Anna Ogrenchuk, President of the Ukrainian Bar Association, provided a legal assessment of another war crime of Russia — the blowing up of a dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP), which caused the flooding of the coastal areas of the Kherson region on both sides of the Dnipro, in a column for the RBK-Ukraina news agency.

About 3:00 a.m. on June 6, 2023 the Russian Federation blew up the dam of the Kakhovka HPP. The thing Ukraine had repeatedly warned about since the fall of 2022 happened. The hydraulic structure was mined for at least half a year, and the inevitability of the disaster was only a matter of time, because for the occupiers there are neither rules nor international norms, nor principles and morality.

The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam is, without exaggeration, the biggest man-made disaster on the European continent, the author and implementer of which are Russia and its military and political leadership. Every hour we receive more and more information about the consequences.

But I know for sure that the fact of the destruction must be carefully recorded, documented and investigated, the consequences and damage must be objectively assessed, so that in the future it will be included in the list of compensatory measures.

What else does the international law tell us?

Blowing up the Kakhovka Dam is irrefutable evidence of a war crime. Since the end of February 2022, the city of Nova Kakhovka has been under temporary occupation, the dam had been mined, and no missile strikes from the outside have been documented.

Article 8 of the Rome Statute provides a clear definition of this category of crime — the intentional commission of an attack with the knowledge that it will lead to the accidental death or injury of civilians or damage to civilian objects or large-scale, long-term and serious damage to the surrounding natural environment. And this damage will be clearly excessive compared to the concrete and immediately expected overall military advantage.

Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, regarding to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts, expressly prohibits the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended to cause, or may be expected to cause, widespread, long-term and serious damage to the natural environment.

Several articles of the Convention, 55 and 56, are directly related to the protection of the natural environment and structures containing dangerous forces — and these are dams and nuclear power plants. Moreover, they should not become objects of attack even in cases where these objects are military and if such an attack could cause the release of dangerous forces and subsequent heavy casualties among the civilian population.

In addition, international law expressly prohibits damage to the natural environment and any structures of this category as reprisals. Instead, all these objects were used by the occupation authorities and the Russian Armed Forces as a means of blackmail and manipulation. The local residents, who were forced to live under conditions of temporary occupation, essentially have become hostages of a criminal regime.

Therefore, firstly, the responsibility for this war crime must be comprehensive: from the perpetrators to those who gave the order for the destruction, and those who planned and had an influence on its implementation. Previously, the Kakhovka Dam was blown up by the 205th motorized rifle brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, that was based at the Kakhovka HPP for a long time. The brigade’s commander is also known.

In addition, a week before the demolition of the Kakhovka Dam, the Russian Prime Minister Mishustin signed a resolution that allows not to investigate accidents at dangerous production facilities in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. This entire chain should be investigated.

Secondly, we should finally stop the discussions about the expediency or impropriety of the appearance of such a new type of crime as ecocide in international humanitarian law. The last 9 years and more than a year of full-scale hostilities on the territory of Ukraine have proven that environmental crimes should be on a par with other international crimes with appropriate legal assessment and responsibility.

Thirdly, I call on the UN not to be ashamed. At the very least, it seems cynical to celebrate the Russian Language Day at a time when the Russian regime is committing the largest international crimes in the last almost 80 years. The UN and the IAEA should take care of safety at man-made facilities, so I call on them to finally apply all the instruments of international law and create a demilitarized zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

And finally. Symbolically, oral hearings began yesterday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding Ukraine's lawsuit against Russia due to the violation of two conventions — the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, filed in 2017. International law matters. And Russia will feel it fully. Sooner or later.