Is the Russian war in Ukraine legal?

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Many anti-war activists condemn the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine. They state that the war is not in conformity with international law. They also argue that war is never justified. Both assertions are wrong. The Russian military intervention in Ukraine is an act of self-defense.

The Donetsk People’s Republic and the People’s Republic of Lugansk asked the Russian government for military assistance. The US-backed regime in Kiev has been committing genocide against them for the past eight years. Massacres of women and children have been the norm, not the exception. Families in the Donbass region have been forced to live in caves. Children, abandoned in orphanages, have starved to death.

French journalist Anne-Laure Bonnel in her 2015 documentary 'Donbas' showed extensive proof of the plight of the people in that region, who are subject to daily bombings and sniper assassinations. Bonnel went to Ukraine expecting to find Russian murderers. Instead, she realized that it was the Western-backed regime in Kiev which is committing genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Russian intervention complies with article 51 of the UN Charter which states:

‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of self-defense or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security’.

In order to validate the request for intervention, the requesting state must be under attack. That is clearly the case in Ukraine. The US-backed regime in Kiev has consistently violated all internationally-brokered peace deals in the Minsk peace process. The only possibility of defending the people of Donbass was to declare independence from Kiev, and to seek Russian protection.

There are many analysts who claim to defend Russia but who condemn the war on legal grounds. They obviously do not understand international law.

Pacifism is a liberal delusion

But there is another problem in many of these poorly structured analyses: pacifism. Pacifism is the idea that war is always unjustified. A pacifist is essentially ‘anti-war’. This idea predominates in left-wing circles.

But the Russian civilization-state is founded on Christian principles. And nowhere in Christianity will one find any justification for pacifism. When Christ says in Matthew 5:38, ‘I say to you, do not resist evil: but if one strikes thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other’. Here Christ is encouraging His followers to endure suffering with patience. The passage refers explicitly to the correction Christian disposition; it does not imply that one should not defend oneself, with force if necessary. Christ does not rebuke the Centurion for being a soldier when in Mark 15:39, he asks Christ to heal his slave. Christ does not ask the Centurion to change job; instead, he praises him!

In the Gospel of Luke, soldiers ask John the Baptist for council. John tells them to be content with their pay and repent for their sins. He does not tell them to leave the military.

War is always to be avoided if possible. But that is not always possible. As a Christian civilization-state Russia has not just the right to defend itself and its allies, but an absolute duty.

US war crimes in Ukraine

In the case of Ukraine, the war was started by the United States in 2014 when they overthrew the legitimate government by mobilizing street protesters and snipers. Ivan Katchanovski from the University of Ottawa conducted an extensive investigation of the massacres that occurred in the 2014 Maiden coup. In fact, a trial was held in Ukraine after the coup where evidence of snipers operating among Maiden protesters was shown. The CIA has a long history of using snipers for covert regime-change operations.

Both French and German mainstream media admitted at the time that foreign mercenaries, many of them Americans, were operating in Ukraine.

Canadian Journalist and human rights activist Dimitri Lascaris claims, “Although the suffering of the peoples of the Donbass region is very real, the claim that they have been subjected to genocide is, at most, tenuous. There is little if any credible evidence that the Ukrainian government or its proxies possess- as required by the Genocide Convention - an ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”. False, there is conclusive proof that this is precisely the case.

Proof of Genocide

On 23 October 2014 in Odesa, former Ukrainian president, and CIA agent Victor Poroshenko says:

“We will have work and they won’t. We will have pensions and they won’t. We will have advantages for pensioners and children, they won’t. Our children will go to schools and crèches. Their children will stay in basements. Because they are useless. And that way, precisely that way, we will win this war”.

This is a clear intention to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Poroshenko is implying that the Ukrainian regime will bomb the homes of families who do not submit to their rule. And that is exactly what they have been doing for the last eight years.  A journalist on Ukrainian TV Hromadske -- which is funded by the American, Canadian, and Dutch governments -- gave a clear explanation of Poroshenko’s intentions when he said:

“You ask me why this is happening. It’s happening because Donbas in general is not simply a region in a very depressed condition, it has a whole host of problems, the biggest of which is that it is severely overpopulated with useless people. Trust me, I know what I’m saying. If we take, for example, Donetsk oblast, there are approximately four million inhabitants. At least 1.3 million of them are superfluous. We don’t need to understand Donbass, we need to understand Ukrainian national interests. Donbass must be exploited as a resource. But the most important thing to be done -- no matter how cruel it may sound -- is to exterminate a certain category of people”.

While Western governments block Russian media in the West, this is the kind of evil they are funding in Ukraine.