Russian President Vladimir Putin bears unique responsibility. Accountability may be improbable given Putin’s stranglehold on power, but Putin is afraid. The reason why Putin makes dissent by his one-time allies a capital offense is that he knows that the motivation for their criticism may be less sincere opposition to the Ukraine war and more an attempt to signal that they could be reasonable alternatives to Putin.If Putin falls but remains alive, trying him and his cronies will be no easy feat.
A similar tribunal may rehash Nuremberg debates: Should the prisoners be executed in Moscow or transferred to Kyiv? Should they be killed in a closed location isolated from the public, in a public square, or on television for the world to see? How to balance fairness with a desire for revenge? Russians and Ukrainians must then ask whether international courts should take the lead on trials, or whether a post-Putin Russia or post-war Ukraine might be better suited to balance process and speed.
Careful, then you best start to prepare for George Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Is that before or after the CIAs trials for war crimes?