To Give Ukrainians Justice, Look to Nuremberg

“While allies should provide Ukraine with the resources needed to push as far toward the Russian border as possible, they should also start to think about post-war justice. Resolving the war will involve more than just agreeing to where lines are drawn on a map.”

In the spring of 2024, both Ukrainian and Russian forces will push to break their current strategic deadlock. In war, gains and losses of momentum and morale can quickly turn small victories into routs, but in the type of attritional warfare happening in Ukraine, battles are mostly won by the side with superior production and logistics of munitions. Russia has turned its economy into a war machine, and Ukraine’s allies need to match Russian arms production, while continuing to put pressure on technology choke points in Russia’s production chain through sanctions and embargoes.

While allies should provide Ukraine with the resources needed to push as far toward the Russian border as possible, they should also start to think about post-war justice. Resolving the war will involve more than just agreeing to where lines are drawn on a map. The desire for revenge must be suppressed, but justice and reparations are needed for the victims. How one war ends can define how the next one starts.

During the Second World War, the Allies, understanding the need for justice, convened a War Crimes Commission two years before the war ended. It decided justice would be delivered by a series of trials in the German city of Nuremberg, under new laws. Valeriia Melnyk, Head of the Division for International Cooperation within the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, told me in a recent interview that the laws that emerged from Nuremberg could provide the model for Ukraine.