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The Russian Intervention in the Ukrainian Crisis: was jus contra bellum ‘confirmed rather than weakened’?

par Corten, Olivier
Référence Journal on the use of force and international law, 2, 2015, page (17-41)
Publication Publié, 2015

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

This article assesses the extent to which the Ukrainian crisis has challenged our traditional understanding of international law. The first section reveals that no extension of the scope of Article 2(4), which prohibits threat or use of force only in ‘international relations’, can be observed. Use of internal violence has been condemned, but by reference to other legal arguments. By contrast, the use of force by a rebel group, a secessionist party or by public authorities is not prohibited as such in general international law. In the second section, it is shown that Russia did not refer to a possible right to intervene in a civil war, but has rather invoked an intervention by invitation, in a first stage by what it considered the official Ukrainian authority (President Yanukovich), in a second by the government of a new (Crimean) state. However, these extensive interpretations of international law (allowing an intervention on the sole basis of a collapsed power or of a self-proclaimed government invitation) were never accepted by the community of states as a whole. The third section finally investigates the invocation of the ex injuria jus non oritur principle. Beyond a positive answer to the question of whether international law has been ‘confirmed rather than weakened’ by the events in Ukraine, it is argued that the Ukrainian crisis illustrates the persistent tensions that surround classical rules of international law, such as self-determination, territorial integrity and, more generally, non-intervention.