Hague "people's court" seeks accountability from Putin for crimes against Ukraine
CBSN
Russia must be held accountable for the destruction it has wrought in its ongoing yearlong war in Ukraine, says Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes.
"The use of force or the threat of the use of force is illegal, except in self-defense," Rapp told CBS News in an interview Friday. "And here that clearly occurred."
"This is a scale that we have not seen in conflict since World War II." Rapp said. He noted Ukraine has suffered an estimated $127 billion in damage — homes, schools, public buildings, companies, infrastructure — not to mention "just the horror that's been visited directly on civilians or civilians targeted for torture and rape and detention." He suggested that if there isn't "some kind of accountability," the international community would be giving Russia a kind of "off-ramp" to carry out more aggression.
On the eve of the D-Day invasion, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower spent the remaining hours of daylight with the paratroopers who were about to jump behind German lines into occupied France. A single moment captured by an Army photographer became the most enduring image of America's greatest military operation.