As Vladimir Putin’s war enters its third year, it is time to count the bodies. Ukraine admits to 31,000 deaths suffered by its troops. The actual toll is probably much higher, not to mention all the serious injuries. Tens of thousands of its civilians have lost their lives, including hundreds of children, while 21,000 young people have been kidnapped and taken by force to Russia.

Damage to infrastructure and housing and the environment has been huge. Russia has not dared to admit to the number of its military casualties, estimated at more than four times that of Ukraine. It is thought that by the end of this year, half a million people will be dead or disfigured.

What does international law say about all this?

Hear no evil? Russian President Vladimir Putin Credit: Sputnik, Kremlin Pool via AP

It says, very clearly, that Putin is guilty of invading another country for no good reason and, as one of the founders of international law, Emmerich de Vattel, said centuries ago, the Russian leader bears legal responsibility for “all the evils, all the horrors of war; all the effusion of blood, the desolation of families, the rapine, the ravages are his works and his crimes”.

Vattel, of course, could have had no conception of the further horror of nuclear war that Putin threatened only on Thursday against any NATO country that sent military forces to Ukraine’s defence. Sabre-rattling or not, the very threat of such attack constitutes, in my judgment, a crime against humanity.

Modern law makes a leader guilty if the United Nations Charter is breached by his decision to invade another member state with a force of the “character, gravity and scale” that........

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