Forget the Debate on Peace Versus Justice. Ukraine Has Set the Stage for Peace With Justice!
By: Dr. Paul R. Williams,* Dr. Beth Van Schaack,** Professor David Crane,*** and Sindija Beta.****
Recent efforts to reach a ceasefire and potential peace arrangement to end Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine have again brought to the fore the tension between achieving peace and delivering justice in the wake of atrocities. For much of the twentieth century, those negotiating peace deals were either silent about the imperative of justice or negotiated it away. Indeed, many peace agreements and arrangements routinely incorporated blanket amnesties, trading accountability for the promise of stability and calm. The Évian Accords in Algeria, the National Reconciliation Law in Guatemala, the Lomé Peace Accord in Sierra Leone, and the “Due Obedience” and “Full Stop” laws in Argentina all exemplified this approach. These amnesties may have encouraged combatants to lay down their arms and helped end the fighting, but they left societies fractured, victims silenced, and perpetrators free to return to positions of power.
Ultimately, many of these amnesties did not hold as national and international courts declared them unconstitutional and/or inconsistent with the nation’s human rights obligations. Argentina, for example, has prosecuted hundreds of individuals who stood accused of committing grave crimes during the country’s “dirty war.” The experience of Sierra Leone and Cambodia demonstrates that even negotiated amnesties do not shield perpetrators from subsequent international justice mechanisms; nor do they override the treaty-based legal obligations of states to prosecute atrocity crimes.
Russia has committed aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other atrocity crimes, not only in Ukraine but also in Georgia, Syria, Chechnya, and elsewhere; to date, perpetrators have largely suffered no tangible consequences for their crimes. No surprise that Russia supported the inclusion of a blanket amnesty provision in the Istanbul 2022 Communiqué, which was proposed in the early stages of the full-scale invasion, and again, almost as an afterthought, at the very end of the 28-point peace plan that the United States and Russia crafted in the second half of 2025. Russia no doubt assumed that Ukraine, and the international community, are so exhausted by war that no one would object to once again trading away justice for peace. What Russia, and those urging a broadscale amnesty as the only option for ending Russia’s war of aggression, ignore is that a decentralized accountability infrastructure is already in place and has already been activated. As such, it is beyond the power of Russia, and even Ukraine, to forsake justice and entrench impunity entirely.
Indeed, justice efforts have been underway since before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Some cases—involving the downing of MH17, proceeding in Ukraine’s domestic courts, and asserting state responsibility before the European Court of Human Rights—are already the subject of final and binding judgments. More than a dozen states—in the region and beyond—have initiated investigations into Russian atrocities, sharing information and strategies through a joint investigative team and the Eurojust network (the known cases are compiled here). Non-governmental organizations are collecting information and creating perpetrator dossiers to support additional proceedings. The International Criminal Court, despite all its recent faults and challenges, has asserted its jurisdiction and has already issued six arrest warrants, which will not be withdrawn even if an amnesty is included within any peace deal. And the Council of Europe, in collaboration with Ukraine, is marching forward with its establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine and a Register of Damage. These justice efforts cannot be derailed or blocked by those sitting around the negotiating table.
As argued by this article’s authors here and here, Ukraine has embraced lawfare, the strategic use of legal tools to achieve political, military, and diplomatic objectives. Lawfare is not limited to courtrooms. It operates in the realm of public opinion, delegitimizing Russian aggression; in the halls of multilateral organizations, mobilizing new mechanisms of justice; and on the battlefield, signaling that Russian crimes will be documented, prosecuted, redressed, and remembered. This strategy has allowed Ukraine to shift the global conversation from geopolitical bargaining to legal responsibility. It has framed the war not as a defensive maneuver by Russia or even a territorial dispute but as a grave breach of the international order, one that demands accountability rather than accommodation.
The irreversibility of Ukraine’s accountability trajectory is reinforced by decades of developments in international law, which have steadily shifted from permissive attitudes toward amnesty to a clear expectation of accountability for atrocity crimes. Key treaties establish this foundation. All four of the universally-ratified Geneva Conventions—which govern Russia’s war of aggression—obligate states to search for and prosecute those responsible for grave breaches during international armed conflicts. Customary international humanitarian law is in accord. Article 2(3) of the ICCPR and Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights likewise require states to ensure effective remedies for serious human rights violations, even when those violations are committed by state actors operating in an official capacity.
International courts and human rights bodies have converged around the principle that amnesties are unlawful and need not be respected if enacted in response to serious international crimes. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia articulated this consensus, noting that emerging international practice prohibits amnesty for crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The European Court of Human Rights has similarly held (see here and here) that amnesties for acts like torture or ill-treatment undermine deterrence and violate states’ obligations to preserve the rule of law. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has been even more explicit. In Gelman v. Uruguay, for example, it held that amnesty laws preventing investigation and prosecution of grave human rights violations are incompatible with international law, even when adopted through democratic processes. Cases involving Libya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia, among others, all confirm that international courts routinely reject domestic amnesty laws when they conflict with obligations to prosecute atrocities.
Taken together, these instruments and decisions reflect a settled reality: international law rejects amnesty for atrocity crimes. For the parties to today’s negotiations around Russia’s war of aggression, this means that justice is not merely a bargaining position. It is an irreversible reality. Even if the Ukrainian government, under immense pressure, agreed to grant amnesty to Russian officials before its own courts, such a provision would have no binding effect on the ICC, the Special Tribunal, or the courts of states exercising universal or other forms of extra-territorial jurisdiction. And such a decision would be subject to challenge before the European Court of Human Rights.
For decades, some policymakers treated peace and justice as mutually exclusive outcomes. Ukraine has demonstrated that this is a false dichotomy. Through its strategic use of law, its mobilization of international institutions, and its insistence that atrocity crimes cannot be ignored, Ukraine has created a system in which the Russian ability to strong-arm Ukrainian officials or the international community into appeasement and amnesty is significantly constrained.
The accountability architecture now in place—including ICC warrants, domestic prosecutions, universal jurisdiction investigations, and a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression—cannot simply be dismantled with the stroke of a pen. The current negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and Europe, therefore, are taking place in a world where justice mechanisms are already active and non-negotiable, regardless of what any peace plan provisions may suggest. Justice, once activated, has a momentum of its own.
* Dr. Paul R. Williams is the Co-Founder and Director of the Public International Law & Policy Group and Rebecca Grazier Professor of Law and International Relations at American University
** Dr. Beth Van Schaack is a Senior and Peace Fellow and former Ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice (2022 -2025)
*** Professor David Crane is the Founding Chief Prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Syracuse University College of Law
**** Sindija Beta is the Legal Officer and Program Manager at the Public International Law & Policy Group