The long-read for Ukraine
I often ask a group of judges a simple question. Tell us something about your life that will surprise me? Many lean into war stories of pyrrhic victory in this or that infamous case. Others choose to share more intimate detail.
My confession leaves some in open-mouthed astonishment. I was once a professional ballet dancer. Now, stop giggling! And that is ‘ballet’ not ‘belly’. I took three months off my law studies and joined the Victoria Ballet Company’s tour of Petrushka, Stravinsky's tragicomedy celebrating the Russian Punch. The famous Valery and Galina Panov led the troupe.
I danced in the corps de ballet 6 nights and 4 matinees a week. At my call back, I still believe I was dreadfully typecast. The director — a harsh, cane-wielding, humourless, ballet mistress — had me dance the parts of a bear in the fourth tableau and a goat in the first! In the second half, we danced a more ‘modern’ circus piece. Again, typecast, I was a drunk. One night I dropped my ballerina mid ‘portee’, and her failed ‘fish dive’ saw an awkward crash land. Exit stage left, immediate return to the law, dancing career in ruins.
For years, Valery Panov was the premier dancer in Russia. His wife Galina was a ballerina of exhilarating potential. Then, in March of 1972, they applied for an exit visa and a new life in Israel. The refusal was accompanied by stunning repercussions. Labelled “refuseniks”, they were arrested and imprisoned, and Galina was demoted from prima ballerina of the Kirov to the corps de ballet. Internal exile followed the arrest, and the KGB demanded that Galina divorce Valery or never dance again.
The KGB, however, underestimated the world’s ballet lovers. So strong was the international reaction to the banishment of the Panovs that in 1974, the world tour of the Kirov had to be cancelled. The Panovs had become an embarrassment unmatched in the Soviet Union since Nikita Khrushchev buckled under the Cuban missile crisis. The government had little choice but to let them go. In 1975 after they entered Israel, they began the delicate process of recovering their art. The antipodean tour followed.
Petrushka, the most popular of the Ballets Russes, tells the story of the loves and jealousies of three puppets. The three are brought to life by a charlatan during the Maslenitsa (pre-Lent) Fair in Saint Petersburg. Petrushka loves the ballerina, but she rejects him. She prefers the third puppet, a handsome berber. Petrushka is angry and hurt and challenges him.
As the merrymaking at the fair reaches its peak, a cry is heard from the puppet theatre. Petrushka suddenly runs across the scene, followed by the other in hot pursuit brandishing his scimitar, the terrified ballerina chasing after them, fearful of what the berber might do to the clown. The crowd is horrified when the two catch up and Petrushka is slain with a single blade stroke.
The police question the charlatan. The charlatan seeks to restore calm by holding the corpse above his head and shaking it to remind everyone that Petrushka is but a puppet and this is all ‘part of the show’.
As night falls and the crowd disperses, the charlatan leaves, carrying Petrushka's limp body. All of a sudden, Petrushka's ghost appears on the roof of the little theatre, his cry now in the form of angry defiance. Petrushka's spirit thumbs its nose at his tormentor from beyond the wood and straw of his carcass.
Now completely alone, the charlatan is terrified to see the leering ghost of Petrushka. He runs away while allowing himself a single frightened glance over his shoulder. The scene is hushed, leaving the audience to wonder what is real and what is not.
The charlatan — or fake, as we would perhaps say — is shrewd rather than intelligent. He does not imitate; he distorts, not least reality, through his falsehoods. The charlatan is nothing without a following, a group of believers often made up of weak and disappointed individuals whom he despises and looks down upon. No scientific falsification, no political decrees will stop the charlatan or deter his wide-eyed crowd. His only real opponent is the individual sceptic, or what de Francesco calls in her 1937 book The Power of the Charlatan, largely crafted about Hitler, “the small minority of incorruptible men and women who lived, unknown and even avoided, as though they were the carriers of infection, among the herd of ‘believers’.” She concluded her study by asserting that “it was these solitary individuals” who were at all times “called on to lead the fight against the power of the charlatan”.
Putin, a master charlatan, was not expecting the extraordinary global response that his unlawful invasion of Ukraine has provoked. He badly misjudged his sceptic’s determination to call his bluff and scrutinise real-time evidence of war crimes throughout the country.
