title: War crimes in Russia's invasion of Ukraine
abstract: This chapter discusses the Soviet legacy in Russian military policy and the historical wellsprings of the Russian Federation’s systematic disregard of international humanitarian law (IHL). Russia’s refusal to abide by IHL norms has been starkly evident in the war against Ukraine since February 2022, but the roots of Moscow’s intransigence go back long before that. At the end of 1991, the government of the newly independent Russian Federation pledged to comply with landmark documents of internati