Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, the thesis that the Russian military forces are endowed with “combatant immunity and therefore are not subject to any criminal liability under the Criminal Code of Ukraine, except for war crimes” started to spread out.

 This article aims to prove the falsity of this thesis and substantiate that such immunity does not exist for the aggressor army’s military personnel.

The author examines the arguments supporting this statement and refutes the arguments criticizing the denial of “combatant immunity”.

The author concludes that the “combatant immunity” in Ukrainian criminal law has no legal, social, or moral grounds. The relative prevalence of the corresponding concept, which is actively promoted by many and thus, unfortunately, uncritically perceived, does not indicate its acceptability. 

Bibliography

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Dictionaries

2. Velykyi tlumachnyi slovnyk ukrainskoi movy (Busel V uklad i holov red, VTF “Perun” 2004) (in Ukrainian).

Newspaper articles

3. Kazarin P, ‘Druzhnii vohon’ (Ukrainska pravda, 02.04.2023)

 <https://www.pravda. com.ua/articles/2023/04/2/7395803> (accessed: 07.04.2023) (in Ukrainian).