Lviv
My favourite hotels in Lviv were all booked out over the weekend. The world’s justice elite were in town for a gathering on how to hold Russia accountable for its crimes. The US Attorney General and the Chief Prosecutor from The Hague, as well as President Volodymyr Zelensky, were there. It was an apposite location. In the early 20th century Lviv was home to the lawyers Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, who later gave us a language to define modern evil by coming up with the concepts of ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ respectively.
Russian media, military and officials boast openly of their genocidal intention in Ukraine and revel in their war crimes: just this week Russian soldiers posted a video of themselves casually executing a Ukrainian PoW as he stood defenceless in some woods. They want to show the world that they can act with impunity and that all the concepts that tried to tame evil with justice are meaningless.
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