Features of qualification of aggressive war and terrorist crimes in the context of events in the Crimea and in the east of Ukraine

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study of domestic court convictions for crimes committed from 2014 to 2019 and qualified as terrorist offenses or as aggression. In particular, the approaches to the legal evaluation of the events in Crimea and in the east of Ukraine, crimes committed in the context of these events, activities not provided for by the law-making paramilitary force of the DPR / LPR and their participants are analyzed and systematized. For 5 years of aggression in Ukraine, in the period from April 2014 to September 2019, 17 convictions were issued on charges of aggressive war. These proceedings brought to justice 24 people, three of whom are acquitted. At the same time, other judges characterize the same criminal acts as terrorist crimes. Such sentences for 5 years almost 2 thousand. The research of differences in Ukrainian courts' approaches to the assessment of identical criminal acts and the development of a unified approach are the purpose of this study. The analysis of these court sentences demonstrates the problem of the lack of definition of "war" in Ukrainian legislation. In criminal proceedings, there is no single approach to qualifying crimes committed in the context of international armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. Identical in nature and content of the actions of the participants, so- called, "DNR / LNR" are qualified by the prosecutor's office and courts in different ways, in particular, as – the creation of militias not provided for by the laws of Ukraine; setting up a terrorist group or terrorist organization; aggressive war. An analysis of domestic court sentences against crimes committed by so- called “DPR / LPR” participants during hostilities demonstrates that no uniform approach to qualifying these crimes has been developed over the 5 years of war, no legal formula has been proposed for use in the law enforcement practice of definitions. There are no clear dates for the beginning of not only historically significant events, but also those that directly affect the qualification of crimes committed both against the world and against the national security Ukraine. Keywords: aggressive war, paramilitary formation, terrorist organization, territorial integrity, informational impact.