Can Putin be brought to justice for Russian war crimes in Ukraine?

As Ukraine fights for survival, investigators scour the country for evidence of atrocities that are hard but not impossible to prosecute.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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A mass grave in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on April 3. (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

When an army indiscriminately slaughters and systematically rapes, criminal liability abounds. The soldiers committing inhumane acts are, of course, violating international law, as are their commanders. (This week, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said the country would try a Russian soldier for war crimes, the first such prosecution in the conflict that began this winter.)

And, above the officers and generals, there is one person atop the armed forces who must be held to account. In Russia’s war on Ukraine, that person is Vladimir Putin. In the last major war on European soil, it was Slobodan Milosevic, president of what was the then-fragmenting country of Yugoslavia. The former president’s story is a bracing one for Putin.