[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EARLY SIGNS OF WAR CRIMES AND
HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES COMMITTED
BY THE RUSSIAN MILITARY DURING THE
FULL-SCALE INVASION OF UKRAINE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, ENERGY, THE
ENVIRONMENT AND CYBER
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 16, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-109
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-068PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York, Chairman
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey Member
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
KAREN BASS, California SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts DARRELL ISSA, California
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
AMI BERA, California LEE ZELDIN, New York
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas ANN WAGNER, Missouri
DINA TITUS, Nevada BRIAN MAST, Florida
TED LIEU, California BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania KEN BUCK, Colorado
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota MARK GREEN, Tennessee
COLIN ALLRED, Texas ANDY BARR, Kentucky
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan GREG STEUBE, Florida
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey PETER MEIJER, Michigan
ANDY KIM, New Jersey NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
SARA JACOBS, California RONNY JACKSON, Texas
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina YOUNG KIM, California
JIM COSTA, California MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
JUAN VARGAS, California JOE WILSON, South Carolina
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
, Staff Director
Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Europe, Energy,the Environment and Cyber
WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts, Chairman
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK,
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia Pennsylvania,Ranking Member
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey ANN WAGNER, Missouri
THEODORE DEUTCH, Florida ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois,
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island BRIAN MAST, Florida
DINA TITUS, Nevada DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
JIM COSTA, California NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas PETER MEIJER, Michigan
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
Leah Nodvin, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESESS
Grozev, Christo, Chief Executive Officer, Bellingcat............. 9
Arend, Dr. Anthony Clark, Professor of Government and Foreign
Service, Chair, Department of Government, Georgetown University 23
Docherty, Bonnie. Senior Researcher, Arms Division, Human Rights
Watch.......................................................... 33
Garlasco, Marc, Military Advisor, Pax for Peace.................. 39
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 72
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 73
Hearing Attendance............................................... 74
EARLY SIGNS OF WAR CRIMES AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES COMMITTED BY THE
RUSSIAN MILITARY DURING THE FULL-SCALE INVASION OF UKRAINE
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the
Environment and Cyber,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:11 a.m.,
via Webex, Hon. William Keating (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Mr. Keating. I call this hearing to order, the House
Foreign Affairs Subcommittee. Without objection, we'll move
forward.
The chair is authorized to declare a recess of the
committee at any point and all members will have 5 days to
submit statements, extraneous materials, and questions for the
record subject to the length and limitation of the rules.
To insert something into the record, please have your staff
email the previously mentioned address or contact the full
committee staff. Please keep your video function on at all
times even when you're not recognized by the chair. Members are
responsible for muting and unmuting themselves and please
remember to mute yourself after you're finished speaking.
Consistent with House Resolution 965 and the accompanying
regulations, staff will only mute members and witnesses as
appropriate when they're not being recognized to eliminate
background noise.
I see that we have a quorum present and will now recognize
myself for an opening statement.
Pursuant to notice, we're holding a hearing today entitled,
``Early Signs of War Crimes and Human Rights Abuses Committed
by Russian Military During the Full-Scale Invasion of
Ukraine.''
During the hearing, witnesses will be presenting testimony
including videos that vividly depict the situation on the
ground in Ukraine.
While the media displayed and the testimony of our
witnesses are vital pieces of evidence, I want to warn the
audience at the outset of the hearing that many of the topics
discussed and the videos and photos that may be shown are
graphic and they're disturbing.
It's important to note that we have a real record of what's
going on. So many times when this kind of activity occurs,
activity that arises to the level of war crimes it is being
denied by those who are perpetrating it, and that's the case
with the Russian Federation.
But it's also important to have a congressional record of
this in place because decades later these same parties will
continue to deny that it ever occurred. So now I'll begin with
my opening remarks.
Thank you all for participating in today's hearing on this
timely and critical topic. We, tragically, find ourselves
witnessing the worst war and humanitarian crisis in Europe
since World War II.
Despite being only 21 days into Russia's full-scale
invasion of Ukraine, reports are already surfacing containing
alarming implications of war crimes and gross violations of
human rights by the Russian military.
Every morning the world is confronted with new, shocking,
horrible images of civilians in Ukraine that have been killed
or wounded as a result of Russian military attacks.
To be specific, recent reports indicate that Russia--the
Russian forces have killed at least--and these are just the
official reports--600 Ukrainian civilians, some of them
children. It was noted by President Zelensky in this morning's
address suggests that he numbers the number of child casualties
over a hundred.
One such girl, Anastasia Stoluk, only 10 years old, died
from a gunshot wound while at her home in a village 40 miles
north of Kyiv. Four members of her family of five, Anton,
Svetlana, Polina, Semyon, were gunned down while trying to flee
Kyiv. The youngest child was only five, and they are survived
only by their one daughter, Sofia, who is in critical
condition.
Russian ordnances killed three of a family of four, Alise,
Nikita, Tatiana, in Irpin. They are survived by their father,
Serhiy.
At this moment, the city of Mariupol is under siege and
civilians are dying in what is quickly becoming the largest
humanitarian tragedy of the war so far. Russian shelling has
already hit a hospital and a maternity ward in Mariupol,
leading to the death of a young mother and her newborn child.
Compounding this tragedy, the lack of access to food, water,
electricity, and other life-sustaining necessities, all in
frigid temperatures, threatens the death of more than--many,
many more innocent civilians.
Finally, in addition to the human cost of this war, the
Russian military has destroyed places of worship, sacred
memorials, civilian infrastructure, children's playgrounds, in
one of the most reckless set of acts of violence the world has
ever seen.
The Russian military has even shelled nuclear power plants,
potentially exposing Ukrainians and the world at large to
radiological poisoning.
We must understand these things in concrete terms. These
people in these places are real, husbands, wives, fathers,
mothers, sons, daughters, sisters, and brothers being ripped
from life early by a marauding army, craven leader.
But we know all of this because, today, we have
sophisticated and accessible technological devices that can
show the world these atrocities. Potential Russian war crimes
just can't be covered up the way they have in the past. They
can't just be explained away or used for propaganda's sake. The
images are real, their locations are real, and the perpetrators
and their victims are real.
Russia can no longer deny the atrocities they've committed
in Ukraine.
However, let me be clear. Vladimir Putin has not only
invaded a sovereign democracy but his actions threaten the
framework of our modern international order laid out after
World War II to prevent other catastrophic events from ever
occurring.
So far, the U.S., along with the vast majority of countries
in the international community, recognize the severe
implications to not only peace and stability in Europe but to
the rest of the world.
Luckily, the institutions that many Americans and our
allies worked so hard to create after World War II have worked,
from the U.N. condemning Russians' actions to NATO providing
tangible deterrence, to restrictions placed on Russian
oligarchs by international financial institutions, to reporting
by international media outlets.
Our collective consciousness has awoken to this crisis and
risen to the occasion to meet it in full force, now confronted
with the injustices committed in Ukraine, NATO and EU members
as well.
Allies and partners around the world all working together.
Asian areas, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, allies in Australia are
more unified than ever in condemning Vladimir Putin's war of
choice.
Our support for Ukraine is unprecedented, comprehensive,
and resolute. We can't just say never again. We have to ensure
never again. For those reasons and as chair of this
subcommittee, I've made it my top priority of mine to shine a
light on this incredibly, brutally taken out Russian military,
their indiscriminate killing of Ukrainian civilians, the use of
devastating weapons in heavily populated areas, and potentially
targeting of civilians on purpose.
All serve as a reminder to us that even in war certain
rules must be followed. Ukrainians and Russians alike must know
more than anyone that the rest of the world is watching and
will not let such crimes go unpunished.
In due time, I also hope that the Russian people see these
photos and videos as well. They should know what their
government is doing and the horrific plight of everyday
Ukrainians.
To accomplish this goal, the ranking member and I have
brought together a distinguished group of witnesses to testify
on war crimes and human rights abuses, their role in
international law, the methods used to collect evidence and
build cases for trial, as well as the types of weapons and
tactics used by the Russian military.
This testimony is essential to lay the foundation for
future avenues of justice.
To our expert witnesses, I thank you very much for being
here today. I look forward to hearing your perspective on how
the U.S., the EU, and various nongovernmental organizations can
work in promoting awareness, gather evidence of possible war
crimes in Ukraine, and holding any war crime criminals
accountable for their actions.
I want to thank the ranking member for joining with me and
helping move this hearing forward.
I'll now recognize Mr. Fitzpatrick for his opening
statement.
Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to
thank Chairman Keating for his strong passionate statements and
strong support for Ukraine.
It's an honor to be working hand in glove with him and
everybody on our subcommittee from both parties to make sure
that we do everything we can to protect Ukrainians and hold
Vladimir Putin fully accountable for everything, all the
heinous war crimes and murderous actions he's engaging in right
now.
We have entered into the third week of Russia's invasion on
the innocent country and the people of Ukraine. There have been
about 600 civilian deaths, between 2,000 and 4,000 Ukrainian
armed forces that have been killed, thousands of injured in
Ukraine as well as Americans that have been killed.
We know that the Russian military is, largely, reliant on
mass artillery as well as unguided bombs and missiles. In a
previous conflicts that Russia has engaged in allegations were
raised of potential war crimes by Russian units specifically
targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. A few
examples, including the Chechen wars of--from 1994 to 1996 and
in 1999 to 2009 against the people of Chechnya.
During both of those conflicts, Russian forces were accused
of potential human rights abuses, including the killing of
civilians, indiscriminate bombing and artillery attacks, and
targeting civilian infrastructure. And the same horrendous
events are now taking place, once again, in Ukraine.
Russia's intervention in Syria is another example of when
Russia has been accused of war crimes. In March 2020, the
United Nations Human Rights Council accused Russia of
complicity in war crimes for specifically targeting civilian
areas and infrastructure in Syria. It is no secret what Russia
is capable of and how far they will go to achieve total control
of the old Soviet bloc.
On February 24th, Russian President Vladimir Putin
announced an unprovoked, unnecessary, quote/unquote, ``special
military operation'' to supposedly, in his words, demilitarize
and de-Nazify Ukraine.
Since then, we have seen Russian forces attack and fire
upon a nuclear plant, bomb civilian infrastructure buildings
such as residential homes and apartments, destroy an operating
maternity ward with infants inside, and target a pediatric
cancer hospital.
These are only a few of the horrific acts that the Putin
regime has carried out and it is clear that they will stop and
nothing, not even killing innocent children with cancer, to
continue their rampage on Ukraine, and it is unfathomable that
we, as a country, are going to sit by and watch these events
unfold while the people of Ukraine are living in bomb shelters
and falling asleep to the sound of gunshots, military
airplanes, and explosions each and every day.
Some examples of committing a war crime include
intentionally killing civilians, torture, taking hostages,
unnecessarily destroying civilian property, and so on.
It is clear that Russia has demonstrated early signs of war
crimes and human rights abuses in Ukraine, and this is not the
first time Russia has been accused of committing war crimes and
human rights abuses and it's clear it won't be the last.
How many times will Russia have to be accused of committing
war crimes for them to be stopped? The U.S. needs to stand up
to these thuggish dictators like Vladimir Putin and take action
to prevent Putin from wreaking even more havoc on innocent
countries and innocent people.
I look forward to hearing from our panelists to further
this discussion. As Chairman Keating said, this is important,
an important first step to build a record that we can use to
forward a charging document and ultimate prosecution of
Vladimir Putin for committing war crimes.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Ranking Member, Mr. Fitzpatrick,
and thank you for all you're doing in trying to stand up for
the people of Ukraine within the committee and personally.
As I introduce today's witnesses, I want to ask unanimous
consent that their--all of their written statements be
submitted for the record. I also, with the agreement of the
ranking member, would like to mention, too, that because of the
films that are here we're extending the time for these
witnesses to speak and give their oral testimony as well.
Again, I've been asked to warn members that these videos
and the topics discussed are graphic in nature as we move
forward. But they're, again, so important that we ensure an
accurate document of what's actually occurring in Ukraine
perpetrated by the Russian Federation.
So I'll now introduce our witnesses. Thank you all for
being here.
