The chances of self-imaged macho man Vladimir Putin end­ing up in court for war crimes in Ukraine are slim to nil. He has, how­ev­er, already been judged impo­tent by the one thing his mas­sive fire­pow­er could not overcome…the per­verse tru­ism that the worst of human beings invari­ably bring out the best of them.

Cos­set­ed in his cocoon of syco­phants and fan­ta­sy, Putin will not, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty see the images of civil­ians, many of them old­er than him, emerg­ing from base­ments and bat­tered hous­es, mov­ing in numb dis­be­lief through shat­tered streets, strewn with corpses of their neigh­bours and Russ­ian troops.
But the world is watch­ing and knows, even if Putin nev­er does, that he is being giv­en a two-fin­gered salute by that inef­fa­ble qual­i­ty that allows peo­ple to find a way to rise from the ash­es — resilience.
It is how good tri­umphs over evil, the vul­ner­a­ble over their would-be oppres­sors, the decent over the bes­tial, how the seem­ing­ly weak and vul­ner­a­ble sym­bol­i­cal­ly spit in the eye of the bullies.
Watch­ing it from afar, it is hard to com­pre­hend, and in many of us it prompts — or at least ought to — the nag­ging ques­tions: “How would I react if it was me, my fam­i­ly, my neigh­bour­hood? Could I/we cope?”
The answer, I believe, is as often as not: “Maybe not as well as the Ukraini­ans, but bet­ter than you might think.”
And that’s what aggres­sors like Putin will nev­er, can nev­er under­stand.  

                       THE REAL ‘X‑FACTOR’

Dogged deter­mi­na­tion to pre­serve their dig­ni­ty, to main­tain a sem­blance and traces of cour­tesy and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, has been a defin­ing fea­ture of the vic­tims of every con­flict I’ve ever covered.
The clos­est hor­ror to Ukraine in recent times was the siege of Sara­je­vo. Rel­e­gat­ed to scav­eng­ing, burn­ing their books for warmth, mov­ing through their once mod­ern city like troglodytes, the trapped civil­ians pre­served a mod­icum of civ­i­liza­tion no mat­ter what. Reduced to wear­ing shab­by clothes, shoes that would oth­er­wise have been replaced, women nonethe­less put on some make­up, even if only a spar­ing­ly thin smudge of lip­stick or eye shad­ow. Men strove to be clean shaven in a place where just get­ting water was life-threatening.
I once asked a moth­er of three if there was any­thing pos­i­tive she could think of about being under siege. She laughed and said; “I’ve learned new ways to cook. I’ll put my net­tle cake up against anybody’s.”
That she could main­tain both per­spec­tive and a sense of humour was a truer mea­sure of human­i­ty than the cru­el­ty and mind­less vio­lence that was Sarajevo’s every­day reality.
The oth­er defin­ing trait that sep­a­rates the decent from the despi­ca­ble is gen­eros­i­ty. The less peo­ple have left, the more will­ing and even eager they seem to be to share it. Per­haps doing so is anoth­er way of say­ing you’re not beaten.
A prime exam­ple was hun­dreds of Koso­vars dri­ven from their homes at gun­point by Serb para­mil­i­taries, only to be penned in a mud­dy field on the Mace­don­ian side of the bor­der. Walk­ing among them after aid work­ers final­ly man­aged to dis­trib­ute bread, we came upon a fam­i­ly of five, sit­ting on the ground. All they had left of their lives was jammed into a bat­tered suit­case and a few plas­tic bags. The father offered me a tired smile, and a piece of bread.

                      CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Those who force ordi­nary peo­ple into sit­u­a­tions where all they have left is their deep­est reserves of dig­ni­ty deserve the harsh­est penal­ties jus­tice can impose. The clar­i­on calls for charges of war crimes to be lev­elled and pur­sued against Putin are com­mend­able and nec­es­sary. Mak­ing them stick, how­ev­er, isn’t as easy as that.
The Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) can issue arrest war­rants if pros­e­cu­tors show “rea­son­able grounds” that war crimes may have been com­mit­ted. The evi­dence emerg­ing dai­ly from Ukraine sure­ly fits their def­i­n­i­tion, which includes “grave breach­es” of the Gene­va Con­ven­tions, among them vio­lat­ing the pro­vi­so against attack­ing legit­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­gets where civil­ian casu­al­ties would be “exces­sive”.
But…neither Rus­sia nor Ukraine, or the U.S. for that mat­ter, are sig­na­to­ries to the agree­ment that set up the court. Moscow doesn’t even recog­nise the tri­bunal, and is almost cer­tain to refuse to co-oper­ate with it. An added com­pli­ca­tion is that the ICC can’t try some­one “in absen­tia”, and Putin and his hench­men are hard­ly like­ly to hand them­selves over.
How­ev­er, accord­ing to James Gold­ston, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Open Soci­ety Jus­tice Ini­tia­tive: “The mere fact of a pub­lic indict­ment can act to stig­ma­tize the accused and can gen­er­ate pres­sure which, over time, may lead to arrest.”
Even if the accused nev­er show up for tri­al, the sword of accu­sa­tion, evi­dence, and pun­ish­ment must always hang over their heads.
In the mean­time, his vic­tims in Ukraine are sen­tenc­ing Putin to the one pun­ish­ment he can nev­er escape, the tri­umph of resilience over thug­gery and inhumanity.

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