MOSCOW, November 15 (RAPSI) – Russia’s reunification with Crimea amounts to an international armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia, according to the Report on Preliminary Examination Activities for 2016 published by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on the court’s official website on Tuesday. 

Fatou Bensouda, the ICC Prosecutor, suggests that the conflict began at the latest on February 26, when the Russian Federation allegedly deployed members of its armed forces to gain control over parts of the Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian Government.

For the purposes of the Rome Statute, the ICC founding document, the report reads, no determination of whether or not the intervention is considered lawful or not is required, while an armed conflict may be international in nature if one or more states partially of totally occupies the territory of another state whether or not such action meets with armed resistance.

Crimea reunified with Russia after a referendum had been held in March 2014, where 96.77 per cent of the voters in the peninsula and 95.6 per cent of those in the city of Sevastopol favored Crimea to become a part of the Russian Federation. The referendum took place after a coup in Ukraine had overthrown the country’s government. The voting in Crimea answered all the democratic standards envisaged by international law and the UN Charter, what, as President Vladimir Putin said, closed the issue for good. 

The Rome Statute, a multilateral treaty signed by 124 states and serving as the ICC’s founding document, entered into force on July 1, 2002, thus enabling ICC to function. ICC is the first permanent international tribunal having jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The court is legally independent from the United Nations. 

Russia signed the Rome Stature in 2000; however, it has not ratified the treaty and is therefore outside ICC’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Russia cooperates with the organization and takes part in its work as an observer.

The U.S. ceased to be a party to the Rome Statute in 2002. In 2016 Burundi, South Africa and Gambia announced they would withdraw from ICC, whereas Uganda and Kenia said they consider such a move. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine, which is not a state party to the Statute, accepted the exercise of jurisdiction by the ICC via its two declarations lodged pursuant to Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute in April 2014 and September 2015.