Mr. Christo Grozev is the Chief Executive Officer of
Bellingcat. Grozev focuses on security threats, Russian
intelligence operations and Weaponization of information.
He and his team earned the European prize for investigative
journalism for exposing the identity of the suspects behind the
2018 Sergei Skripal poisoning in the United Kingdom.
I now recognize Mr. Grozev.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTO GROZEV, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
BELLINGCAT
Mr. Grozev. Thank you very much for inviting us, Chairman
Keating.
First, a few words on what Bellingcat is doing in this
conflict and how it all started, from our perspective.
Bellingcat was established in 2014 as a global collaborative
platform for investigations based on open source data.
Over the last 7 years, our researchers have scoured through
tens of thousands of images and videos from war-torn countries
including Syria, Ukraine in 2014-2015, and Yemen, and our main
focus has been to verify through methods such as geolocation,
chronolocation, and contextual research visual evidence of the
use of weapons, whether conventional or chemical, against
civilian targets.
Evidence gathered and verified by Bellingcat has already
served as the basis of prosecutorial investigations in the case
of, for example, the shooting down of Malaysian airliner MH-17
in 2014 by a Russian military brigade and in the killing of a
Georgian asylum seeker in Berlin in 2019 by the Russian
government. Using the war in Yemen as a test case, we developed
a robust methodology of verification, preservation of chain of
custody, investigation, and archiving of incidents of harm
caused to civilians during wartime.
These methods were, in fact, tested thoroughly and deemed
acceptable for use in courts by an English common law judge.
With Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February this year,
Bellingcat directed all of our resources to gathering,
verifying, and preserving evidence of harm to civilians in this
new conflict.
We engaged the same verification methods previously tested
in the Yemen case. These include a robust system of evidence
gathering by a dedicated team that is firewalled from
Bellingcat's editorial team, this to ensure the integrity of
the evidence and to avoid any potential bias in data gathering.
Each reported incident is logged, validated, described, and
archived, with attribution of weaponry used and origin of
attack being added to each case whenever this is possible to
determine through the use of open source methods.
The purpose of this evidence gathering is to provide a
dataset of prevalidated incidents of civilian harm to judicial
bodies that will investigate cases of war crimes, such as the
International--the ICC, the prosecutors of individual countries
that invoke their universal jurisdiction on war crimes, such as
Germany and Spain, that have already taken on this
responsibility and likely the Netherlands, and maybe other
countries.
The goal of this project is not to replace the actual
investigative bodies of these countries. It is to speed up the
process of verification and, in turn, to significantly shorten
the time to serving justice to the victims and their families.
In just 19 days of war, Bellingcat has recorded more than 350
incidents that have caused harm to civilians, most of this
deadly harm.
Of these, just over 10 percent, between 35 and 40, appeared
to be egregious cases of violations of the law of warfare with
unwarranted targeting of residential buildings, and in some
cases, even hospitals and maternity wards, and with
indiscriminate use of inhumane munitions such as cluster bombs
in or near residential areas.
While Bellingcat has not yet completed the process of
attribution of origin of attack, most of these attacks appear
plausibly attributable to the Russian side of the conflict and,
in some cases, the Russian government has even unapologetically
taken credit for the attacks on civilians.
Under the time constraint, this testimonial will focus on
just five examples from the most egregious cases of civilian
harm that had been verified and archived by us. First would be
the intentional missile strike on Mariupol's maternity hospital
on the 9th of March 2022.
Many of you have seen the haunting images of the aftermath
of the strike, which left two dead and at least ten wondered.
Surreally, further casualties were prevented because the
Russian government had indicated the previous day that its
forces planned to strike a maternity hospital in Mariupol under
the unsubstantiated claim that it served as a recruiting
station for Ukrainian volunteer battalions.
We will try to share this video, even though many of you
have seen it already, or video from the aftermath of this
shelling.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Grozev. This is video of the aftermath of the shelling
of the maternity hospital. I would like to express--well, to
add to this the fact that in the days after this was recorded
and broadcast worldwide the Russian government actually
launched a disinformation campaign where they claimed that
these videos had been faked and represented crisis actors. In
fact, pregnant women were played by actresses, they said.
We have looked into these allegations as we do with every
such claim and we found them to be completely unsubstantiated
and these videos have been verified by us and by many others.
Second, I would pinpoint the air strike on a Chernihiv
residential area, actually, several residential areas, on the
3d of March this year. At least eight dumb bombs, unguided
bombs, causing indiscriminate and uncontrollable death were
dropped into the middle of a residential area, killing about 50
people and we're still counting.
Let's have a quick look at the video in this egregious case
as well.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Grozev. This is an example of just one of the A bombs
that were launched into Chernihiv.
Third, the strike on the Kiyv TV tower on the 1st of March
this year, which also killed three innocent civilians and hit a
nearby Holocaust Memorial. We'll have a quick look at the video
that has been verified by us in this case as well.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Grozev. Needless to say, a TV tower is located at the
center of the city and there's no plausible way that it could
be targeted without consideration of civilian damage, and we
see that in this case as well.
Moving on to the fourth case I would like to bring to your
attention is the air strikes in Kharkiv on the 1st of March
2022, which may have been targeting an industrial area but hit
a residential block of flats, killing dozens of civilians.
Let's have a look at video from the aftermath of that as
well.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Grozev. And, last, we can also pinpoint the widespread
use of cluster munitions, especially in the city of Kharkiv,
which have repeatedly impacted civilian areas, countless
civilian casualties, all foreseeable when using cluster
munitions near residential areas.
And the last video we will look at is from Kharkiv.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Grozev. These are the telltale horrible signs of
cluster munitions, in this case, exploding near a playground
near a kindergarten.
These are only five of the nearly 40 cases of
indiscriminate or intentional targeting of residential areas
that has caused multiple civilian casualties. We are going to
actually attach a full list of incidents and make it available
to--as an appendix to all members of the committee.
We believe many of these will be investigated as possible
war crimes. However, I'd like to mention that not all potential
war crimes are easily captured on camera and uploadable on
social media by firsthand witnesses.
We have also received private videos and photographs as
well as direct witness reports, parts of which we have been
able to also verify, that may likely constitute war crimes.
These include, for example, photographs of bodies of civilians
with clearly visible signs of torture and mutilation, which
were geolocated and time stamped to areas and times where
troops from the so-called Spetsnaz units of Chechnya's leader
Ramzan Kadyrov had been located just hours earlier.
These photographs were made available directly to
Bellingcat by witnesses who could not upload them to social
media for fear of being tracked down and reprisals against
them.
In other cases, witnesses interviewed by us told us of
intentional killings by a member of these Chechen units of
civilians on--of murders of civilians in villages, who had seen
the route of the armed units likely in order to eliminate
witnesses who might report later on the movements to Ukrainian
armed forces.
We will make such evidence also available to international
investigators and as an appendix to this report. We also
submitting some photographs from the mutilated bodies, which I
would not like to make public in this video stream but are
available to members of the committee.
The Russian invasion in Ukraine has only lasted 19 days,
but has already caused thousands of civilian casualties through
Russia's indiscriminate use of old-fashioned but powerful dumb
bombs, the use of cluster munitions to target residential
areas, the shelling of towns with imprecise multi-rocket launch
systems, and the targeted killings of civilians by at least
certain parts of the invading forces.
Investigating these potential war crimes will take years.
However, an early awareness of normative of civilian casualties
is the only way to engage the international community to
pressure Russia's authorities into stopping this cruel war.
Bellingcat will continue to validate and make public each
reported instance of harm to civilians, and to this goal today
we're launching a special civilian harm tracking website at
Ukraine.bellingcat.com, where everybody can trace the civilian
harm in real time.
Thank you very much, Chairman, and I'm available for any
questions from the members of the committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grozev follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you very much.
And if members of the committee want to view those
photographs, please contact our staff and we'll arrange for
that viewing to occur.
Dr. Anthony Clark Arend is a professor of government and
foreign service at Georgetown University and chair of the
Department of Government. His research focuses on international
law, national security law, and human rights. He founded
Georgetown's Institute for International Law and Politics.
We welcome you this morning, and please begin with your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY CLARK AREND, , PH.D., PROFESSOR OF
GOVERNMENT AND FOREIGN SERVICE, CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF
GOVERNMENT, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Dr. Arend. Chair Keating, Ranking Member Fitzpatrick,
members of the subcommittee, I want to, first, commend the
chair and the ranking member for their important leadership on
this critical issue.
As the chair said, we are at a very grave time in our
history. The very structure of the international system is
being challenged. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a clear
violation of international law, without question.
Article 2 paragraph four of the United Nations Charter
explicitly prohibits the use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of any State, and that is
exactly what is happening now.
But, as Mr. Grozev demonstrated, there is also rather clear
evidence that war crimes are also being committed by Russia and
their affiliates. The purpose of my testimony this morning is,
really, to ask two questions.
First of all, what do we mean by war crimes and, second,
how can war crimes be enforced? In other words, how can those
who perpetrate war crimes be brought to justice?
So the first question, what are war crimes, this is
something that the chair and the ranking member both alluded
to. In short, war crimes are violations of the laws of war,
also known as international humanitarian law or the law of
armed conflict.
That law is embodied in a series of treaties, including the
1907 Hague Convention on the laws of land warfare, and the very
famous Geneva Conventions of 1949, and they include the kinds
of violations that, frankly, we just saw, the deliberate
targeting of civilians, the deliberate targeting of unoccupied
and unarmed towns and villages, the deliberate targeting of
hospitals and medical facilities, the use of torture, the
mutilation of bodies, the use of weapons like cluster
munitions, which cause unnecessary suffering, the mistreatment
of prisoners of war, and we could go on.
Those are what we mean by war crimes, and the great work of
Bellingcat and others is demonstrating, is recording, is
memorializing these kinds of actions.
Now, the question before the world community and,
certainly, before the Congress is how do we enforce these laws?
How do we prevent war crimes from occurring, in part, by
punishing those individuals who have perpetrated these horrific
actions?
In general, there are two broad mechanisms for enforcing
war crimes. One, international tribunals and, two, domestic
enforcement, and let me say a little bit about each of those.
International tribunals--we really started taking war
crimes seriously after the horrors of the Holocaust. The
Nuremberg Trials demonstrated how individuals could be held
accountable. Well, the Nuremberg Trial was an international
tribunal. It was an ad hoc tribunal established for that
purpose.
We have seen similar ad hoc tribunals: the International
Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone. It is
possible that, in this case, a special ad hoc tribunal could be
convened to try Russia and Russia's affiliates and anyone else
for committing war crimes.
The challenge here is that unless at some point Russia
consented to the jurisdiction of that ad hoc tribunal, its
legitimacy would be called into question and it would be
unlikely that individuals would be brought before that
tribunal.
However, there is hope. In a post-Putin world, meaning
Putin is no longer in power, it is possible that Russia, to
regain legitimacy, may actually consent to such a tribunal. For
example, after Slobodan Milosevic was in power, Serbia actually
sent him to The Hague to be tried by the International Criminal
Tribunal for Yugoslavia.
So there is hope there. But there is also, as Mr. Grozev
mentioned, a permanent international tribunal, the
International Criminal Court. Now, while neither Russia nor
Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute, which established the
International Criminal Court, because Ukraine has previously
consented to the jurisdiction of the court, investigations are
beginning. It would not surprise me if at some point we see
individuals indicted by the ICC.
If those individuals are captured by Ukraine or someplace
out of Russia, they could be sent to The Hague if they are
indicted. And, again, in a post-Putin regime, Russia itself may
even be willing to send high-level officials who were engaged
in these actions to The Hague.
So those are sort of our range of international tribunals.
But there's one other mechanism I want to mention relating to
enforcement and that is domestic enforcement, and Mr. Grozev
alluded to this.
Under international law, there is a concept of a universal
crime. War crimes are a universal crime, and as a universal
crime, any State has enforcement jurisdiction over individuals
that commit that crime.
Mr. Grozev mentioned Germany and Spain and, perhaps, the
Netherlands may, in accordance with their domestic law, choose
to prosecute those individuals. That is an option.
In the United States, the applicable statute is the War
Crimes Act, and while this requires that the perpetrator be an
American national or the victim be an American national, we
have already seen evidence that there may be targeting of
individual Americans, including journalists, so that is a
possibility.
