ANALYSIS: The West is running out of ways to punish Putin

The lurid images coming from a mass grave in Ukraine 2:49 (CNN) — Western outrage, new sanctions and promises of next-generation weapons came too late to save the man found shot to death next to his bike on a grassy bank outside Kyiv. The man was photographed at a weekend of horrific images in Ukraine. He was one of many innocent civilians whose fate randomly collided with President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion. The scenes unfolding as Russian troops withdraw from Kyiv are sparking eerie memories of the atrocities the Nazis last committed against Ukrainians in World War II. Bucha, massacred by passing Russian forces 2:13It is a snapshot of the bloody price Ukrainian civilians are paying for Putin’s obsession with humiliating Russia during the Cold War, and it encapsulates how global responses to crimes against humanity – short of military action – are struggling to keep up with a ruthless war on the ground. The feeling of revulsion at what is happening in Ukraine on Monday produced a new impetus to hold Russia accountable. The European Union and Ukraine have launched a new investigation into possible war crimes in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where bodies were found strewn in the streets. Congressmen called on President Joe Biden to speed up the flow of weapons to Ukraine to deal with the invasion. The European Union is facing mounting pressure to take a painful economic blow by completely cutting off Russian oil and coal exports. Biden reacted Monday to the growing catalog of inhumanity by calling for more sanctions and for a war crimes trial against Putin. “You may remember that I was criticized for calling Putin a war criminal,” Biden said. “He is a war criminal. This guy is brutal.” But the appalling tragedy unfolding in Ukraine means that all the measures the West is willing to contemplate to punish Moscow and thus affect the long-term course of the war cannot do much to save the civilians who are being targeted. now. And it is doubtful that any of the possible responses to the bloodlust of Putin’s troops will be able to sway the ruthless Russian leader. The leaders’ reflex to offer horrified condemnations, demand accountability and lash out at Putin is understandable. It is also essential that the world does not go numb to acceptance. But the West is unlikely to stop Putin’s campaign of atrocities anytime soon, especially as the Russian leader has proven immune to moral outrage. And given the scale of the carnage already committed, including attacks on apartment blocks, hospitals and bomb shelters, it too seems long past the point of any containment. The weekend, which saw shocking images of civilians shot to death, some of them execution-style, in Bucha, has given new impetus to imposing new punishments on Russia. A CNN crew also observed a mass grave in the city on Sunday and witnessed bodies being removed from a basement on Monday. Ukraine warned Monday that such scenes may be the “tip of the iceberg,” with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying worse atrocities were being uncovered. “There is already information that the number of victims may be even higher in Borodyanka and some other liberated cities,” Zelensky said. “In many villages in the liberated districts of the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the occupiers did things that the locals had not seen even during the Nazi occupation 80 years ago.” Putin knows the limits of the West The harshest sanctions in history, Russia’s new status as a global pariah and its cultural, diplomatic, economic and sporting isolation have not yet stopped the Kremlin strongman. Given Putin’s seemingly secure political position, he shows no concern about being labeled a war criminal, and the chances of his being tried are remote in the absence of stunning political change in Russia. Russia’s contempt for the notion of responsibility, meanwhile, shone through in its ludicrous claims that the scenes of decomposing bodies being pulled from the basement and images of civilians apparently being killed execution-style were staged by the Ukrainians. Armed with the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear warheads, Putin understands that the West is unwilling to intervene directly in Ukraine and risk a disastrous clash with Russia with measures such as a no-fly zone to save civilians. He is offering a lesson on why other dictators might consider getting nuclear weapons. The kind of Western interventions to save civilians in places like Kosovo or Libya are prohibited in Ukraine, simply because of the implicit power of the Russian leader’s arsenal and his saber rattling early in the war. Eighty years after dictators like Adolf Hitler in Germany or Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union spread terror at home and abroad, Putin is creating a new and terrible spectacle for the 21st century: that of a dictator who cannot be deterred. . Mariúpol, a city in ruins due to Russian attacks 0:45A special impunity Putin’s willingness to absorb the punishments already imposed on Russia for the invasion gave him a special impunity. Sanctions on the Russian economy and the oligarchs may have a long-term debilitating impact. But it is clear that they have failed as a deterrent tool. The Russian leader has also seemed willing to tolerate heavy casualties among his troops in the face of heroic resistance by Ukrainian forces. However, the recalibration of the Russian strategy to try to consolidate control of the eastern regions may show that even Putin can be swayed by events over time. From the outside, the war is a military, diplomatic and economic disaster for Russia after its failure to conquer key objectives. But it may still be a wicked success for Putin if his goal is simply to destroy as much of Ukraine as possible and create a victory parade for the Russian state media. So in many ways he is playing an asymmetrical game with the West, whose sanctions and punitive measures are based on a more logical view of Russia’s interests and its own limitations. Still, the White House reacted to the horror emerging from Ukraine by promising to speed up the pace of military, humanitarian and economic aid to Kyiv. “The images of Bucha powerfully reinforce that now is not the time for complacency,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday. This aid could shorten the war and ease attacks on civilians in the coming weeks and months. But Putin has been besieging and bombing Ukrainian cities for weeks. Millions of people have already been expelled from the country to Western Europe as refugees. CNN crew escapes close Russian attack 3:16A Nuremberg-style trial? Momentum is also growing to create some kind of formal mechanism to hold Russian leaders accountable for war crimes. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that the invasion was the biggest disaster in Europe since World War II and deserved a justice system similar to the Nuremberg trials of war criminals. Nazis. “We have to prepare right now. We urgently need to conduct a joint investigation to be ready to bring Putin to justice and see Putin sitting behind… bars.” But the nature of the post-Cold War international system would complicate the establishment of a system that would enjoy global legitimacy. Russia, for example, would be sure to veto any attempt to involve the United Nations in the Security Council. China would also try to thwart any effort to impose accountability for human rights abuses, given its own crackdown on Muslim Uyghurs that the United States has labeled genocide. This is what the world’s largest commercial airliner looks like in Ukraine 0:48Still, the difficulty of bringing Putin to justice does not mean that Russians lower in the chain of command cannot be investigated, although the International Criminal Court The Hague does not conduct trials in absentia. However, the organization already has investigations in Ukraine, which has accepted its jurisdiction despite not being a member of the court. A new potentially significant blow against Russia could come from Europe, as the European Union prepares new sanctions. French President Emmanuel Macron backed a ban on Russian coal and oil exports to the EU as soon as this week. But it is doubtful that other major powers, including Germany, would go that far, given the energy shortages and spikes in already high inflation that would follow. Without a doubt, this measure would contribute to reducing the financing of the war in Ukraine. But in the short term, it would also raise two questions: Is Putin still vulnerable to pressure? And how many more Ukrainian civilians will die until it is?