Ukraine

On 22 May 2023, two Russian paramilitary groups – the Liberty of Russia Legion (LSR) and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) – conducted a cross-border raid from Ukrainian territory into the Belgorod region of Russia. After briefly ‘liberating’ some border villages, the fighters were forced to retreat on to Ukrainian territory again. This was not the first such…

Before Spring 2022, only the real connoisseurs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were familiar with the so-called Moscow Mechanism enabling any OSCE participating State to request the establishment of an ad hoc expert mission to investigate specific questions related to the OSCE human dimension. In the first thirty years of…

As announced on 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Mr Vladimir Putin (the President of the Russian Federation), who has been charged with unlawful deportation and transfer of children (Articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute) from the occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation at least…

On 20 March 2023, the European Court of Human Rights published a Practice Direction on the modalities of Third-Party Intervention and announced an amendment of the Rules of Court. The clarifications and changes contained therein could not come at a better time. Just three days earlier, the Court had announced that 26 member States would intervene…