Finally, I want to mention civil suits that could possibly
be brought against people who have perpetrated war crimes. This
might not be something we would immediately think of.
But the Alien Tort Statute provides this option. The Alien
Tort Statute was incorporated by Congress in the Judiciary Act
of 1789 and it allows aliens, meaning non-U.S. nationals, to
bring suit in U.S. courts for a tort in violation of the law of
nations or a treaty to which the United States is a party.
That means a non-U.S. national in the United States could
bring a civil suit against an individual who had perpetrated a
war crime. If there are assets of that individual in the United
States, a judgment could attach those assets as an effective
way of punishing this war criminal.
Now, it is true that the Supreme Court in the Kiobel case
said that there is a presumption against the extraterritorial
application of the Alien Tort Statute. I think the case of war
crimes might be an exception.
But I think, even more significantly, Congress could make
an exception. Congress could explicitly say that the Alien Tort
Statute would apply to war crimes committed in the Russia-
Ukraine war.
If Congress were to adopt a statute to that effect, that
would give U.S. courts jurisdiction to be able to hear cases
where individuals could bring claims against Russian nationals
and others who had committed war crimes.
So these, I think, are some of our options for enforcement.
Needless to say, I would be happy to go into more detail during
the question and answer period.
I want to thank the chair and the ranking member and the
members of the subcommittee.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Arend follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for your
explanations.
Ms. Bonnie Docherty is a senior researcher in the arms
division of Human Rights Watch. She's also the associate
director of armed conflict and civilian protection as well as a
lecturer on law at the International Human Rights Clinic at
Harvard Law School.
She focuses arms and the protection of civilians during war
as primary areas of her concern. Docherty played a leading role
in the negotiations for the Convention on Cluster Munitions and
advocated against the use of these weapons by analyzing their
impact in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Georgia.
You are now recognized for your testimony. Thank you for
being here.
STATEMENT OF BONNIE DOCHERTY, SENIOR RESEARCHER, ARMS DIVISION,
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Ms. Docherty. Chair Keating, Ranking Member Fitzpatrick,
and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to
participate in this hearing.
I would like to highlight two types of weapons that Russian
forces are using widely and with devastating effects on
civilians in Ukraine, cluster munitions and explosive weapons
with wide area effects.
The use of these types of weapons has a long history. I,
personally, have documented cluster munition use in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Georgia, and have
investigated the effects of explosive weapons in populated
areas on health care in eastern Ukraine in 2016.
My Human Rights Watch colleagues have done extensive
research on these weapons in numerous other conflicts. Russia
has been using cluster munitions in Ukraine since the beginning
of its full-scale invasion.
On February 24th, Russian forces launched a cluster
munition ballistic missile that struck near a hospital in the
Donetsk region, killing four civilians and injuring 10. Four
days later, Russian rockets with cluster munition warheads
rained submunitions down on three neighborhoods in the city of
Kharkiv, and you saw the video of that earlier.
One resident told Human Rights Watch, ``The bangs lasted
for about 2 minutes. When I went out, I saw three covered
bodies lying in the street, and one wounded person being taken
away by emergency services.''
Cluster munitions are large weapons containing dozens or
hundreds of smaller submunitions. They can endanger civilians
at the time of attack, especially when used in towns or cities,
because they spread the submunitions over the size of a
football field.
In addition, many of the submunitions failed to explode and
lie around like land mines for months, years, or even decades.
Russia is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions,
the international treaty that bans these weapons, but Russia's
cluster munition attacks have been unlawful because they
involve inherently indiscriminate weapons that cannot
distinguish between combatants and civilians, and individuals
responsible for ordering or carrying out cluster munition
attacks against civilians or civilian objects with criminal
intent_that is either intentionally or recklessly_would be
committing war crimes.
Russian forces' use of explosive weapons with wide area
effects in populated areas represents an even greater peril for
the civilians of Ukraine. Explosive weapons include a wide
range of munitions such as rockets, missiles, or aerial bombs.
The harm they cause is magnified when they have wide area
effects. That is, they have a large blast or fragmentation
radius, they are inaccurate, or they deliver multiple munitions
at the same time, such as cluster munitions.
Russian forces' use of these weapons in Ukraine's cities
and towns has been catastrophic, and the U.N. Office of the
High Commissioner of Human Rights has highlighted it as the
major cause of the more than 1,800 civilian casualties recorded
as of yesterday.
On March 3d, Russian aircraft dropped multiple unguided
munitions in the neighborhood of Chernihiv, a city in
northeastern Ukraine and, again, you saw the video of that
earlier.
The attack killed at least 47 people, according to local
officials, and wounded many others. It also significantly
damaged an apartment building, a hospital, a pharmacy, and
other civilian structures.
A doctor at the hospital described the blast as a windstorm
that filled the basement with dust. He treated children with
fragment wounds, including an 11-year-old boy with metal shards
in his brain and damage to his skull.
In addition to causing immediate civilian casualties and
structural damage, the use of explosive weapons withwide area
effects in populated areas produces long-term reverberating
effects.
Destruction of infrastructure, such as power plants or
water treatment facilities, interferes with basic services
including health care and education, and, in turn, infringes on
human rights. Large numbers of civilians become displaced and
the consequences of Russian forces' bombing and shelling of
Ukraine's population centers will endure long after active
hostilities end.
Given the well-documented pattern of direct and
reverberating effects, the use of explosive weapons with wide
area effects in populated areas heightens concerns that attacks
are indiscriminate and disproportionate and, thus, unlawful.
Individuals carrying out such attacks with criminal intent are
responsible for war crimes.
We were glad to hear that the United States will support
investigations by the International Criminal Court into alleged
war crimes in Ukraine. In light of the massive civilian harm
caused by Russia's use of these weapons and the possibility
that Ukraine could also use them, we urge the United States to
take two additional steps.
First, the U.S. should condemn the use of cluster munitions
and the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in
populated areas. At least seven NATO countries and the NATO
Secretary General have already spoken out against Russia's use
of cluster munitions, and such international pressure can make
a difference.
Second, the U.S. should strengthen its own policies on both
types of weapons. The U.S. should join the Convention on
Cluster Munitions, which has 110 States parties including most
NATO member States.
At a minimum, the U.S. should reinState a policy signed in
2008 by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, which required
the U.S. to cease using all cluster munitions with a more than
1 percent failure rate by 2018. The Trump administration
reversed that policy in 2017.
In addition, at the negotiations of a new international
political declaration on explosive weapons in early April, the
U.S. should agree to a commitment to avoid the use of explosive
weapons with wide area effects in populated areas.
Thank you again for allowing me to testify and I'm happy to
answer any questions you may have.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Docherty follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you very much.
Finally, our last witness, Marc Garlasco, is a military
advisor for PAX for Peace. He's a former Defense Intelligence
Agency analyst who left the intelligence community to work on
human rights issues and civilian casualties mitigation.
Garlasco has worked for Human Rights Watch, the United Nations,
and the Center for Naval Analysis.
We welcome your presence here today and now recognize you
for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MARC GARLASCO, MILITARY ADVISOR, PAX FOR PEACE
Mr. Garlasco. Chairman Keating, Ranking Member Fitzpatrick,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you and speak about Russian war
crimes in Ukraine.
To understand what is happening in Ukraine, we need to only
look at Russian actions in Syria. I am here today to share with
you my experience investigating Russian war crimes in Syria and
their implications on the civilian population of Ukraine.
As the military advisor on the U.N. Syria Commission of
Inquiry, I examine the tactics, weapons, and conduct of all
parties to the conflict. We are witnessing likely Russian war
crimes broadcast daily from within Ukraine.
Unfortunately, for those of us that investigate war crimes,
none of this is new, as these acts by Russia have been tested
on the battlefield of Syrian villages, towns, and cities.
We have all been horrified by the brazen attack on a
maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol last week. Yet, I
fear we will see many more such attacks on protected places
because of Russia's prior practice.
In Syria, the group Physicians for Human Rights implicated
Russia in 244 attacks on hospitals and medical facilities. Now,
I investigated the use of sarin by the Syrian air force in Khan
Sheikhoun in 2017. While this attack garnered the world's
attention for use of weapons of mass destruction against
civilians, the follow-on strikes on Syrian hospitals in the
region by the Russian air force is less well known.
For example, we found Russian jets carried out strikes on
the Al-Rama Hospital in Khan Sheikhoun hours after the Syrian
chemical strike. This attack deprived the local population of
life saving treatment.
Russia States it has a robust precision strike capability,
yet that has been almost completely absent in Syria, where
weapons have been, largely, unguided, indiscriminate, and used
against the civilian population.
In Syria, Russian aerial bombs were almost exclusively
unguided and targeted urban centers. We are seeing the same
tactic of bombing the population into submission in Ukraine.
More than one was taken from a Russian propaganda video
released by the Russian Ministry of Defense. It shows Russia's
premier attack aircraft, the Sukhoi 34, as it takes off for
operations in Ukraine. It is carrying only dumb bombs.
These OFAB 250 were used widely in Syria in attacks on
civilians, and we're seeing widespread use of them throughout
populated areas in Ukraine.
These unguided bombs should not be employed in populated
areas due to their inherent inaccuracy and widespread effects.
Russia also relies on cluster munitions and their inherently
indiscriminate effects when used in cities.
Syria will likely be contaminated by Russian cluster bombs
for decades. We're seeing the same weapons in Ukraine. Image
two is a photo of a Russian artillery rocket in the city of
Pokrovsk. Each rocket contains 552 DPI CM submunitions with a
standard volley of 12 rockets containing 6,624 bomblets.
Typical dud rates for cluster bombs are 25 percent, meaning
we may soon see millions of these indiscriminate killers
unleashed on Ukraine, killing on contact, and creating de facto
minefields that kill for years.
The use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.
The Commission documented the use of siege tactics in Syria
where Russian and Syrian military trapped the population in
urban centers, surrounded them, and starve them out.
I fear we will see the same tactic applied in Ukraine as
Russia moves to encircle Kyiv and other urban areas. They may
also attack aid convoys, as happened in Syria.
In 2016, I investigated a deliberate attack by the Syrian
air force on a U.N. aid convoy in Urum al-Khubra outside
Aleppo, an attack labeled by the U.N. as a war crime. The
strike on the convoy was preceded by persistent Russian UAV
traffic, giving our team reasonable concern Russia provided
Syria with targeting information.
It is critical humanitarian aid convoys in Ukraine are
given safe passage, but I fear we may see a reprisal of this
tactic. The group Air Wars has documented up to 6,381 Syrian
civilians killed by Russian attacks in Syria during some 6
years.
I fear Ukrainian civilian casualties will dwarf that number
before the month is out. What can you do? I began my career as
a civilian intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence
Agency.
The intelligence community has a lot to offer to war crimes
investigations, and has in the past provided important support.
They can publish an order of battle and chain of command so we
know what units are committing war crimes and who is giving the
orders.
The IC can begin a declassification process to provide air
tracks and signals intercepts of attacks on civilians. They can
also provide data on weapons launched into civilian areas so
attacks can be matched to harm.
Finally, the U.S. Government can support the new U.N.
Ukraine War Crimes Commission with funding so it can conduct
investigations into war crimes in Ukraine.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Garlasco follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. I want to thank our witnesses for your
testimony and the detailed nature of that testimony. I'll now
recognize members for 5 minutes.
Pursuant to House rules, all time yielded is for the
purposes of questioning our witnesses. Because of the virtual
format of this hearing, I'll recognize members by committee
seniority, alternating between Democrats and Republicans.
If you miss your turn, please let my staff know and we'll
circle back to you. If you seek recognition you must unmute
your microphone and address the chair verbally. I'll now
recognize myself for 5 minutes.
I think I'll address to Dr. Arend first this question.
Given the configuration of the Russian Federation, the way it's
organized, the way it functions as a country, the hierarchical
command, can you describe for us how Vladimir Putin himself,
could be held as a war criminal?
Dr. Arend. Absolutely, and I would begin by saying the
Russian hierarchy these days is a little bit unclear, meaning
we do not exactly know fully how things are working. We do not
have the kind of intelligence that we may have had during the
time of the Soviet Union.
