With rare speed, the U.S. government has determined that Russian forces are committing war crimes as they attempt to bombard Ukraine into submission, a brutal onslaught that has displaced millions and likely killed thousands of civilians.
But even after egregious actions, war crimes prosecutions are methodical endeavors that can last for more than a decade before perpetrators are brought to justice — if they ever are.
Something different, though, is occurring with Ukraine, legal and human rights experts say. Thanks to smartphones, social media and the publicity savvy and pointed eagerness of Ukrainian officials, evidence of potential war crimes is being compiled even as they unfold.
“It's all happening in real time,” said Jane E. Stromseth, a professor of international law and human rights at Georgetown University, who previously worked on global justice for the State Department.
This will allow investigators to build cases more rapidly than in previous theaters of war crimes, such as the Balkans or Sudan or Rwanda, all in the 1990s and early 2000s.
It took more than a decade to indict, capture and try the former president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, who gave the world the term “ethnic cleansing” in his campaign to eliminate Muslim Bosnians. Milosevic died in his cell at The Hague in 2006 during his trial.
Omar Bashir, the former president of Sudan, was free for more than a decade after…
