and diplomatic consequences, but also in terms of what motivated Ukraine, as a non-state party to the ICC, to accept the court's jurisdiction and allow for any investigation of crimes committed – even by the Ukrainian military.

The support neutral States are providing Russia and Ukraine has ignited a debate over neutrality. It is one of existential magnitude for Ukraine. Indeed, the survival of Kyiv in early 2022 can be attributed in significant part to external support, particularly the delivery of Javelin anti-tank systems. Later, HIMARS rocket launchers helped Ukrainian forces retake territory occupied by Russia. Western intelligence also made possible the sinking of the Russian Black Sea flagship, Moskva, and strikes on command and control facilities. And the forthcoming transfer of tanks to Ukraine will enhance the effectiveness of the anticipated Ukrainian offensive eastward. But, at the same time, Iranian drones have enabled Russia's continuing attacks, including against civilian infrastructure, throughout Ukraine, and Russia has been mounting operations from (neutral) Belarus.

What protection must be accorded prisoners of war (POWs) in international humanitarian law (IHL)? How might this protection scheme shed light on the role of personal status categories in IHL? Many of the protections accorded POWs closely track the increasingly robust fundamental guarantees accorded all conflict-related detainees. Some POW protections, though, reflect a different protective logic. Indeed, POWs are overprotected with respect to the humanitarian baseline because of special considerations of fairness, honor, and respect tightly linked to the specific requirements for POW status. This line of analysis (1) makes clear the standard of treatment for POWs; and (2) helps clarify the role that status categories play in contemporary IHL.

The Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) are two parts on the island of Cyprus, with a combined territory of 99 square miles, over which the UK exercises sovereignty. They were created by the Treaty of Establishment 1960, which is also the international agreement that granted the Republic of Cyprus its independence. The article maps out the implications of the Chagos Archipelago Advisory Opinion for the SBA. It argues that the process through which they were created disregarded the wishes of the Cypriot people and was, therefore, not in accordance with the right to self-determination.

One argument occasionally made in favour of the possibility of Russia's expulsion from the UN in its entirety – and thus from the Security Council – is that the procedure for expulsion as set out in Article 6 of the UN Charter only requires a "recommendation" from the Security Council before the General Assembly can vote on it, and the General Assembly would therefore be free to disregard that recommendation in its entirety if it wants to.
In arguing that Russia is not a "peace-loving State" within the meaning of Article 4(1) of the Charter, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has referred to the ICJ's Order on provisional measures of 16 March 2022 in Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation), where the Court ordered Russia to "immediately suspend the military operation that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in Ukraine" and to "ensure that any military or irregular armed units … take no steps in furtherance of the military operations". The ICJ held – in a case brought by Ukraine itself, and for which the recognition that the Russian Federation is the continuing State of the USSR was quite essential to Ukraine's argument – that the Russian Federation, at least insofar as the Genocide Convention is concerned, is the State continuing the USSR's position as a State party to that convention. The claim that Russia is the State continuing the international legal personality of the USSR is also extensively supported by national case law and State practice. The Russian Federation was not a new State taking the place of the USSR; instead, it was simply the same State under a different name and with a rather reduced territory and population. Russia, as far as the UN was concerned, was simply the Soviet Union by another name.
In Part 2 the counterargument that is occasionally offered namely that Ukraine, as an original member of the UN, has at least as much right as Russia to claim the USSR seat, was without force, as the former UN principal legal officer Larry D. Johnson advised, there was in fact a process around the change of name: Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, recognizing the UNSG's very limited role in the question of credentials, simply circulated President Yeltsin's letter and left it up to the Member States to decide. No member of the United Nations – including, notably, Ukraine – objected to Russia's continuance on the Soviet seat, and the UN continued as if nothing had happened but a change of name and flag.