But based on everything I know, Putin's decisions are the
ones that are being implemented. My impression is that he is,
clearly, the decisionmaker. He knows what's happening. He
cannot claim that he is ignorant. And even then, under the
concept of command responsibility, he knows or reasonably
should have known the kinds of activities that are taking
place.
So it seems clear to me, and, obviously, the committee
could bring in people who are Russian experts and can talk more
about the details of the Russian hierarchy, but it seems
absolutely clear that he knows what's going on.
And as a consequence, much as Milosevic was brought before
the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia, Vladimir
Putin himself could be brought before any tribunal that would
be established.
Mr. Keating. I note--could any of the other witnesses--
would you care to comment on this? I noticed Mr. Grozev was
nodding his head.
Mr. Grozev. Very briefly. I would like to add to this that
it's an unusual case of concentration of decisionmaking
military power that we see in Russia, unprecedented even under
Soviet times.
We received a lot of inside information from worried
witnesses close to Putin who have said that the decision to
invade was held close to his chest and was withheld even from
people that typically would be considered members of the small
circle of confidants. Maybe three to four people were only
involved with the actual decisionmaking and he was personally
involved.
What I also believe, based on the outflow of information
that is coming from the Kremlin, because of the fact that many
people even with the closer circle disagreed with this
decision, I'm confident that there will be a lot of ready
witnesses in a future tribunal that will come forward and will
speak to exactly the inner dealings of the decisionmaking.
Mr. Keating. Anyone else wish to comment on that?
I'll just note that there have been reports of captured
Russian officers who have said they've been ordered to attack
civilian targets, ordered to attack hospitals, and we have seen
the same conduct in Syria, as was mentioned before.
I just want to ask Mr. Garlasco, too. The introduction of
Syrian soldiers, the military, into the mix, as has been
reported, what concerns do you have regarding the introduction
of these Syrian military soldiers?
Mr. Garlasco. Thank you, Chairman Keating.
The main concern that I would have with the introduction of
Syrian soldiers is that they have a very poor adherence to
international humanitarian law or laws of armed conflict, if
any adherence at all.
We already see very poor adherence to the law from the
Russians, and so their compatriots in Syria have shown similar
disregard for the laws of war. And so my concern would be
you're bringing in troops that are even more poorly trained
than the Russians are and we would see vast war crimes with the
application of Syrian forces.
Mr. Keating. Could anyone comment, too, on the fact
President Zelensky mentioned at a prior meeting that other
Members of Congress were at as well that he was a target of
assassination carried out, he thought, by the Chechens or
something.
Could you comment on the kind of action, if that's proven
true, where they're targeting officials for assassination? You
also shared how a municipal mayor of one of the cities was
taken to the basement, tortured, and killed. These kind of
assassinations, could you comment on those tactics as well?
Anyone--anyone can jump----
Dr. Arend. Yes. Just, Chair, if I can jump in on that.
To me, those would also be clear violations of
international law by targeting civilians, targeting anyone for
assassination. I have heard the reports about mayors being
targeted. That would be a clear violation of international law,
a violation of the Geneva Conventions and, indeed, violations
of international law, even if there were no armed conflict
going on.
Mr. Keating. I now yield to the ranking member, Mr.
Fitzpatrick, for 5 minutes for his questions.
I'll now recognize Representative Wagner for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for organizing this
absolutely critically important hearing, and I want to thank
our witnesses for their expertise and their work on these
critical issues.
I traveled to Poland and the Ukrainian border just over a
week ago as part of a bipartisan delegation of Foreign Affairs
Committee members and I saw for myself the incalculable human
cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
We met just a few of the millions of Ukrainians fleeing
Putin's brutal war on their people and I spoke with women who
had left their husbands, their sons, their fathers, behind to
fight the Russian assault on a free and democratic Ukraine.
The strength and the courage of the Ukrainian people have
demonstrated in the face of such suffering has galvanized the
free world to craft a swift, I think, and unified response to
Putin's invasion.
Putin is a butcher. His cold-blooded attacks on Ukrainian
cities, including on apartment complexes, civilian
infrastructure, orphanages, maternity hospitals, and
humanitarian corridors are nothing short of evil, plain and
simple.
We all just listened to the historic address to Congress by
President Zelensky of Ukraine and we must keep them in the
fight. Providing Ukraine with the MiG-29 jets that they have
been requesting for some time is no different than the weaponry
and lethal military aid that we are already providing.
We must work with Poland to make that happen, and
humanitarian corridors must be secured at the very least. The
United States and our allies must continue to send an
unmistakable message to Putin that we will not allow his
repugnant crimes against civilians to become commonplace. War
crimes are a profound offense to all peaceful and responsible
nations and they must always be met with severe consequences.
President Zelensky's strong plea at the end of his speech
to America must be heard and met. In his words, ``You are a
leader of your Nation. You are the leader and you must be the
leader of the world. Your nation must be the leader of peace.''
While I was in Poland, I met with women civil society
leaders who urged us in the strongest possible terms to impose
more pain on Putin to punish his unspeakable crimes against
Ukrainians, including by going after the oligarchs, as
President Zelensky mentioned in his address, who support his
criminal regime.
Ms. Docherty, what are the major gaps in the current
sanctions system and what can the U.S. and allies do better to
tighten the screws on Putin and prevent Russia from skirting
these sanctions?
Ms. Docherty. Thank you, Representative Wagner, for the
question. I appreciate that, and I think that highlighting the
humanitarian consequences of the conflicts is key.
Human Rights Watch does not take a position on the
sanctions,--we maintain neutrality on those issues in part
because it allows us to assess the violations of international
humanitarian law with more impartiality.
However, I think it is essential--excuse me, would you like
to go ahead?
Mrs. Wagner. I would just say--well, let me go on the. The
government of Russia has already been sanctioned twice under
the U.S. Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare
Elimination Act of 1991 for its use of chemical weapons.
It's clear these sanctions have failed to instill a strong
enough deterrent against Russia's future use of chemical
weapons.
Ms. Docherty, how could U.S. sanctions be used more
effectively, do you think, to deter Russia's use of chemical
weapons?
Ms. Docherty. I think our focus, I would say, would be more
on the deterrence through international criminal law and I
think the importance of documentation of potential war crimes
of which there is widespread evidence is crucial. I think the
U.S. support of the international criminal investigations is
crucial and I think also to address some of this--the issues
you saw at the Polish-Ukrainian border States can help those
people through humanitarian aid and securing the humanitarian
corridors that have been agreed on.
All of those are crucial efforts that need to be undertaken
as soon as possible.
Mrs. Wagner. And every time they tried to secure a
humanitarian corridor, Putin shelled that humanitarian corridor
and took out those convoys. It is reprehensible.
I thank you for your input. I thank you all for the work
that we're doing, and I think this committee and you, Mr.
Chairman, for addressing this issue.
I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair now recognizes Representative Cicilline for 5
minutes.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
the ranking member for convening this very important hearing.
I too, recently traveled to the border of Ukraine and
Poland with many colleagues and saw firsthand some of the
consequences of Russia's aggressive and unjustified invasion of
Ukraine, and, of course, this morning, we heard directly from
President Zelensky.
So, Mr. Grozev, I'd like to begin with you. You know, I
think so much of the analysis is kind of how do we get Vladimir
Putin to understand the implications of what he's doing and to
continue to suffer consequences as a result.
And so I'm wondering whether Bellingcat or any of your
partners have found evidence to suggest there are any internal
actors within the upper echelons of the Russian Federation that
are either advising Putin to use methods of war that amount to
war crimes, or conversely, are there advisors that could
influence Putin to wind down these hostilities and to,
particularly, underscore that severe consequences of the kind
of war crimes he's committing?
Mr. Grozev. This is an extremely valid question. We see
evidence of both. We see a very small, militarized circle, a
corrupt militarized circle around Putin that is actually making
commissions on all Russia's arms sales, both domestically and
internationally, that are advising an escalation.
But we do see evidence, including whistleblowers, that are
reaching out to media and to us directly that suggested a
growing part of the silovik circle of the sort of power
structures are very uncomfortable with the economic and other
costs and human costs of the war, not so much imposed on
Ukraine but imposed on their own compatriots.
And I think that we are at an unprecedented moment in the
recent Russian history where there's a sufficient degree of
dissent in the elite near Putin that needs to be engaged with,
and I think that's where part of what the United States should
focus his efforts on is.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you. And, Dr. Arend, you described a
number of ways that we might be able to hold Vladimir Putin
accountable for his war crimes. Do you have a view on kind of
which is the best venue to proceed and the kind of prospects
for success?
Because we talk a lot about holding him accountable for
these war crimes but being able to actually do that, I think,
is incredibly important.
Dr. Arend. I think that's exactly right, Congressman. I
think it's a challenge while he is in power, but what I think
could be done as a multi-track approach, I think, if the
International Criminal Court were to indict him they would be
able to hold that over him.
I also think that civil suits under the Alien Tort Statute
in the United States that would be directed against assets that
are held by Putin himself, the oligarchs and others, would also
be a way to squeeze the oligarchy and, potentially, be able to
exert pressure on Putin.
In addition, as Mr. Grozev said, some of the other States
like Germany and Spain and, potentially, the Netherlands
exercising universal jurisdiction would also, I think, be very
good.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you.
And, Ms. Docherty, you know, since 2014 in Donbas and
Crimea Russian proxies have targeted journalists and dissidents
and funneling information about atrocities out of these
regions, and multiple journalists have been killed in the full-
scale invasion of Ukraine, including American Brent Renaud,
while others have been very seriously injured, and we know that
the Russian journalists that are critical of Putin and his
regime are targeted as well.
And so as we're trying to make sure the world understands
what's going on, how difficult will it be for independent
members of the press to operate in Ukraine should Russia
capture additional territory and what would Russia's plan look
like to suppress free expression during an occupation of
Ukraine and how might that impact the world's response to this
violence?
Ms. Docherty. Thank you for the question.
Obviously, it's crucial to be dealing with the conduct of
the war but it's also crucial to be thinking about human rights
such as free expression, both in Ukraine but also it's also
important to be thinking about it in Russia as well, I just
wanted to add.
Protection for journalists is key. I'm not sure I have the
answers for how to ensure it at this stage. But I think
continued calls for protecting journalists from attacks at this
point, which is a fundamental right under international
humanitarian law. That they are protected actors, just like
civilians are, is an important thing to be keeping in mind.
And it needs to continue not just during the hostilities
but also if there were to be an occupation, that right would
continue in that situation.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you very much.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes Mr. Mast for 5
minutes.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate it.
I have a--I would like to begin with just a general
question for all of our witnesses.
Is it your understanding that you are here to advise on the
potential for adjudicating some sort of war crime against
Vladimir Putin sometime in the future or to provide a case to
us as Members of Congress in discussing about violation of
international law and war crimes, whether there has been some
threshold that the United States should support a no-fly zone
or giving jets to the Ukraine? What would be your understanding
of why you're here?
Dr. Arend. Congressman, I can weigh in. My sense is that I
am here to provide an understanding of the international legal
framework for both what constitutes war crimes and how one
might go about prosecuting individuals who have committed war
crimes.
Mr. Mast. Nothing about whether Putin has crossed some
threshold at this point or anything else or whether we should
increase our involvement today? That would be accurate?
Dr. Arend. Yes. My sense is that my purpose here was to
provide a legal structure and a legal framework and to make
suggestions as to how the United States could encourage the
further investigation of war crimes and potential prosecution.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Mast. So I'll appreciate--I'll just stick with that. I
think I'm asking a question that most would agree that is the
purpose of this hearing, to evaluate some kind of war crimes in
the future.
I think it's important for the American people to know that
just minutes ago we heard from the president of Ukraine,
President Zelensky, and we're having a hearing, in my opinion,
that is entirely tone deaf unless the purpose of it is to help
evaluate whether we should be enforcing a no-fly zone or
granting jets to Ukrainian pilots to go out there and fight the
Russians.