Normally moribund international legal institutions have suddenly sprung to life in response to the illegal invasion. Just days into the war, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that he was launching an investigation into possible Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity. Last week our International Association, supported by all 94 member states called for the thorough and independent gathering of evidence about Russian Military war crimes and a special tribunal to try Russians for waging this illegal war in Ukraine.
Following the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine, justice continues to be administered, even though legal professionals face continuous safety risks, some have been injured or even lost their lives and many court buildings have been destroyed. At the same time, many legal professionals, in particular judges and prosecutors, often women, sometimes accompanied by children, had to flee their country. They have sought refuge in other European states, where they may face difficulties of various nature. Jeff Smith attended a virtual conference for JANZ on Poland and Ukraine. You can read his report here.
JANZ will continue to work alongside others on initiatives such as the self-help platform “Basecamp”, also accessible by mobile phone, where Ukrainian judges and prosecutors in need can specify their whereabouts and ask for help and advice. You can read about this initiative here. Working alongside our sister association we will also use their experience from last year’s Afghanistan crisis and pressure our government to create a refuge in Aotearoa.
To be clear, no international legal institutions will be able to halt or turn back the Russian invasion. But they have power, nonetheless. Since the invasion began, the Russian leader has made many baseless claims — that Ukraine has committed genocide in the Luhansk and Donetsk, that economic sanctions are tantamount to a declaration of war, that Russia is simply responding to requests from people in the “independent” regions of Ukraine to come to their defence. That hospitals, schools, and railway stations are mistaken ‘military’ targets, that the shallow graves of many are a macabre fake. But these have been sapped of any authority by the unified response of international legal institutions subjecting Putin’s claims to scrutiny. Ukraine and its allies are calling Putin’s bluff.
Wayne Jordash QC, a human rights lawyer at Doughty Street Chambers, London, working in Ukraine for the not-for-profit Global Rights Compliance, says: “The rules of war are an encouragement to better behaviour. Yet they’re only as good as the enforcement that follows or doesn’t follow. They are important but often sadly ignored.” Even if very senior figures cannot feasibly be hauled before the court, building a case is still important. “It matters to victims and their families,” says Jordash. “Sometimes they want prison sentences, sometimes they want their relatives to be found. Sometimes, though, they just want the truth.”
There are other sceptics called on to lead the fight against the power of this charlatan. Some are using their artistic talents to call him out. The recent Grammys for example. In a pre-recorded message that aired on the show, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy likened the invasion to a deadly silence threatening to extinguish the dreams and lives of the Ukrainian people, including children.
"Our musicians wear body armour instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals, even to those who can't hear them," he said in English. "But the music will break through anyway."
Following Zelenskyy's message, John Legend performed his song Free, with Ukrainian musicians Siuzanna Iglidan and Mika Newton, and poet Lyuba Yakimchuk, as images from the war were shown on screens behind them.
Russians love ballet. It is no coincidence that last week Ukrainian dancers displaced by the war performed alongside their Romanian colleagues in the Ballet Giselle at the National Opera, Bucharest, and that leading performers from across the world took part in the sell-out Dance for Ukraine charity gala at the London Coliseum theatre raising funds for the Disaster Emergency Committee's Ukraine Appeal. What better response to Putin’s deathly war than the defiance of dance and the power of music to point out the obvious.
Putin being tried in a courtroom is not an “immediate prospect”, says Jordash. But, he adds, international law is “quite patient”. The “Butcher of Bosnia”, Radovan Karadzic, for example, was only found guilty of genocide by the ICC in 2016 — 20 years after the end of the war.
Although Putin may never face swift justice history will mark him as a complete embarrassment unmatched in the Federation’s history. Like the charlatan in Petrushka, he should run away with his shrinking group of believers and await an end, under the rule of law, that will correspond to his deeds as the ghosts of Bucha defiantly shout at him from their shallow graves. Putin, might cannot make right.
JANZ calls for the unified and sustained legal and social condemnation of the unlawful Russian Federation invasion of Ukraine. Unified condemnation is essential not only to sustaining hope for a future in which Ukraine is free and independent but also to maintaining an international legal order founded on principle.