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Jacques Baud on the legitimacy and legality of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine

Introduction. Jacques Baud is a former colonel of Swiss Strategic Intelligence, former colonel of the General Staff, specialist in Eastern countries, and former chief of doctrine of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. He is author of several books published by Max Milo, including Ukraine Between War and Peace, Operation Z, and Governing by Fake News.

Jacques Baud on the legitimacy and legality of Russia’s SMO in Ukraine Dennis Riches, Lit by Imagination 13 June 23

Dialogue Franco-Russe, 2023/05/31 (partial transcript,)_ translated by Dennis Riches

Jacques Baud is a former colonel of Swiss Strategic Intelligence, former colonel of the General Staff, specialist in Eastern countries, and former chief of doctrine of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. He is author of several books published by Max Milo, including Ukraine Between War and Peace, Operation Z, and Governing by Fake News.

Interview

Irina Dubois: You were a member of Strategic Intelligence Switzerland, a specialist in Eastern European countries at the United Nations where you participated in programs in Ukraine in 2014 and 2017. We organized a major conference at the Dialogue Franco-Russe in February of this year, and we dealt with many topics but perhaps not everything.

Today I want to come back to these questions, some sensitive questions perhaps, but certainly questions about the issues that interest our audience. And you are in Paris because your latest book Ukraine Between War and Peace was published by Max Milo yesterday.

First of all, is the Russian special operation, as it has been defined by Russia, or the war in Ukraine, as they say in the West, legal from the point of view of international law?

Jacques Baud: Obviously, there are many views, and naturally it depends on what you understand as the objective of this operation. Westerners tend to explain this special operation as Russia’s desire to occupy and seize Ukraine. Others say it’s because of NATO’s advance etc. These motives would not make an operation legal because you cannot go to war simply because your neighbor wants to join NATO. But that’s not what the Russians claim, either. It is Westerners who give this explanation.

The explanation given by Russia is an explanation that is, in my opinion, the only valid one. The idea was to protect the Russian-speaking populations of Donbass from the actions of the Ukrainian government. These abuses against the people of Donbass began… It’s really been a very long time, actually, but they really started to show a certain aspect from 2014, starting because of the new authorities, when the new unelected authorities in Kiev came to power and started what triggered, in reality, the revolt of the whole south of Ukraine.

It was the abolition of the Official Languages Act that made Russian an official language on a par with Ukrainian. The abolition of this law meant that Russian-speaking citizens could no longer interact with the authorities in Russian and had to do so in Ukrainian. And that’s what sparked massive revolts throughout southern Ukraine, not just in Donbass, but throughout southern Ukraine.

Westerners did not talk about this because they wanted to legitimize the coup d’état in Kiev— Maidan as it was called—but in reality, the whole south of the country ignited from Odessa to Kharkov. To restore order, so to speak, the Kiev government couldn’t use the Ukrainian army because it was also made up of Russian speakers, and the Russian-speaking Ukrainian soldiers didn’t want to shoot other Russian-speaking Ukrainians. This is why it was necessary to create these famous ultra-nationalist paramilitary units such as the Azov Regiment, the Pravi Sector, and all these paramilitary units, some of which are neo-Nazi—we will come back to this—and which have since 2014 committed violence against the populations of Donbass.

What happened in 2015—it is important to remember this—in order to stop this violence under the auspices of the OSCE and with the participation of France, Germany and Russia, France and Germany on the Ukrainian side, Russia on the side of the Donbass forces, which was not separatist—I repeat, which was not separatist—signed the Minsk Accords, which were supposed to bring a political solution to the conflict. But the Westerners did not respect their signatures. The Ukrainian government did not respect its signature, neither under President Petro Poroshenko nor President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. 

So we arrived in a situation where in March 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the reconquest of Crimea and the south of the country, and from that moment, on March 24th, 2021, there was a concentration of Ukrainian forces on the borders of Donbass preparing an offensive against Donbass. That’s when the Russians started thinking about what was going to happen, and they saw that an intervention might be needed. They applied a principle that is a United Nations principle, which is the principle of the Responsibility to Protect [R2P]. This is the same principle that Russia invoked in 2008 to protect the populations of South Ossetia in Georgia. This Responsibility to Protect is a United Nations principle that was adopted in 2004-2005, and I can speak to it because I was responsible for the doctrine of peacekeeping operations at the United Nations in New York. I was responsible for the protection of civilians. So this is a subject that I know well.