And my opinion of why this is taking place is to ease the
conscience of a Congress that just heard from a president that
is pleading for assistance where 435 members of the House of
Representatives and 100 members of the Senate sat in an
auditorium and listened to the Ukrainian president plead for
help because of the unconscionable crimes going on in his
country, the people being burned, buried in rubble, the infants
killed, the attacks, and not even all of the members of the
Foreign Affairs Committee are sitting together right now
minutes after evaluating that plea.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are not
meeting with us from the Foreign Affairs Committee later today
to say, what did you think about what President Zelensky said
and what is our evaluation of what we should do in the face of
his plea.
All of us, as members of House Foreign Affairs and Senate
Foreign Relations, and State Department, and others, we do not
have this on our calendar to discuss later today or later this
week where we will all get together and very sincerely debate
the plea of President Zelensky.
We will not be sitting with President Biden to discuss
this. We will not be sitting with Secretary of State Antony
Blinken to discuss this. I think that is unconscionable on our
part.
I think we are negligent in our duties and I think the
American people should know that members of the Foreign Affairs
Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
Blinken and President Biden and others have not, since the
inception--since the beginning of this Ukrainian invasion all
sat together behind closed doors discussing and debating what
we should actually be doing, whether sending jets to Ukrainian
fighters actually moves us up somewhere in some ladder of
escalation into conventional war or thermonuclear war.
We have not all sat together, and given that, a deliberate
debate, or whether we should be looking at this in terms of
should we have people on the ground or not. We have not all sat
together and had a debate in that way.
We owe Congress more, we owe the American people more, and
we owe President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, who are
pleading for our help, we owe them more than what we're doing
right now to try and ease our conscience from lifting a
military finger in their defense--from not----
Mr. Schneider. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Mast [continuing]. Military finger. I have no more
time. But if I did have time I would yield.
Mr. Keating. No. The gentleman's time has expired. I would
say that since the gentleman's comments were directed toward
the chair and, perhaps, the ranking member himself, too, let me
suggest that it's never being tone deaf to speak up,
investigate, hold accountable people that kill innocent
children, women, men, that target schools and hospitals.
So the importance of this hearing is relevant time wise and
I'd suggest it's one of the most important issues to expose at
this time, not just for our country but for the world.
I now yield to Representative Wild 5 minutes.
Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find this hearing to
be very pertinent and timely, particularly, given that as I was
sitting here on this hearing I received a breaking news alert
of 12 Ukrainians standing in line for bread who were just
killed by Russian shelling. The travesty of what is happening
there is just unbelievable and, yes, we must address these war
crimes.
My first question is to Dr. Arend.
Dr. Arend, having never ratified the Rome Statute, the
United States, like Russia, is not a member of the
International Criminal Court, the ICC, but the United States,
also unlike Russia, has taken actions to support the ICC's work
in some instances, including adopting a policy of opposing
invitations, facilitation, or support for travel by individuals
subject to outstanding ICC arrest warrants.
As we think about the need to reaffirm the rules-based
international order in the face of this outrageous aggression,
is it fair to say that although other countries who are not
members of the ICC would, obviously, need to make the decision
to join voluntarily, would it significantly strengthen the
ICC's credibility if the United States became a member?
Dr. Arend. Absolutely. I would strongly support U.S.
ratification of the Rome Statute. I understand that the statute
is not perfect.
But I think when we look at the advantages and
disadvantages, it would be much in America's interest to be a
party to the Rome Statute and it would be in the interest of
the international community because it would strengthen the
rules relating to prosecuting people for committing war crimes.
Ms. Wild. Thank you for your very succinct answer and
definitive answer.
Short of ratifying the Rome Statute and becoming a member
of the ICC, are there intermediate steps that we could be
taking to bolster the ICC's work that might be helpful for
strengthening international justice?
Dr. Arend. Absolutely. As you mentioned before, the United
States has supported efforts by the International Criminal
Court. We could, certainly, go on record in this particular
case that we would support those efforts, and in past times, we
have also supported U.N. Security Council resolutions
encouraging referral to the International Criminal Court.
Those would be some of the things, and pledging cooperation
with the prosecutor, including providing, when possible and
when plausible, intelligence information that would help the
prosecutor bring cases against Putin and a variety of other
individuals.
Ms. Wild. Thank you.
Is Mr. Grozev--yes, Mr. Grozev is with us.
Mr. Grozev, I have a question for you. As you work to
document instances of criminality by Russian forces, have you
gained a sense of how the Russian government and military's
decisionmaking mechanism functions?
Have you seen any evidence that Putin and the most high-
ranking officials may be taking precautions that shield
themselves from possible prosecution?
Mr. Grozev. We have obtained information that gives us an
understanding of how the decisionmaking functions. But part of
what we focused upon is whether or not the Russian intelligence
that encouraged them to proceed with the war and has--clearly,
has been faulty, whether that understanding has taken place at
the Kremlin, and it has, and that was important for our
understanding of the future of the conflict.
What we do know at this point is that the initial political
plans that--political intelligence that Russia had received--
the Kremlin had received that suggested a very quick defeat,
bolstered by agents of influence in Ukraine that would have
supported the Russian position--the Russian invasion--has
completely failed, and this has been delivered--this
information has been delivered to President Putin, which means
that President Putin is currently or has been over the last
several days trying to come up with an alternative strategy.
And I'm certain that, given the understanding of the
failure of the original strategy, he would have started
planning for an escape legally and personally as well from
this.
And, again, this is why I'm encouraging as more--as much
engagement with people around him, including the oligarchs, as
possible, in addition to just simply attacking them through
sanctions because these are the people who would help in
preventing such shielding because they will be privy to all the
information at this point in time.
Ms. Wild. Thank you. And with about 40 seconds left, Dr.
Arend, I have one more question for you. Do you expect that
we're going to see cases brought forward that would lead to
high-ranking Russian officials being tried and subject to
arrest in multiple countries once they leave office?
Dr. Arend. I do. I do see that happening. I see an
indictment coming from the International Criminal Court. I also
see some indictments coming from countries like Russia--like--
Germany and Spain and, potentially, others. Yes.
Ms. Wild. All right. Thank you very much. That's all I
have. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes Representative
Tenney for 5 minutes.
Ms. Tenney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this
meeting, and also the ranking member.
I think it's important to get these facts on the record and
your expertise is greatly appreciated, and also just whether we
have--where we can go with crafting legislation or coming up
with legal solutions as Dr. Arend suggested.
I'm going to just jump to my questions because I have a
lot. My first question is to Ms. Docherty, and I just wanted to
ask, reports have emerged that Russia has used the thermobaric
weapons and cluster munitions against civilians in Ukraine.
Have you seen evidence that Russia has used these weapons
in Ukraine against civilian targets in a manner that violates
international law, in your opinion?
Ms. Docherty. Thank you very much for the questions,
Representative Tenney.
With regard to cluster munitions, definitely, they have
used cluster munitions widely in civilian areas and killed
numerous civilians.
We do not have exact statistics on how many civilian
casualties been caused but, definitely, they have used in
civilian areas cluster munition rockets, particularly, but also
missiles. We have documented several cases of that at Kharkiv I
mentioned in my testimony, as well as other places, including
near a hospital and so forth. So that's a particular concern.
Ms. Tenney. So we do have evidence of that that we could
use and, potentially, we could use?
Ms. Docherty. Definitely, there is evidence.
Ms. Tenney. OK. Also----
Ms. Docherty. Definitely evidence. Definitely, there is
evidence of inherently indiscriminate weapons that violate
international humanitarian law.
Ms. Tenney. I also just wanted to ask you your opinion, as
the government of Russia has been sanctioned twice under the
U.S. Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare
Elimination Act of 1991 for its use of chemical weapons, and we
have also seen the, you know, the use in Syria as well, it's
clear these sanctions have failed to really stop them in a
deterrent way, since Syria was more recent, and prevent them
from the future use of these chemical weapons, could we use--
could the U.S. sanctions be done more effectively to deter
Russia's use of chemical weapons?
And I say that because I was meeting with a group of Syrian
Americans this weekend who were very concerned that the
chemical weapons could, potentially, be used as they were in
Syria in this situation, and I just wondered if there was
something we could do and that you would recommend with your
expertise?
Ms. Docherty. Sure, and let me answer real quickly on the
thermobaric side of things as well.
We do not have evidence that--we haven't documented
evidence of use yet but we have seen evidence of Russian
vehicles carrying thermobaric weapons. So it's possible that
they could be used in the conflict, just to wrap up that first
question.
In terms of sanctions, I guess I would--do not have
comments on the specific sanctions that could be used. But,
obviously, it's an area of concern that they could use them. We
do not have evidence at this point of having--certainly, not of
having used them or any plans to use them at this point.
So I do not have a specific answer to that question, in
particular. But it's an area that we'll continue to monitor.
It's an area we have tracked in the past. So thank you again.
Ms. Tenney. Yes. Definitely need to find a solution to how
we can do something that's effective to prevent that from ever
happening.
Mr. Garlasco. If I could just comment, very quickly, on the
use of the thermobaric weapons. We do have evidence of the
OFZAB-500 being used, which is a O-F-Z-A-B hyphen 500. This is
an aerial bomb. It's categorized as a fragmentation high
explosive incendiary bomb.
This is a type of thermobaric weapon and there's a number
of photos and videos that you can find that shows unexploded
bombs of this type being removed from civilian homes. Thank
you.
Ms. Tenney. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that.
I also just want to go to Dr. Arend. The Kremlin is
intentionally spreading lies that the United States and Ukraine
are engaged in chemical and biological weapons activities in
Ukraine.
These claims are part of a broader years-long
disinformation campaign by the Kremlin to discredit the United
States. For example, similarly disinformation campaigns
perpetuated by the Russians, the Soviets, have included
spreading false claims that COVID-19, HIV, were created in U.S.
military labs.
What is the Kremlin's goal and can you address this
misinformation campaign? Because there seems to be just a lot
of issue--there's a lot of discussion on this in social media
and people are looking for answers and the truth here.
Could you answer that quickly because I do have a legal
question for you after that, if I have any time left?
Dr. Arend. I think part of the disinformation campaign is
just to confuse people, generally. But also, I think it's to
confuse the Russian people so that the argument is out there
that Russia is really doing this because of the evil Ukrainians
and the evil Americans.
Of course, that's absolute nonsense. But I think that's
part of the plan.
Ms. Tenney. Thank you.
Now, I want to ask you, because you mentioned the Alien
Tort Statute and I think Ms. Wild also mentioned can we
actually bring these people to justice, and my concern is can
we get jurisdiction over them.
Can we compel appearances? Can we get remedies? And that
was something a U.S.-based jurisdiction, but even on the
international court stage--court situation, can we get that
done?
And you indicated there's a possibility and I just want to
know how realistic it is because I think, right now, we are
crying for justice as we see these horrific videos that--not
just here but what President Zelensky showed the world this
morning.
We just--we want justice and we want to see Vladimir Putin
pay the price for these horrific crimes and war crimes that we
believe are happening. And we just want--I'd just like your
legal expertise, if I have any time left on that.
Dr. Arend. Yes. So, Representative Tenney, you're
absolutely correct and I think there will be justice and we
need it as quickly as possible. The only question is how long
is it going to take.
I think with the Alien Tort Statute we would need to have
individual Russian citizens who have assets in the United
States who can be reasonably accused themselves of having
committed war crimes.
So whether it's a general or an oligarch or someone
directly involved, and then an individual who was injured, a
Russian national could bring a civil suit in the United States.
That's not going to be fast because we're still trying to
assemble the information. You would need to prove beyond a
preponderance of evidence in a civil suit in the court.
But, I think, that would be one mechanism. In terms of
exercising, whether it's Germany or Spain, exercising
jurisdiction under the universality principle of enforcement
jurisdiction, the likelihood is the Russian nationals are not
going to be in Germany or in Spain, and so you're going to be
less likely to be able to implement that sooner.
I do not know all the details of Spanish law or German law.
So there may be a possibility for attachment of property,
however, even in the absence of somebody appearing in court.
But that would be for others to talk about.
Ms. Tenney. Thank you. It just seems like legally a stretch
for us to get jurisdiction over these people and use the U.S.
court system and how effective we could be internationally
might--I just think it's going to be a stretch to get them into
court here and actually get--you know, get them to appear if
they're not already, you know, hidden away in some--squirreled
away in some country, you know, where we can't get to them.
