Armed Conflict

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As Far As We Know, There Has Been No Armed Attack Against Poland

November 16, 2022

Yesterday a missile struck a village in Poland, near the Ukrainian border, prompting immediate fears of escalation and of a more direct entry of NATO states into the Russian/Ukranian armed conflict. As I write this it remains unclear whether the missile was fired by Russian or by Ukranian armed forces. However, US President Biden and other US officials have expressed doubts that Russia fired the missile, while Russia itself has denied attacking Polish territory and asserted that the missile came from a Ukrainian S-300 air defence system. Again, as things stand the facts are yet to be conclusively established. But from what we know at the moment it seems unlikely that Russia deliberately targeted Polish territory, including because it had nothing to gain and much to lose from such an action. Two hypotheses seem more likely: (1) that the missile was indeed fired by Russia, despite Russia’s protests to the contrary, but at a target in Ukraine and that it somehow got misdirected, through operator error or mechanical…

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Twenty Years of Drone Attacks

November 15, 2022

On November 2, 2002, the United States conducted its first targeted killings using a drone. CIA agents based in Djibouti launched the drone’s two Hellfire missiles at a vehicle traveling in rural Yemen, killing six. Several weeks later the Los Angeles Times reported details, including the fact that while the U.S. Air Force controlled the…

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The Olympic Truce: Tradition or International Law?

October 20, 2022

Ekécheiria ("laying down of arms") was a noble tradition of antiquity, by which Greek city-states were to observe a sacred truce during the Olympics. This truce, born of a treaty between the polis of Elis, Pisa and Sparta, extended from one week before the start to one week after the end of the classical Olympic Games, to allow…

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Are sabotage of submarine pipelines an ‘armed attack’ triggering a right to self-defence?

October 18, 2022

On 26 and 27 September 2022, explosions damaged NordStream 1 and NordStream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea (here). These are major transboundary pipelines (consisting of two pipelines each) transporting gas from Russia to Germany. They cross the territorial sea of three States (Russia, Denmark and Germany) and the exclusive economic zone (‘EEZ’) of five States (Russia,…

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Occupation of Minds: IHL Response to Russian Education Policies in the Occupied Ukrainian Territories

October 12, 2022

Into the eighth month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia has rushed to implement its plan to annex and assimilate newly occupied southern-eastern regions of Ukraine via sham referenda and attempted absorption of territories through respective domestic laws. The areas in question include parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and…

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