The Responsibility to Protect consists of three pillars. The first is that every state is responsible for protecting its own population. So there Ukraine was obligated to protect its population in Donbass. However, we know that between 2014 and 2022, there were about 10,000 deaths in the Donbass and that in February 2022, the Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass. Therefore, the first pillar of Responsibility to Protect was not respected.

The second pillar of Responsibility to Protect is the role of friendly countries or allied countries, if you will, or surrounding countries in this case of Ukraine. These countries should have helped Ukraine to solve these internal problems. In this case it is very simple since for the Minsk Accords we had the German and French signatories. Yet we know, because Angela Merkel said it in November last year and François Hollande said it in December of last year, then Zelenski confirmed it in January of this year, that they never intended to put the agreements in place. Therefore, the political solution that constituted the second pillar of Responsibility to Protect was not respected, either, neither by Ukraine, nor by Western countries, nor even by the countries of the Security Council. The Minsk Accords had become a Security Council resolution.

There remains the third pillar of Responsibility to Protect, which is the possibility of a neighboring country intervening to help civilian populations. It is this third pillar that Russia is currently working on with its special operation. The term special operation is legitimate because the war, in fact, began in 2014. It had at first a political solution in February 2015 with the Minsk Accords, and these agreements were not respected. Thus we are in the same war that began in 2014, an internal war that initially extended until 2022. Therefore, the Russian intervention is indeed a special operation within a war that already existed, and it is important to say so.

So they are still within Responsibility to Protect, which is a principle. So what about legality? We have in principle the legitimacy of the Russian action. Legitimacy is the moral right, the political right to do so. Legality is the legal right to do so, but we will come back to that.

All the conditions that existed in Donbass at that time gave legitimacy to the Russian action in Donbass. So next is the problem of legality. 

The Russians understood that very well. First of all, the Russians are a people who are very legalistic. We know that this is a subject that the authorities uphold. It was even the same with the Soviets long ago. It’s surprising, but that’s the way it is. Then the following thing happened. In order to intervene under the principle of the responsibility to protect, Russia invoked Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, which authorizes intervention for the benefit of a population. However, to do so it had to be done within the framework of a coalition. This legality involved a bit of hairsplitting, but it is nonetheless legal. To create this coalition, Russia had to recognize the independence of the two self-proclaimed republics of Donbass, the Luhansk Republic and the Donetsk Republic, which Russia had always refused to do before. This is important to say because the Russian authorities, Vladimir Putin in particular, had in mind a political solution to the problem. That is, the implementation of the Minsk Accords. But at the beginning of February 2022, with the Ukrainian forces preparing to attack Donbass, the Russians found that the political solution was now dead and that it was necessary to move to a military solution, if you will, and Vladimir Putin agreed to recognize the independence of the two republics so that he could ally with the two now recognized independent republics, signing treaties of friendship and assistance in case of danger. This is what was done on February 21st, 2022: the recognition of the two republics. Then there was a parliamentary process in the Moscow, in the Duma [legislature], in the Russian Federation, and then in the parliaments of the two republics. On this basis there was the signing of friendship treaties. On February 23rd both republics requested military assistance from Russia. At that time, in coalition with the two republics, Russia intervened under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.

Thus, in reality, we have de facto legitimacy through Responsibility to Protect and legality through the application of Article 51 of the UN Charter. It is very important to stress that this legitimacy and legality is only valid to the extent that, in my opinion, Russia was seeking to protect populations. Russia’s calculation, I think, is that they intervened to help these populations, and that in order to conclude the conflict, Russia would integrate other political objectives such as the question of NATO, such as the question of neutralizing the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine etc. This is another problem, but that can be added in a later phase of negotiation. This is what happened, in fact, when Volodymyr Zelenskiy, at the end of March 2022, made proposals to Russia that took into consideration precisely the neutralization of Ukraine, the status of the Donbass republics etc. In reality, the policy of Russia is legitimate, and it is legal. I think that strategically it was much less false than what the Westerners always say………………………………………………………………………..

