Stephen Karganovic
The procedural, and theoretical, admission of Russia's case at the place and time when it occurred emits a double message.
Good for Russia ! And cautiously, good for international law!
The International Criminal Court [ICJ], an institution with scant juridical credibility, which was founded under the auspices of the collective West and remains effectively under its control, has agreed to consider Russia's submission wherein the neo-Nazi Ukrainian regime is charged with committing genocide against Ukrainian citizens, present and former, perceived by the regime and/or identifying themselves as Russians.
That extraordinary development comes in the wake of ICJ's indictment in March 2023 of the President of Russia and a top government official responsible for child protection for "kidnapping" Ukrainian children from the war zone and "forcibly transporting" them to the territory of Russia proper. The accusation against the Russian officials that ICJ had previously accepted was clearly frivolous and inspired by the propaganda needs of the Kiev regime rather than being grounded in juridical theory or facts. By contrast, the Russian submission against Ukraine, which on 5 December 2025 the ICJ found "admissible as such" and has agreed to take under consideration, is of an exceedingly serious nature.
Ukrainian charges in the matter of the allegedly kidnapped children were characterised from the beginning by wild and inconsistent claims that gave away their propagandistic character. At one point the Kiev regime claimed that more than a million children had been abducted. As scrutiny intensified, the figure fell to 20,000, and eventually was whittled down to a few hundred. When pressed, Ukrainian authorities managed to scrape together about 350 names, most of which turned out to be adults and located not in Russia but in various European countries.
These glaring manipulations of the "evidence" however did not deter the International Criminal Court from issuing indictments against Russian officials, thus giving in the eyes of the untutored a modicum of credence to these prima facie baseless allegations. Nor did the Court pause to reflect that transporting to safety civilians trapped in a zone of armed conflict under international law is not a war crime but a strict and non-negotiable duty. That is a well-established principle that Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan and the judges are presumed to be familiar with.
The Russian submission filed earlier this month, by contrast to Kiev regime's nebulous allegations, is fully consonant with international legal principles which imperatively require, in military operations theatres, "to take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects against the effects of attacks." It meticulously details the devastating and deliberately indiscriminate artillery and drone attacks against civilians in the Donbass region from 2014 to the present day and the mayhem it has caused.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on 5 December 2025 issued a statement that outlines the gist of the Russian position:
"On November 18, 2024, the Russian side submitted to the Court [ICJ] a substantial body of evidence, exceeding 10,000 pages, which substantiates the criminal Kiev regime's perpetration of genocide against the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Donbass. The evidentiary materials included documentation of over 140 incidents of deliberate targeting of civilians in Donbass, corroborated by testimonies from more than 300 witnesses and victims, as well as expert analyses and investigations.
"The West-backed Ukrainian government, driven by genocidal intent, employed a broad arsenal of war crimes and other violations of international law against civilians: mass murders, torture, indiscriminate bombardments, and shelling. Across Ukraine, a policy of forcibly erasing Russian ethnic identity has been implemented - banning the Russian language and culture, persecuting the Russian-speaking Orthodox Church, while simultaneously glorifying collaborators of the Third Reich and obliterating the memory of the Victory over Nazism."
The Russian submission substantiates violations by Ukraine of the provisions of Article II of the Genocide Convention. The evidence needs to be sifted and closely examined, of course, but there is little doubt that there is a prima facie case that the Kiev regime needs to answer.
Whether or not the Russian evidence and legal arguments can receive fair consideration in a forum as corrupt and susceptible to political pressure and blackmail as the International Criminal Court only time will tell. But an important first step in the right direction has been taken. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the proceedings, a modest levelling of the playing field has now occurred by making it possible for Russia to also present its case, something that would have been inconceivable but a short time ago.
ICJ's unanticipated openness to letting both sides be heard in its chambers is undoubtedly to some extent virtue signalling using a procedural mechanism which ultimately does not obligate the court to anything in particular. But even that much would not have been possible outside the context of great power negotiations to settle the conflict in Ukraine that are currently in progress. The procedural, and theoretical, admission of Russia's case at the place and time when it occurred emits a double message. Its message to the world is that the collective West is retreating from the arrogant Ukraine-can-do-no-wrong posture that it steadfastly maintained for the last three years. The message to the illegitimate cabal that rules Ukraine is not to be overly obstructive and to better take its cash and pay heed to the demands of its sponsors.