The efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Wagner group’s coup may have made it easier for him to be prosecuted by an international court and the Russian state for war crimes which were committed by the mercenary fighters, stated the experts in international law.
After the mutiny headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin stated that the mercenaries had been “fully funded” by the government authorities in Russia. More than 86bn roubles were paid to Wagner fighters in 2023 till the month of May, he stated.
“Those words potentially have very significant consequences in terms of exposing the Russian state to responsibility for the acts of Wagner, and Putin, personally and individually as the leader of the Russian state,” stated Philippe Sands KC, professor of law at UCL and the author of East West Street, while speaking to The Observer.
The Russian leader had distanced himself from the Wagner group for years as war crime accusations against the fighters mounted internationally, which included an investigation by the United Nations into their presence in the Central African Republic.
Paying to the Wagner group does not make Putin or Russia legally responsible for its war crimes, stated Dapo Akande, professor of public international law at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford.
“It’s a significant admission. Funding is, in and of itself, not sufficient to say that somebody’s responsible for an international crime … [but] it makes it more difficult to say ‘these things have nothing to do with us’,” he said while speaking to The Observer.
“You said that you were actually funding this group, so that means that in one sense, you were contributing to what this group is doing. Now, the prosecution might need to show more, or a court might need to find more, but at least the first element is present,” he added.
How Putin’s acceptance affects international tribunal
Paramilitaries have been found guilty of war crimes by the court, but not the linked state. In an international tribunal, Serbian militiamen were found guilty of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims, however, Serbia was only accused of not preventing genocide.
“(The court) could not establish that the paramilitaries were under the direct control of the Serbian authorities. That distinction was seized upon in Belgrade the next day, and the government-supportive or government-run newspapers ran with headlines that said things like ‘We are innocent’,” Sands said while speaking to The Observer.
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“That makes Putin’s comments potentially key to a different outcome in future trials. Given the increasing fragmentation of states and the use of private military companies, this is going to be a bigger and bigger issue for courts, as time progresses,” he said.
“Putting aside the rather large question about whether courts should be playing this sort of role in the midst of a very delicate political and military situation, it is clear that it’s going to be important and difficult for courts to work out who is responsible for particular acts that take place in a fog of war which has just got a lot foggier,” Simpson stated.
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