It just--I just--it's curious. I mean, I think we need to
explore every option to find justice because right now it's
just--it's absolutely horrific what we're experiencing.
But thank you. I think my time has run out. Thank you to
everyone and the witnesses and thank you, again, to the
chairman and the ranking member for bringing this important
meeting at this important time in our country. Thank you.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes the gentleman
who's the chair of Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security--
importantly in this issue--Migration, and International
Economic Policy, Mr. Sires.
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Chairman, for hosting this meeting
today and thank you for the people who are testifying today.
You know, as I look at this, I am--I wish I was as
confident as you are that we can bring some sort of justice to
this issue of war crimes, because I see what Putin did in
Georgia and I see what he did in Syria. He seemed to have
gotten away with everything that he did, all those criminal
acts, and now we're seeing what he's doing here in the Ukraine.
And we go back and forth on whether it is--where the
responsibility falls on Putin. I'm just not that confident that
we're going to be able to prove that these were war crimes. And
I know we have all these videos and everything else, but can
you talk to that a little bit and get me from where I am to a
more positive view?
And as far as journalists are concerned, journalists are
under attack all over the world. We do not have to go very far.
We just go to Mexico, where they're killed every week and we do
not seem to do anything, you know, and that's just as horrible.
So can you give me some confidence here? So I can view
this, Dr. Arend?
Mr. Garlasco. If I can just--Dr. Arend, if you do not mind,
if I can just interject quickly. Representative Sires----
Dr. Arend. Please--please do, Marc.
Mr. Garlasco. Yes. I greatly appreciate the question. I've
been working as a war crime investigator for almost 20 years
now, and while I do admit that justice takes time, it does not
mean that we should stop, that we should pause. We must always
push for justice, particularly when human rights are violated
or international war crimes.
Mr. Sires. Oh, I didn't say that at all. I do not meant to
interrupt, but I do not say that at all.
Mr. Garlasco. Yes, sir. I think it's important for us to
recognize that there are a number of mechanisms. Certainly, Dr.
Arend has spoken about the ICC, universal jurisdiction. But
there are other ways that we can go about bringing together the
information.
For example, the Commission of Inquiry, which the United
Nations has recently empowered and has created, is a fact
finding mission that goes out and does work on investigations
on the ground in these countries.
I, myself, have been on two. I've been on the Syria
Commission and also the Libya Commission. I've also worked as a
war crime investigator for the United Nations in Afghanistan.
And these organization--I'm sorry, this commission is an
important fact finding mission and if it is not backed by the
powers of not only the United Nations but the member States,
such as the United States, with funds and also, importantly,
with political power, then they're unable to get the facts.
You talk about us getting justice. In order to get justice,
we have to have the facts so that when Vladimir Putin is,
hopefully, brought before----
Mr. Sires. Yes, but we have the facts in Syria, sir, and we
have the facts in other places, and we do not--I do not see
them moving forward. I'm afraid that we'll have the same issue
here.
Mr. Garlasco. It does take time.
As Dr. Arend stated, you know, it took us a while to get
Milosevic. We got Milosevic. I understand it's not--it does not
feel good, but it's going to take time. Thank you.
Mr. Sires. You know, the other thing that worries me, you
know, you have all these dictators now surging in the Western
Hemisphere and they see Putin get away with all the things that
he does to his people, and I'm afraid that they're going to
start doing the same thing in their own country, in Nicaragua
and Venezuela.
So we have to find a way to--the people that are
responsible for war crimes to bring them to justice. I think
that's the only thing that's going to, you know, stop--is going
to stop this----
Mr. Garlasco. I totally agree with you and I----
Mr. Sires [continuing]. Because all the abuses on their
people it's just constant and it keeps growing and growing in
different areas.
Mr. Garlasco. That's an important reason for United States
to show leadership, to join the International Criminal Court,
and to, hopefully, bring these individuals to justice someday.
Mr. Sires. Look, I agree with you. I'm 100 percent behind
bringing these people to justice. But I get frustrated. You
know, when I see--when I see Zelensky and he showed that
video--you know, you see that little boy running, you know, I
mean, it breaks my heart and that this Putin--I mean, he--I do
not understand why people are so afraid to go against this guy.
The only guy that's giving Putin a black eye is this guy
Zelensky. Quite frankly, he got away with it in Georgia. He got
away with it in Syria, and we need this--you know, we need to
support Zelensky as much as we can to punch this guy out in
real life so he can't do this to the people in this world--the
abuse on people, and I, for one, will support any kind of
effort that this country wants to do to support Zelensky.
So I thank you for being here today, and I apologize. I get
frustrated with these--you know, especially with this guy Putin
because while we sleep these guys plotting how to destroy the
United States of America, and people in this country do not
realize that. We have a president that called him a genius. How
idiot that was.
But I thank you. Thank you, Chairman, and my time is up.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
The chair recognizes Representative Pfluger for 5 minutes.
Mr. Pfluger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, for
holding this very important and timely hearing. Like many
others, obviously, very concerned. I have a military
background.
I'm extremely familiar, as a fighter pilot, with what it
takes to deconflict from civilian casualties, to take every
possible step to not engage with civilians. This is what I did
for my professional career.
I have a series of questions. So I want to start out with
very--with a very basic--is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?
Dr. Arend. Congressman, if I can venture to enter into
this, while we do not have all the evidence and I think it's
very, very important in order for us to get the forensic
evidence in great detail, for us also to get any kind of
testimony that's possible, it appears to me that Vladimir Putin
has authorized the commission of war crimes. We have seen a
variety of evidence, and while the final word is not in, it
seems pretty clear to me that Vladimir Putin has committed war
crimes.
Mr. Pfluger. Does anybody--thank you very much. Does
anybody have a different take on that?
Mr. Garlasco. I do not have a different take on that.
However, it is important, as Dr. Arend stated, to collect all
the facts before we go forward with any kind of an indictment.
Just as we wouldn't say someone in the United States is
guilty before trial, the same thing should happen with Vladimir
Putin.
Mr. Pfluger. Yes. Absolutely. I agree with that and--but I
also think that, you know, at this point in time, time is of
the essence. We heard Zelensky just an hour ago. I met with him
5 weeks ago in Kyiv.
I meet with members of the Ukrainian parliament on an every
other day or weekly basis. So time is of the essence here. Time
is for--is not in the interest of the Ukrainian people right
now every day that we delay.
So let me ask another question. Are there ways that we can
be sanctioning Russian oligarchs or other people inside of
Russia who are traveling internationally who we know are either
helping facilitate the transfer of weapons, who are part of the
process of being part of authorizations of these war crimes
that could be taking place?
What can we do to these people right now?
Mr. Garlasco. I would just like to reiterate that one of
the things that we need to do, as Dr. Arend and I have stated,
is to collect as much evidence as possible.
As Bellingcat, for example, is doing with open source
information, the intelligence community also needs to be
collecting that and sharing what it can in an unclassified
format with a variety of war crimes tribunals or war crime
investigations that may go forward.
We need to move forward with the facts, and this is
completely separate from any kind of economic sanction that
you're putting on the Russian oligarchs in parallel. But I
think it's very important that we continue to move forward with
the collection of as much detailed information as possible.
Mr. Pfluger. Let me jump to my final question because I
think it's extremely important, probably the most important
question that I will ask.
There's a responsibility to protect, as stated in the
United Nations agreements that we have all signed up to. What
is our red line for intervention? Is it a nuclear weapon? Is it
the attack of a nuclear facility? Is it the indiscriminate
bombing of innocent civilians?
I mean, what is you all's recommendation on a red line for
this administration?
Mr. Garlasco. Congressman, I want to thank you for that
question. I believe that the red line for that is above my pay
grade. But what I will say is that the responsibility to
protect is an important part of what is enshrined in the United
Nations.
As you know, NATO went to war in Libya, for example,
because of the attacks on civilians in Benghazi. We then
intervened and protected the civilian population. So there is
that option, moving forward.
Dr. Arend. And just from a legal perspective, the--where
the red line is is also above my pay grade as well. However, I
want to say that because an armed attack has occurred against
Ukraine, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter,
Ukraine has a right of collective self-defense, meaning right
now it is lawful for other States in the international system,
including the United States, to come directly to the aid of
Ukraine.
Whether that should happen now and how is a policy
question, again, above my pay grade. But it is perfectly lawful
under international law to provide defense in any form to
Ukraine.
Mr. Pfluger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I realize my time has
expired and I appreciate you taking the interest in this
hearing. I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
And for the witnesses' edification, the full committee will
be looking at the discussion of an AUMF and authorization to
use military force, and that's something that the Foreign
Affairs Committee will be addressing.
So I thank the representative for his question and I'll now
yield to Representative Costa for 5 minutes.
I believe you're muted, Representative.
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the
importance of this subcommittee hearing and the timeliness,
given the dire circumstances that we are all dealing with and
President Zelensky's speech this morning to a joint session.
I want to ask a couple of questions related to the
discussion we have already had today, and both to Mr. Grozev
and Dr. Arend, to give more detail, Mr. Grozev--and I do not
know if, Dr. Arend, you'd care to comment, but can you give
members the sense of the scale and the scope of the alleged war
crimes that are being carried out that are hard--that are hard
to prosecute?
We saw that video this morning and it was horrific, and we
have seen other demonstrations of the acts of terror that this
pariah, Putin, I think, should be held up to as a war criminal.
But prosecuting them, as we looked at the example back in the
1990's in Bosnia, how do we get there from here? I know a
number of nations are in the process of taking action.
Mr. Grozev. If I can quickly respond.
First of all, there's, certainly, going to be hard
prosecutable--in fact, easy to prosecute and prove evidence
after the war is over. That will take years.
But there is evidence of mutilation of prisoners of war.
There's evidence of killing and mutilation of completely random
civilians because they witnessed the army movements.
There's evidence of, and we haven't made this public,
there's evidence of, in fact, targeted killings of people who
were thought by Russia to be on their side and they had been
developed as assets and agents for a long time but they didn't
come forward at the last minute and they----
Mr. Costa. Testimony by captured Russian personnel can also
be used?
Mr. Grozev. Yes. Yes, of course, many of them, obviously,
subject to the legal limitations of what--of not forcing a
prisoner of war to testify, but many of them--many young
conscripts who were captured were--did not even know they were
going to war until the day they went and they willingly, at
this point, are ready to testify as well.
So I think it will be not difficult to prove the commission
of war crimes in the future. What is really important now is to
look at the open source evidence that provides real-time
evidence of war crimes that cannot not have happened because
they are there. We see the destroyed----
Mr. Costa. So we need to be documenting this and making
sure that we have the best information.
Mr. Grozev. We're doing that, and it's a policy decision
for governments to act. It's not so much a legal requirement or
ban thereof.
Mr. Costa. Dr. Arend----
Mr. Garlasco. If I can just tag on to that, very quickly.
You asked what are difficult war crimes to go after, and from
my perspective, having run many war crime investigations in the
past, really the issue that I'm looking at here is one of DPH--
direct participation in hostilities by the civilian population.
We have some very brave Ukrainians taking up arms to defend
themselves and their country. But because of this, they are now
directly participating in hostilities and they make themselves
lawful targets.
When that happens, it becomes difficult for war crime
investigators to go into a site and say a bomb was dropped on a
building, an apartment building, let's say, and was that
because the Russians were very poor in their targeting and
just--and didn't do it well--they're not very professional.
That's not a war crime.
Is it because they were targeting people who are directly
participating in hostilities? That is not a war crime. Or is it
because they were trying to kill civilians in that building and
they were using the direct participation of hostilities as an
excuse? That then becomes very difficult to adjudicate and that
is one of the harder things to prove on the battlefield.
Thank you.
Mr. Costa. Yes, and the misinformation and the outright
lies that Russia has been active in during the course of this
action, obviously, obfuscates a lot of that.
Dr. Arend, my last question here. Congress, what can we do
to strengthen the War Crimes Act in order to more directly
prosecute Russia for war crimes? Do you have recommendations?
Dr. Arend. I do, indeed, Congressman Costa. That, I think,
is a very good question. At present, the War Crimes Act says
you have to be an American national to be prosecuted or an
American national has to be the victim of the war crime, and
that could, certainly, be expanded to include people who are
not American nationals or not victims of some sort of action.
