Explainer | Who’s a war criminal, and who gets to decide?
- US President Joe Biden publicly called Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal’ for the first time
- White House spokesperson suggested Biden’s proclamation was his opinion, not a legal analysis
The White House had been avoiding applying the designation to Putin, saying it requires investigation and an international determination. After Biden used the term, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president was “speaking from his heart” and renewed her statements that there is a process for making a formal determination.
Still, the Kremlin quickly punched back, calling the comment “unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state, whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world”.
In popular usage, the phrase has a taken on a colloquial meaning as a generic term for someone who’s awful.
“Clearly Putin is a war criminal, but the president is speaking politically on this,” said David Crane, who has worked on war crimes for decades and served as chief prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, which tried former Liberian president Charles Taylor.
The investigations into Putin’s actions already have begun. The US and 44 other countries are working together to investigate possible violations and abuses, after the passage of a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry. There is another probe by the International Criminal Court, an independent body based in the Netherlands.