The issue of the Indigenous Peoples Act is also important. I mention it in my book, and I quote a parliamentarian of the Kiev Rada [parliament]. The law was passed on July 1st, 2021. For those who don’t know, it’s a law that gives different rights to Ukrainians based on their ethnicity. In history you must know that the Germans had done the same thing in 1935 with what was called the Nuremberg Laws, which gave different rights to German citizens and Jewish [German] citizens. So the principle of this type of law is that it gives different rights, not according to what one does but according to who one is……………………………………… in short, that from now on Russians will no longer have the same rights as others Ukrainian citizens. They will no longer even have the same rights, the same benefits, the same human rights, and will no longer enjoy constitutional rights like other Ukrainian citizens. So a very clear distinction was made between Ukrainian citizens and Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine.

………. For me, this law expresses very well the ultra-nationalist character of the government………..  ultra-nationalist, most certainly neo-Nazi in the sense that they take elements of ideology that make distinctions between ethnicities. This is the element that goes beyond ultra-nationalism and could be called neo-Nazi………………

Irina Dubois: But why exactly is the neo-Nazi presence minimized by the press in the West? And why is this term almost never taken seriously?

Jacques Baud: It is never taken seriously because in the West they wanted to create a black-white perception. They wanted to avoid all shades of grey, and since 2014, in fact, we know that the Maidan Revolution was possible thanks to the intervention of ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi extremists………………….. governments …….had to work with those who helped them carry out the coup. This is why we have this permanent presence of neo-Nazis in the security apparatus and the political apparatus of the country………………………

I have also put in my book—you have the excerpts—the writings or doctrines of these different movements. They are indeed talking about racial purity. It is the same as the Germany of the 1930s that wanted purity, blondes with blue eyes etc., the same thing.

In the West, of course, if we talk about this, we delegitimize the Ukrainians and we would have to recognize that Russia is correct. This is what is avoided in all our media but also among politicians. It’s in all Western media, particularly in Switzerland and France, where you are never told about the victims of Donbass. We never talk about them. And above all, you are never told about it as the possible reasons for the Russian intervention. Never……………………………….

…………… This difference in the treatment of minorities is something that Westerners don’t want to show because it would explain and justify Russian intervention. As I said, the invocation of Responsibility to Protect is legitimate.

Irina Dubois: They are not talking about neo-Nazis, but on the other hand, they are talking about war crimes by Russia such as acts of torture, and lately the deportation of children. Do we have evidence today of all these acts relayed by the press since the beginning, the very beginning of the conflict, especially in Bucha?

Jacques Baud: I start from the idea that in a conflict where you have thousands of men fighting each other, there are certainly war crimes on one side and on the other, perhaps more by one than by the other, but there are most certainly some. The problem is that they wanted to focus on only some of them. Bucha is one example, and the example of the children being another. ………………….. I may say it is a crime, but first there must be an impartial, objective, and international investigation.

Moreover, with regard to the children, we know that the decision of the International Criminal Court was made on the basis of a report made by an NGO and that American journalists tried to investigate this document. They found something very different from what was being told. They first found that the children who had been deported (so-called “deported” with quotation marks) had in fact simply been removed from the battlefield because in Donetsk, where these children came from, they were periodically bombed by Ukrainians. Therefore, these children were removed to safety with the agreement of their parents. There was no deportation but rather it was the parents who sent their children, in fact, to Russia, and journalists have even found that the concentration camps do not exist. Where were these children? In fact, they are at very good hotels. And the children have music lessons, play the cello, do cultural activities………………………………………………….

There are also many parents who did not dare to admit that they sent their children to Russia because they were afraid of reprisals from the Ukrainians. The work of these American journalists I know is very serious work. They are truly American people, so they are not Kremlin delegates. They are American, and I know from experience with them that they are people who do serious work. I have seen what they have done, and I can say that it is serious work. I have the impression, based on that, that the International Criminal Court went beyond what it was supposed to do. That is my feeling. They have deliberately—and I mean deliberately—because the report on which it is based—its judgments, finally—show that there was no desire on the part of Russia to abduct children, to separate them from their families. There was no evil intent in this case, so I question, personally, the moral, intellectual, and professional integrity of the people in charge of the International Criminal Court.

– End of interview excerpt – more https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/34145837/posts/4755356855

June 14, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference | 6 Comments