So you could expand that to include other individuals who
have perpetrated the war crimes. I think that would be a very,
very good idea. It is more akin to the kind of universal
jurisdiction statutes that other countries have.
Mr. Costa. Well, Chairman Keating, my time has expired. But
I think we should consider that when the full committee acts or
holds a hearing on this within the next week or so as a
recommendation in terms of how we can better strengthen the War
Crimes Act and America's resolve to prosecute those who have
been the greatest offenders.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Keating. I look forward to working with you and our
office is in the process of doing that. So I enjoy your support
and help in that regard.
The chairman recognizes Representative Meijer for 5
minutes.
I'm not sure if Representative Meijer is still with us. I
do not see him on the screen.
Representative Meijer is still with us?
Mr. Meijer. Can you hear me now, sir? Can you hear me now,
sir?
Mr. Keating. Yes.
Mr. Meijer. OK, and I apologize for that. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses who are here today.
I want to drill down on some of the other questions my
colleagues asked. You know, we had that discussion on, you
know, making sure after the fact that there is justice being
served.
I think the--one of the paramount goals is what we can do
today to prevent, to dissuade that coercive ability that, I
think, we're trying to do with the sanctions and when it comes
to preventing, you know, the deliberate targeting of civilian
areas.
I guess my question would be, first, to Mr. Grozev. Do you
see any indication on the open source side of the Russian
military officials who are either ordering or carrying out
indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas that likely constitute
a war crime?
That they are aware that they are committing potential war
crimes and that they could be, you know, facing justice after
the fact for those actions?
Mr. Grozev. Yes, we do. There's a lot of verified audio
recordings, intercepts of telephone calls, and this is actually
one of the silver linings of this conflict.
Because of the incompetence of the Russian army, they have
totally been unable to use their secure communication system
and they've, largely, communicated via open channels.
There are tens of thousands of intercepted phone calls that
will be made available and validated by future investigators,
and in some of them you could hear the soldiers and the
officers reporting to their loved ones that actually have been
told to disregard civilian care and care of civilian
casualties--not necessarily to target them offensively but to
not really put them on the priority list and to assume that
they should be in the line of fire.
And this alone is evidence that they're aware and their
commanders are aware of the likely commission of the crime.
Mr. Meijer. And I guess just, you know, a little bit
further on that. I mean, I'm not as familiar with Russian
training, tactics, and procedures. I know in the U.S. military
it is required that we understand the law of armed conflict.
It's required that we understand proportionality, the avoidance
of civilian casualties.
You know, that's something that has been, you know, well
understood, everything from local level rules of engagement to
just what our basic training and requirements are. This may go
beyond the scope of this hearing, but is that something that
Russian soldiers, you know, understanding a lot of these are
conscripts who seem very poorly trained and their basic
elements of maneuver and tactical procedures seem laughable and
incompetent, you know, is there any equivalent understanding of
Geneva Conventions of law of armed conflict that is taught
within the Russian military, whether at, you know, officer
level or among enlisted?
Mr. Grozev. I will answer very briefly and I'll ask other
members of the
[inaudible] to add to that. My understanding is that
conscripts are taught that but at a very rudimentary level and
without taking this seriously, because the concept of offensive
war in Russia among the Russian military was also a--totally
unthinkable until a couple of weeks ago.
But important to know that in this conflict we also have
private military contractors that are heavily used by the
Russian side exactly to deflect responsibility and we have at
least several hundred deployed in Ukraine, maybe more.
We have talked to some of them and we know that they've
been given a free hand to actually go after a list of civilian
or military targets of people, kill lists, to go after and kill
without necessarily complying with any international norms of
warfare.
Mr. Meijer. I do not know if there's any other witnesses
who want to answer on that, or else I'll kind of conclude.
You know, I guess, if there is an understanding--and Mr.
Grozev, I really appreciate you sharing and putting on open
source the failures of Russia's Era encrypted messaging system
and so we have seen that evidence that they're aware of what
they're doing.
Is there any evidence that they are--or any intercepts or
any awareness that some of the crimes could be on par with what
has been tried in, you know, international courts? We mentioned
Syria as something that had been kind of dissuaded or we had
not seen the concentrated effort to get justice there.
But, certainly, Bosnia, Serbia, you know, prior conflicts
in the mid to late 1990's there had been concerted efforts. Are
any of these Russian soldiers, officers, generals, do they
express any hesitation or awareness of what justice may befall
them?
Mr. Grozev. Based on the few intercepts that have been made
available publicly and to us, there are cases of officers being
aware of what they're--what they're doing, of being
uncomfortable but still following through with orders.
So it's really going to be a case--in these cases is going
to be a case of following the chain of commands to the person
who was in charge of authorizing such unlawful methods.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Garlasco. I just wanted to say quickly that any soldier
that commits an unlawful--that accepts an unlawful order that
they would then be up for a potential war crime indictment.
Mr. Meijer. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Keating. The chair recognizes Representative Schneider
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Chairman Keating, and I want to
thank you for having this hearing. I want to thank our
witnesses for taking the time to speak to us and to share your
perspectives.
Before I go to my questions, I want to reflect a little bit
on comments earlier made by my colleague on the appropriateness
of this hearing.
And on the one hand, I agree it is imperative that we in
Congress, and, in particular, the Foreign Affairs Committee,
have the discussions about how we best help Ukraine fight
against the Russians to defend themselves, to protect their
territory, protect their rights, protect their sovereignty, and
that is an important conversation. I was in the hall today when
President Zelensky spoke to us and made his impassioned plea.
But we can do two things at the same time and it is
imperative as well and vitally important that we have this
hearing today to talk about potential war crimes, to understand
what we need to do to collect and protect the information to
hold the people to account down the road.
And so I just want to thank you for having this hearing. I
look forward to, as you noted, to further discussions about
other actions we might take.
Shifting back to where we are now, and I apologize for the
bell, long bell, if I can turn to Professor Arend. You used the
term ``I'm not a lawyer'' but I think I understand the concept.
You said reasonably should have known, and at the end of
the day, we have seen the pictures, the pictures that were
included in the testimony here of civilians tortured and
murdered. We have seen the video that was shown here today,
actions taken by soldiers in Ukraine, actions taken by
artillery. But there's a chain of command and, ultimately,
Putin is at the top of the command.
Professor Arend, can you expand a little bit about the
idea--well, you also said authorized commissions of war crimes,
how hat fits together and why accountability runs through the
entire chain of command.
Dr. Arend. So thank you very much, Congressperson.
It's a very important question, and the reasonably knew or
reasonably should have known, I am going back to the Yamashita
case, which was a trial in the Far East Tribunal after the
Second World War, and under Yamashita there were a variety of
war crimes that were taking place and the claim was he did not
know, and the response of the tribunal was he was the
commander.
He had command responsibility. Either he knew or he should
have known because he was the commander. And in this particular
case, if we go all the way up to Vladimir Putin, I actually do
believe he has ordered things which have been war crimes.
That's my sense, again, without the forensic details on
that. But even if he didn't order those things, he's seeing the
same videos. He's hearing the same reports. He's, ultimately,
making the decisions and he reasonably should have known.
Mr. Schneider. Great. Thank you. And if I expand it
further, we are in the thick of a war, twenty-first day of an
unlawful assault on Ukraine, civilians being targeted,
civilians dying.
The prosecution of those crimes, though, and I'll open this
to all the witnesses, does not happen immediately. It takes
time. How important is it to collect information today so that
we can effectively and successfully hold to account once we
achieve the peace and the end of this war?
Mr. Garlasco. Congressman, that is one of the single most
critical things that the U.S. Government can do, is one of the
single most critical things the United Nations and its
investigators can do, and any support that you and the
intelligence community can provide to those investigations
would be absolutely critical. Regardless if we're able to get
someone short term or long term, justice will find them.
Mr. Schneider. Great. Thank you. And my last question in my
last minute, I'll direct this to Mr. Grozev. You talked about
the role of individual responsibility.
So we talked about should have known. But for each
individual, whether it is a front line soldier or a decorated
general, what is their individual responsibility?
Mr. Grozev. That is a very good question that actually
leads a little bit back also to the question about what the
United States can do in terms of better sanctioning.
You are targeting the top oligarchs and the top generals,
but a lot of the people who have some say in the process and
know what they're doing are not being sanctioned, and this has
relevance both on the military side but also on the civilian
side.
There are hundreds of employees of the Russian State that
are enabling the war effort today while they are not sure
whether they're following orders that are compliant with
international law.
I think an example should be made of several hundreds of
these that we have identified and I'm sure that your
intelligence would be much better than us identifying, and
putting such people, mid-level people, on the sanction list
because this will discourage others from actually jumping in
and exposing themselves to sanctions.
So these middle-level enablers, both on the civilian and
the military side, are people that I think should be addressed
in a further wave of sanctions.
Mr. Schneider. Thank you.
And, Mr. Chairman, my time is expired. I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes Representative
Meuser for 5 minutes.
Mr. Meuser. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks very much, and
thanks very much to the witnesses. Some compelling information
being provided. It's appreciated and of great value.
So let me ask you this just to start, please. Perhaps, Mr.
Garlasco or any of the other witnesses. President Biden has
said there will be severe consequences if Russia uses chemical
weapons in Ukraine. In all due respect, I'm not sure what that
means at this point. Do you--could you interpret what do you
think that means?
Mr. Garlasco. Thanks for the question, Congressman. The
mindset of the President is not in my purview. I can say that
Russia has not used chemical weapons in Syria. As a war crime
investigator for the U.N. in Syria we found no evidence of
Russia using chemical weapons.
The Syrian government did, however, and they did it in
support of Russia, for example, in the attack on Douma on April
7th, 2018, which Bellingcat did an excellent investigation of.
They showed how the Syrian government supported Russian
attacks in the area using chlorine gas and killing upwards of
50 civilians in a single strike. So we do know that while they
have not used it they have been supported with chemical
weapons. Thank you.
Mr. Meuser. Thank you. Now, let me ask you this. So as this
thing moves along and, you know, of course, we all saw
Zelensky's comments this morning and offering that NATO,
perhaps, would be off the table and perhaps he's offered other
points in the negotiation to create a negotiation or some level
of appeasement seeking peace, the--what additional atrocities--
and again, I'm not--I am asking your opinion here. You do not
have a crystal ball or get into anybody's head. But do you
think could occur within Kyiv if you were wargaming this?
Mr. Garlasco. Well, you know, I have to ask you to really
look to my organization, PAX, and the product that we put out
under SiegeWatch.org. We have put together 10 separate reports
on the history of sieges in Syria as conducted by the Russian
Federation, how they systematically circled and starved out
communities. They began with a surrender or starve order, and
then it later changed to surrender or die.
In fact, they were targeting tunnels that people were using
to transport food goods into those areas. So there were direct
targeting of civilians and their foodstuffs, medicine, et
cetera, with the sieges.
Mr. Meuser. Right.
Mr. Garlasco. So my grave concern right now is the
establishment of sieges within the cities, whether it's
Mariupol or Kyiv or others, surrounding those areas, cutting
the foodstuffs off, hitting food--we have already seen food
warehouses hit. So you're going to really--they're putting the
screws in the civilian population and that's a grave concern.
Mr. Meuser. Wow, and that could be tens of thousands of
people, of course, could perish.
OK. Are there any drops? Are there--is there any other
humanitarian aid that--I mean, not within the boundaries of
Ukraine, of course, but is there any response to that as far as
your intelligence and intellect and experience could respond
to? Is there anything that we can do to help that situation?
Mr. Garlasco. Well, it's--so it's--I think it's important
that foodstuffs and goods come across the border. It would be
great if the United Nations, you know, through the good offices
of the United States or others, other member States, could
negotiate food deliveries through World Food Programme, for
example, as happened in Syria.
The concern, of course, is, though, that those food convoys
would then be targeted, as happened in Syria. So they would----
Mr. Meuser. Would that--would that be a war crime. Do you
think that----
Mr. Garlasco. That's would absolutely be a war crime.
There's no doubt that that would be a war crime.
