After years of snail-pace investigations of war crimes in Africa, the International Criminal Court in The Hague may finally be trying to go after the big guys — Russia and the United States. The U.S., however, has never accepted the court's jurisdiction, and Russia has now adopted the same stance.
On Monday, the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor, run by the Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, issued a report describing the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia as an "international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation." It went on: "The law of international armed conflict would continue to apply after March 18, 2014, to the extent that the situation within the territory of Crimea and Sevastopol factually amounts to an on-going state of occupation."
Putin's regime claims Crimea voluntarily joined Russia after a referendum and said the ICC had proved itself to be "one-sided and inefficient."