Why did Russia said ‘no’ to ICC on MH17

During the last session of the Security Council of the United Nations, the Russian representative Vitaly Churkin did what everyone expected. He raised his hand and with his ‘no’ against 11 votes in favor and three abstentions killed the international tribunal on the disaster of the Boeing 777. Forever.

The veto had been widely anticipated. But it’s not just for this reasonthat the show of hands of Mr. Churkin did not surprise anyone. It is now more than a year that the Russian authorities and the media tell an imaginary reality in which – alternately – the US or Ukraine, or Ukraine on the orders of the US, downed the Malaysian flight in the skies of Donbass.

The outer world were we live, the real one, says something different. Not even an hour after the flaming wreckage of the Boeing had fallen on the fields around Torez, about 80 kilometers from Donetsk, it was clear which side was responsible. Separatist leaders soon boasted to have downed a Ukrainian troops transport plane. The leaked conversations between militants sent on the spot and their superiors, and a recently released video shot by themselves, showed all their astonishment in front of suitcases full of clothes and piles of Dutch passports. In the immediately following days, appeared on the web images of a Buk anti-aircraft system transported in the crash area and then taken away with one missile fewer. Finally, when the news of the civilian flight shot down had spread, the post loaded on social networks by the separatist commanders miraculously disappeared.

In addition, there were no separatists aircrafts flying in the area, because separatists never had any air force, nor ones from Russia, that have never given air support to the rebels. That means the Ukrainians did not have anything flying to shoot. There have already been several Ukrainian aircraft shot down instead, because Kievwas using aviation as a military weapon and troop transport. Separatists had something to point their anti-aircraft weapons at. And they already used it.

Finally, rumors leaked from the Dutch led Joint Investigation Team working on the case point the finger at pro-Russian rebels. The report will be released in October.

In short, had the pro-Russian separatists stolen a Buk system to Ukrainian army, or with used one “borrowed” by the Russians, or even had a Russian commando entered the territory of Ukraine to help the rebels, there is little doubt which of the two warring parties bear the responsibility of the 298 dead. In the last scenario, an international tribunal under the UN rule could eventually call to account Russian military officers.

A question of impunity

The reason of the veto, the real one, was revealed by Mr.Churkin himself, during the session of the Security Council. “Let’s hope the investigation will clear that up, too, and that impunity will result both for those who downed the plane and those who sent it to the war zone”. A magnificent slip that for once reversed the old rule: if you want to know what Russian diplomats will do, just think the to the opposite of what they say.

In other words, with a bunch of evidence that may result in establishing the responsibility of individual Russian citizens and officers, Russia claims impunity. Certainly not to save a few army officers or a Moscow warlord (read Igor Girkin), but just to assert its right to an impunity that goes beyond the responsibility. The impunity that is the prerogative of the strongest, of the superpowers, just what Putin’s Russia tries in every way to be. Impunity like the one the United States has always granted to its soldiers around the world, subtracted to any national or international justice apart from the American one. That knows how to turn a blind eye, and even both.

In this sense, the Russianveto goes beyond the downing of the flight MH17 and its 292 victims. That, losing perhaps the only chance for justice, end up disappearing in the background of this conflict.

@daniloeliatweet