Mr. Meuser. Yes. OK. There's quite a few war crimes but
that one is----
Mr. Garlasco. Targeting--direct targeting civilians--
starvation as a----
Mr. Meuser. In war is a war crime.
So and I know you all discussed this before, but the ICC
versus an independent tribunal--your quick thoughts on that?
Mr. Garlasco. My quick thoughts is you take every single
avenue you possibly can. You support the ICC. You support the
Independent Commission of Inquiry. You support the OSCE's
investigation. You support any universal jurisdiction
investigation. You do not go down one road. You go down every
road so that one of those screws sticks.
Mr. Meuser. That's great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield
back. I appreciate that very much.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair now recognizes Representative Jacobs for 5
minutes.
Ms. Jacobs. Well, thank you, Chair Keating, for your
leadership on this issue and for letting me join this
subcommittee hearing.
I wanted to, first, thank the witnesses for all of your
incredibly important work and to talk about one of the really
important issues, I think, we haven't gotten to enough, which
is the use of cluster munitions, the deliberate targeting of
hospitals, residential buildings, and I think an important part
of how we handle this war will be ensuring accountability for
those who have committed war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
The use of cluster munitions is, rightly, condemned by the
international community. A hundred and twenty-three States have
joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Unfortunately, the United States is not one of them. Ms.
Docherty or Dr. Arend, can you speak to the importance of this
convention and how might the U.S. being a party to this
convention help our case in condemning Russia's unjustified
egregious actions in Ukraine?
Ms. Docherty. I'd be happy to speak to that. Yes.
So the Convention on Cluster Munitions comprehensively bans
use, production, stockpile, transfer of cluster munitions. A
hundred and ten States have--are actually full parties to it
and another--a number of other States have signed the treaty,
meaning they are also obliged to uphold the object and purpose
of the treaty, which would include not using cluster munitions.
Also, the majority of NATO States and U.S. allies have joined
the treaty.
If the U.S. joined the ban, it would definitely give it the
added moral high ground to condemn Russia's behavior in this
conflict as well as in other conflicts. Russia-Syrian alliance
used cluster munitions widely in Syria, and Russia-backed
rebels and Ukraine both used them in the 2014-15 conflict.
So it would--it's really crucial that the U.S. take steps
toward joining the treaty and also to change its domestic
policies. I mentioned in my earlier testimony that the Trump
administration rolled back the policy under the Bush
Administration that would have ceased use of most cluster
munitions by 2018.
So at a minimum, the U.S. should reverse the Trump
administration's policy. But I encourage this--the country to
join the treaty as soon as possible.
Dr. Arend. And I just want to agree completely with what
Ms. Docherty just said. I think it's vital that the United
States ratify the Cluster Munitions Convention as soon as
possible and also roll back those previous restrictions that
she mentioned before. Very important in setting the example for
the rest of the world.
Ms. Jacobs. Well, I completely agree with you. The United
States is in support of the ICC investigation on the situation
in Ukraine.
I think the support for an ICC investigation is incredibly
important, especially as we have seen so many of the
heartbreaking images from today and that you all showed, and I,
honestly, hope this marks a change in the United States' stance
on the ICC in general.
So, Mr. Garlasco, and anyone else who wants to comment,
could you share with us how the United States can be more
supportive of this investigation as a nonmember of the ICC, and
what kind of information can the U.S. provide to the court that
would be helpful in prosecuting those who have committed war
crimes in Ukraine?
Mr. Garlasco. Thank you for this question, Representative
Jacobs.
First, it would be great if the United States showed the
leadership of joining the ICC. But beyond that, there are a
number of steps that the U.S. can take, as I stated in my
testimony.
The intelligence community, I'm certain, is currently
collecting an awful lot of information it could declassify and
provide to the ICC and other investigatory bodies that are
currently ongoing.
So that would be an important step. Also, an important step
would be to fund these bodies. So, for example, the brand new
Commission of Inquiry that the U.N. has just put forward and
authorized requires funding so that it can begin its work. So
these are a number of steps, of concrete steps, that the United
States could take right now.
Mr. Grozev. If I could jump in and add to that.
I completely agree with Dr. Garlasco. The United States
intelligence agencies traditionally compile a lot of
information in the course of conflicts like this one and rarely
share it either with judicial bodies or even with the general
public. And, obviously, there's a balance to be made between
national security and exposing the technical means and helping
the judicial process.
I just think that this balance should be reconsidered in
the case--in similar cases in the past, such as the shooting
down of MH-17, the airliner. The United States refused to share
its intelligence data from satellites with the law enforcement
bodies in investigating the case on the argument that it does
not want to disclose its technical capabilities.
But in this case, we're talking about, potentially tens of
thousands of deaths, and providing that to law enforcement, to
ICC, or to the Dutch or Spanish or German investigators would
probably be a moral--a higher moral calling than some
hypothetical damage to national security.
Ms. Jacobs. Well, thank you. And in my last remaining
seconds, I just wanted to see if any of you have thoughts on
how we kind of balance the need to hold accountable and the
need to try and cut a deal and end the conflict.
You know, I have a master's degree in international
conflict resolution. I feel like this question of peace or
justice is one that we debate often. I think it's much more
nuanced than that, as we know that there really won't be peace
without justice.
But if any of you have thoughts as we're looking at
potential off ramps and deals on how we try and thread this
needle and do both well?
Dr. Arend. One quick comment on that, because that's
exactly what I talk about in class when we try to balance peace
and justice.
So one thing I've heard some folks say is--and one was
David Scheffer, who knows a tremendous amount--this is our
former U.S. Ambassador on war crimes--is that all the sanctions
need to be in place until people are brought to some kind of
tribunal without judging the whole issue.
I think that's going too far. I think if we saw Russian
troops exiting Ukraine in a verifiable way we should reduce
certain sanctions. I think if we saw other actions on the part
of Russia we should reduce certain sanctions.
So at least on that one piece of it, I do not think we
should keep sanctions in place until people are brought to war
crimes tribunals because that will, certainly, discourage any
kind of off ramp.
Beyond that, it's a delicate balance and we, I think, have
to look at individual circumstances and individual cases.
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you.
And my time has expired so, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair now recognizes Vice Chair Spanberger for 5
minutes.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And I have been joining this committee hearing on and off
through--in tandem with other--another committee hearing and I
just want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for putting this
together. This is one of the most extraordinary hearings I've
participated in in terms of just the valuable information that
the witnesses are providing. So to all the witnesses, thank you
so very much.
A couple of questions that I'd like to run through, and I
know there's been some discussion related to social media and
technology and so just jumping straight to what role do you see
for social media companies in preserving the evidentiary record
of war crimes or potential war crimes, and what role could they
play in removing or curating information so that we can
separate facts from lies?
And I will open it up to anybody who wants to speak to it
first.
Mr. Garlasco. We saw a situation in Syria where a number of
videos were being taken down by YouTube and other social media
organizations, which led to a real crisis where we, in the
United Nations Commission of Inquiry when I was on it, were
unable to catalogue all of the videos that we needed to
catalog.
And so there was an outreach to a variety of organizations
to keep that historical data. It is critical for any war crime
investigation to have that, particularly, because of the chain
of custody issue.
And so since they would be the originators of that
information, we would then turn to them to hold it within some
kind of a--you know, a repository. So I think that's a really
important and fine question that most people do not get about
war crimes because we have turned to an era right now where
social media is--you know, is prevalent, and we're watching the
war crimes being broadcast live by people daily in Ukraine.
So it really needs to be captured because of the concern
that it might be taken down at some time by some--you know,
some automated system within a YouTube algorithm, for example,
that looks for some kind of violent act and takes it down, and
that really needs to be catalogued. Thank you.
Ms. Spanberger. And you said you had trouble--if I could
just go back to your answer--you said you had trouble
cataloging previously. Was that because the videos were getting
pulled down?
Mr. Garlasco. That's correct. It was because videos were
being removed. There was a request by a variety of
organizations to have videos reuploaded.
Ms. Spanberger. And from a congressional standpoint, then
I'm curious--perhaps an important place for us to followup is
how those videos, while taken down, might be saved in some sort
of repository and made available.
Are you aware of any requirements or internal company
policies of any of these social media companies that do keep--
when they take them down, they file them, they catalog them, or
they have them available to individuals such as yourselves and
your organizations?
Mr. Garlasco. I am not aware of social media companies'
policies, but, rather, the policies of some of these war crimes
investigative bodies, such as the Commission of Inquiry, the
independent investigative mechanism of the United Nations.
They have very specific requirements on data protection and
chain of custody, and so it would definitely behoove the United
Nations and the social media companies to get together and to
discuss how that information can be saved in such a way that
supports future war crimes trials so that they are accepted by
the war crime trials and not just thrown--the evidence being
thrown out because you do not have chain of custody.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Garlasco.
Would anyone else want to add to that line of questioning
or to his comments?
And so when we're looking at some of the propaganda efforts
of the Russians, some efforts to obscure the record, some of
the propaganda they're doing at home, what are some steps that
we, the United States, could be taking, the Congress, or
American social media companies to ensure the differentiation,
kind of, of the historical record of Russian propaganda versus
the atrocities on the ground?
Mr. Garlasco. Well, you know, you just discussed taking
videos down--videos for war crimes investigations that we do
not want taken down. But propaganda videos we would want
removed.
I look specifically to the work of Bellingcat on the Douma
investigation in 2018--you know, the fine work that they did.
Immediately after their investigation came out, the internet
was just plastered with stories--with false stories and it
really mucked things up and made it very difficult.
And so I would, you know, turn also to Christo to address
that.
Mr. Grozev. Yes. The disinformation machine in Russia works
on a very efficient level, much more than any other country's
propaganda machine that I'm aware of because it's diversified
and decentralized.
It works from the top down but it also has several centers
run by oligarchs making their money off government contracts
that actually work almost on a competitive basis with one
another.
So we are seeing a huge disinformation effort in all social
media platforms that compete with the authentic content that is
being produced by people actually witnessing the war crimes,
and this fake content, essentially, provides a counterfeit
version of reality. It's difficult to--for us to go after each
incident of forged evidence.
But for social media companies, it is relatively easy.
There are algorithms they can use and they can, during times of
war, tune them up somewhat on the--erring on the side of
caution side as opposed to just allowing any search content
that has been posted by an account that was created 3 days ago
being widely available and widely seen.
So asking social media companies to tune up their
algorithms to be more cautious at this time is one thing that
can happen. Another thing is that government accounts that
spread disinformation should not just be noted with the
disclaimer it's a government account.
When they publish clear disinformation, such as the account
of the Foreign Ministry of Russia, claiming that the people
that were hurt or killed in the attack on the maternity ward
were crisis actors, this is not only false--demonstrably
false--it's also offending to the victims, and something like
this should be taken down immediately as opposed to be given
just a warning.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much.
And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting me run over. I
hope you agree that that response was worth the extra time.
Thank you very much. I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you very much. I want to thank our
witnesses. This has been an important and lengthy hearing. I
want to thank all the members--the many members who
participated in a very busy schedule to be part of this.
I was a former prosecutor before I was a Member of Congress
and I know how important it is to get the information, to talk
to percipient witnesses in a timely fashion, to document, to
chronicle, to authenticate evidence, and that has to be done as
soon as it can be done.
And today's testimony made clear the importance of the
investigation side, the importance of looking at what tools are
there, what tools could be expanded in terms of bringing people
to justice, and making sure that this is an ongoing commitment
and letting the world know that this is being done, which, I
think, will have a deterrent effect as well.
All these things are important. This committee is prepared
to move forward on many of the things. In fact, we had some in
motion before the hearing. You've helped us, I think, a great
deal make those much more targeted, and we'll ask for your
continued cooperation, if it's available, as we move forward to
move with some results from this hearing.
So I want to thank everyone. This was an important hearing
and it's something that can't be left to do afterwards. It has
to be done while things occur.
So with that, members of the committee will have 5 days to
submit statements, extraneous materials, and questions for the
record, subject to the length and limitation in the rules.
As I mentioned at the outset, we have made your written
statements all part of the record and I want to thank you for
those statements as well.
With that, this hearing is adjourned. Thank you so much.
[Whereupon, at 12:27 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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