The ICC – A Cog In The NATO War Machine

On June 25th, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, so-called, issued arrest warrants for two more Russians, the former defence minister, Sergey Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, on three charges, which claim the deliberate targeting of civilians in the conflict in Ukraine by the Russian Armed Forces, in strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure, to wit, electric power generating plants.

by Christopher Black, July 2024

Prosecutor’s Statement and Criticism

In his statement issued the same day as the warrants, the Prosecutor, Mr. Khan, a British, London-based lawyer, stated that they were issued,

“On the basis of evidence collected and analysed by my Office pursuant to its independent investigations…”

It seems Mr. Khan has never understood, or has forgotten, his responsibilities and obligations as the Prosecutor to ensure that a thorough, fair and complete investigation has been conducted before claiming high officials of a sovereign country are guilty of crimes. He seems to be under the impression that he is a legal officer of NATO or Ukraine and acting on their behalf for their interests, instead of acting in the interests of world justice. This is more than evident when he further stated that,

“I am particularly grateful to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine for its collaboration, including by facilitating our work on the ground.”

Yes, that’s right. He sought the “cooperation” of the Nazi-oriented regime in Kiev but not the Russians, who will not talk with him and do not recognise either the legitimacy of the ICC nor its jurisdiction with respect to Ukraine, which is, like Russia, China, Israel, The USA, and many other nations, not a signatory to the Rome Treaty.

The reader will ask, well then what was he to do if the Russians would not cooperate? The answer is simple. Send in his own completely independent, unbiased investigators to see if the claims made to the ICC by Kiev of alleged Russian crimes, can be substantiated, or not. But that is not what he did. He relied on the statements and claims of the Kiev regime only and did not even attempt to be even-handed or to gather unbiased evidence, of which we have seen none.

Allegations of Bias and Selective Prosecution

For if he had done a real investigation he would have learned that in fact it is the Kiev regime that has been attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, in the Donbass republics of Ukraine since 2014. Thousands of civilians have been killed in these attacks, on schools, hospitals, administrative buildings, energy facilities, and other infrastructure. The Donbass peoples have been shelled by high explosive munitions, missiles, drones and mines, and lately by the use of cluster bombs banned by most countries. In all those situations, the targets were no military at all. They were purely civilian targets, chosen to create maximum terror on the population in order to break their will to resist the Nazi coup regimes’ attacks upon them for refusing to accept the NATO coup that overthrew the elected government of President Yanukovic.

He would have been advised by his investigators that, since 2022, the Kiev regime has deliberately targeted Russian civilians from Belgorod to Crimea; with the sole purpose of creating terror, panic and loss of support for the Russian government. They have used drones and missiles of high explosive and destructive power on targets which have no military content or character whatsoever.

He also would have been told that the Kiev regime had conducted numerous assassinations of political figures in the Donbass, including the use of car bombs, and has assassinated Russian civilians in Russia proper, for political reasons, and to attempt to demoralise the Russian people. The assassinations of journalists and others opposing the Kiev regime has now progressed to mass murder with the Crocus terror attack in Moscow, which the Russian investigative services have established was organised by Kiev and its NATO masters.

He would have been told that the Kiev regime has shelled the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant multiple times, attempting to cause a nuclear catastrophe that would affect millions in Ukraine and far beyond, an act of genocide in fact.

He would have been told that Russian attacks on energy infrastructure followed Kiev attacks on Donbass and Russian infrastructure but that the Russian objective is not to harm civilians but to deprive the Kiev forces with the ability to maintain, move, supply and operate their forces in the field, a legitimate military objective.

He would have been told that a peace deal had been concluded between the Kiev regime and Russia in March 2022 which would have brought peace to the region, but that the British and Americans ordered President Zelensky to renege on the signatures of his negotiators and carry on the war against the Donbass Republics and Russia on behalf of the USA and its NATO allies, which are co-belligerents in the war against Russia.

But his investigators did not investigate. They didn’t even read the mainstream media, which reports on these events every day. So that Mr. Khan engages in an open case of selective prosecution by charging Russia but not Ukraine and those responsible in NATO and through this policy ensures that the Kiev regime and NATO have complete legal immunity from prosecution for their crimes, and so encourages them to commit more crimes.

But it gets worse. Mr. Khan even rewrites history, commits a crime against history when, near the end of his statement, he states this,

“In our application for these warrants, my Office again underlined that these acts were carried out in the context of the acts of aggression committed by Russian military forces against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which began in 2014.”

Historical Context and NATO’s Role

This is an outright and damnable lie. Russia did not attack Ukraine in 2014, NATO did, by organising and carrying out a coup d’état by which they overthrew the elected President and imposed on the Ukrainian people a Nazi oriented NATO puppet government, a regime, whose authority the Ukrainians in the east of the country refused to accept.

In retaliation for the Donbass people not recognising the NATO puppet regime imposed on them, the Kiev regime ordered its armed forces, including Nazi battalions operating outside of regular army command, to attack the civilians in the east who then had to defend themselves. The attacks began and have never stopped. All the while, Russia tried to bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict and was lured into the Minsk Accords, which turned out to be a ruse by NATO to prepare the Kiev forces to mount a major offensive against the Donbass and Crimea, that is Russia itself.

It was to stop this war on the people of east Ukraine, who had declared themselves as republics, and who requested Russian intervention, and an attack on Crimea, that caused Russia finally to make the decision to intervene, to fulfil that request and to put an end to the war once and for all.

There was no “aggression” by Russia. There was no invasion of Ukraine. The Donbass republics could no longer be considered part of Ukraine, as they had declared themselves independent, and the Kiev regime, by its anti-Russian policies and practices and its war upon them, had rejected them as part of the Ukrainian polity. They themselves had destroyed Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity by their own actions, and they must bear the responsibility.

But the statement by Mr. Khan exposes his real objective, and it is not international justice. That is far from his mind. His sole objective, the objective of his masters in London, Washington and Brussels, is to make propaganda against Russia, to try to diminish its prestige and reputation in the world.

But in this, he has failed. The world is not blind. The world is not as stupid as he would like to think and his action has proved, yet again, that the ICC, instead of an international organ of peace and justice, is nothing more than an organ of propaganda providing the justification for more war, that it is, in reality, not an independent word judicial body, but just another NATO tribunal, just another cog in the NATO war machine.
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Christopher Black is a Toronto-based lawyer specialising in international criminal law. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases. He writes essays on international law, politics and world affairs. Recently he has published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He is a member of the World Union of Freethinkers and has been nominated for a seat on its board.