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.
[Ed: the attacking a dangerous installation and the concomitant deliberate release of hundreds of millions of cubic metres of natural gas into the environment is a war crime under the Rome Statute]

The war in Ukraine is shaping up to be one of the bloodiest of the 21st century, with both sides reported to be losing hundreds of soldiers each day as the conflict moves towards its first anniversary. But quite how many people are dying in this bitter struggle depends on who is doing the reporting.
Norway's defence chief, General Eirik Kristoffersen, claimed recently that Russia has suffered 180,000 casualties to Ukraine's 100,000, not counting 30,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties. The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, claimed that Russian casualties are "significantly well over 100,000 now". US intelligence has reportedly suggested this figure is around 188,000.
But truth is said to be the first casualty of war and it is certainly possible that Kristoffersen and Milley are downplaying the number of Ukrainian casualties while overestimating Russia's.

The debate on how to prosecute the international crimes linked to the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is ongoing (for example, here, here and here). One of the most prominent aspects of the debate concerns the question of how to prosecute the persons who are allegedly most responsible for such crimes, particularly, the head of state of the Russian Federation and commander-in-chief of its armed forces, Vladimir Putin.
The prevalent view is that, apart from prosecution in their own country, heads of state may only be prosecuted in an international court. Underpinning such view is a decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Arrest Warrant case. In this case, the ICJ considered that – despite the fact that heads of state, heads of government and foreign ministers enjoy "full immunity" from foreign jurisdiction and inviolability – they can be prosecuted before "certain international criminal courts". Hence, the debate has so far focused on the possibility of his prosecution at an international criminal court or tribunal. The debate has been particularly alive in what concerns aggression, the "supreme international crime".

As the conflict in Ukraine is about to enter its second year, Ukraine and the West are accelerating efforts to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't get away with his illegal war. That has meant the West supplying weapons that were previously off the table, but it has also meant renewed attention to accountability. In November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made clear that justice is a key condition for peace. "This," he explained, "is what stokes the greatest emotions." But while there are courts where Russians can be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, a major piece is missing: there is nowhere to try Putin and other top Russian leaders for launching the war in the first place. For this, a special tribunal for the crime of aggression is needed.
Scholars and diplomats have pointed out the double standard they see in calls to create a special court to try the crime of aggression by Russia when no mention has been made of holding U.S. or British leaders to account for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which violated the UN Charter by launching a war without clear Security Council authorization. (The United States argued that the Security Council had authorized military intervention when it gave Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations," but few agreed. ) That war set off a cascade of cataclysmic events and contributed to the rise of the Islamic State (or ISIS) and the Syrian refugee crisis.

The call for a Special Tribunal for the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is necessary since the jurisdiction of the ICC in the case of a crime of aggression is limited to State Parties, so both the attacking State and the victim State must be parties to the Statute. It was of course already known before the Russian invasion of Ukraine that this jurisdictional regime is much too narrow – why should the victim State, which is also a territorial State, not have jurisdiction over a crime of aggression committed on its territory?
When the crime of aggression was included in the ICC Statute in the course of the first review conference in Kampala in 2010, a broader jurisdictional regime was politically not feasible. In fact, the existing jurisdictional straightjacket was also promoted by France, the United Kingdom and the USA, i.e., the very Western States which now feel compelled to demand a UkrTrib, albeit being unclear whether they will join a respective treaty at all or whether they will refrain from doing so for fear of setting a precedent which could later turn against them.

You might have heard of killer robots, slaughterbots or terminators – officially called lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) – from films and books. And the idea of super-intelligent weapons running rampant is still science fiction. But as AI weapons become increasingly sophisticated, public concern is growing over fears about lack of accountability and the risk of technical failure.
Already we have seen how so-called neutral AI have made sexist algorithms and inept content moderation systems, largely because their creators did not understand the technology. But in war, these kinds of misunderstandings could kill civilians or wreck negotiations.

In 2023, non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Stop Killer Robots will continue their calls for a new international legal framework to regulate autonomous weapons systems. Some States and scholars are optimistic about the possibility. These optimists often analogize to nuclear weapons regulation to illustrate that States sometimes have been willing to limit their own flexibility in strategic and sensitive areas – such as the one posed by the AI "arms race."
However, this analogy is flawed. There are good reasons to be skeptical about the prospects that States will achieve a new, robust multilateral agreement that implicates development of lethal autonomous systems or other "national security AI."