Combat without warfighting: Non-belligerent actors and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The Justices- members of the Association of European Administrative Judges (AEAJ) Lauma Paegļkalna (Judge, Supreme Court of Latvia) and Richard Humphreys (Judge, High Court of Ireland) have written a paper “Combat Without Warfighting: Non-Belligerent Actors and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine”.
The Russian Federation’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, assisted by Belarus, has provoked a range of responses from non-belligerent state and private actors that represent an evolved form of sub-warfighting combat. Going beyond traditional responses such as established types of sanctions, the responses to the invasion have illustrated a wide range of tools available to non-belligerent actors without reaching the threshold of warfighting. Nonetheless, these responses fall short of those in other situations of breach of international law, such as arising from apartheid South Africa or North Korea’s nuclear aspirations. There is considerable scope for the intensification of such responses and countermeasures.
The full text of the paper is available at the link: https://cutt.ly/kAb8Ew8