(Uncomfortable news) Western politicians are busy promising “justice for Ukraine.” It sounds reassuring. But it’s almost certainly a promise they cannot keep. And that may prove dangerous. Here’s why.

TWO GRUMPY OLD MEN ON UKRAINE

AUG 03, 2026

Bodies of Ukrainian civilians tortured and murdered in cold blood by Russian troops in Bucha, Kyiv Oblast. April 2022. Photo: open source

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

“Justice for Ukraine” has become one of the most repeated slogans of the war.

It is also one of the least examined.

The Russians have – again – placed themselves in the role of Europe’s pariah – violent, primitive, sadistic, uncivilised.

Europe is with Ukraine, no doubt. From the first day. 

Our politicians love to go to Kyiv for photo-ups with the sweet Zelensky and repeat that “we will be with Ukraine as long as it takes.”

The caveat is that none of them ever explain what that concretely means. Logically, “for as long as it takes” means very different things to a Ukrainian, a Dane, a Brit and a German, for example. Never mind an American. 

You see where this is going, right?

Don’t misunderstand me. 

This essay is not about whether Ukraine deserves justice. It does. 

It is about Western politicians who keep invoking Nuremberg while pursuing a strategy that makes a Russian Nuremberg impossible.

Everybody is promising “justice for Ukraine. That’s nice. And empty.

The same is true – with the same caveats – when it comes to Western politicians addressing the 230-250,000 Russian war crimes in Ukraine, Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, and many, many more places.

Pretty much all Western politicians promise “justice for Ukraine” and the Ukrainians. But they are not telling the truth. And they know it. They must be aware.

Over the past four’-and-a-half years, Western leaders have explicitly and constantly promised justice, accountability, and that Russia’s crimes will not go unpunished.

“We have to gather all the details so we can have a war crimes trial,” US president Joe Biden said in 2022 after the atrocities in Bucha. Biden also stated that Vladimir Putin should be held accountable for war crimes. He also called the Russian leader “a killer.”

The president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has often repeated that “Russia must pay for its horrific crimes” and must face justice through a special tribunal.

Keir Starmer, British prime minister till a fortnight ago, supported the ICC arrest warrant for Putin and said Russian leaders should face justice at The Hague.

All western leaders have said the same – Macron, Scholz, Merz, Trudeau – you name them. (With one noticeable exception – Donald J. Trump, more about him later.) 

A detailed example of our pretending

In May, a British government minister, Alex Davies-Jones, came to Kyiv. I want to stress that I am using her only as one, detailed example – the words from pretty much all western visitors are the same.

Minister for Victims and Violence Against Women and Girls, Alex Davies-Jones MP

Speaking at the ’United for Justice Conference’, Davies-Jones praised the Ukrainian spirit and resilience, expressed great empathy and sympathy and declared:

“But we cannot speak of peace… of rebuilding… without speaking of justice.”

She spoke at length about how Britain is supporting – indeed (part)sponsoring – Ukraine’s war crimes investigations, she spoke about “those responsible for Russia’s war being held to account”, at the International Criminal Court, and at “a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression.”

“Justice for victims remains at the heart of this. Justice for the people of Bucha, and Irpin. For all Ukrainians whose lives, rights, and dignity have been violated.” 

“There can be no lasting peace for Ukraine without accountability… peace without justice is no peace at all.” (Alex Davies-Jones, UK government)

It all sounds fair. 

But it won’t happen. 

Anybody who knows the political reality and a bit of history knows it. 

So why do our politicians keep pretending?

The key is what you mean by justice.

The fact is that the only situation in which “all Ukrainians whose lives, rights, and dignity have been violated” will get “justice” is if Russia is totally defeated, surrenders, is occupied, leading to a total reconfiguring of Russia. 

As the allies did with Nazi Germany. 

But that will, of course, not happen.

Ukraine will never get a Russian Nuremberg

The Nuremberg process was only possible because Nazi Germany had been totally defeated and occupied, the Nazi regime had collapsed, and the allies had taken control of all German institutions. That will not happen in Russia. 

(And even so, in the end, only 207 people were actually tried at Nuremberg, in the years 1945-46. But the symbolic value was enormous, and European peace was built on it.)

But, in short, there will be no equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials because:

• Russia is a nuclear power that is utterly unlikely to be militarily defeated and occupied.
• Few in the West actually want a total Russian defeat (meaning something comparable to Germany in 1945): the fear in western capitals of a splintering of Russia – with loose nukes – is much greater than the desire to see Russia defeated.
• Ironically, a total dismemberment of Russia is exactly what many Ukrainians naturally crave.

• Putin and senior Russian decision-makers are unlikely ever to stand before an international tribunal.
• Not least because the US under Donald Trump is doing its very worst to hollow out the International Criminal Court. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal… we will dismantle the ICC – brick by brick, if necessary,” was what Marco Rubio promised two weeks ago. 

• Most perpetrators of war crimes – the Russians have so far committed 250,000 in Ukraine – will never be prosecuted.
• Instead, we will likely hear our politicians explain to the Ukrainians that ‘justice is not all-or-nothing.’ ‘Be content, dear Ukrainian partners,’ they will explain, there will still be:

• Convictions of some individual perpetrators, if they are stupid enough to be caught on a beach in the west or be captured in Ukraine.
• The west will sponsor that Ukrainians document the atrocities, and on paper there will be’ historical accountability.’
• The perpetrators will be put on our sanctions list, and might have to take their holidays in Thailand instead of the Costa del Sol. 
• We will see some prosecutions of lower-level perpetrators captured by Ukraine and trials in absentia – but will that give victims and relatives “justice”? 
• As of 1 April 2026, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, 252 convictions for war crimes had been pronounced, but – and herein lies the crux of the matter – the overwhelming majority of those 252 convictions were trials in absentia, only 23 defendants were physically present in court.That means that, despite more than 230,000 registered alleged war crimes, only about two dozen Russian defendants have actually sat in a Ukrainian courtroom.
• We will see ‘truth commissions’ – but there will be no Russians there.

What are the potential risks of fake justice?

The then British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, predicted what would happen. (Very likely unknowingly.) At the 2023 London conference on accountability – illustrating that the topic has been discussed basically since the Russian invasion started – Sunak declared:

“There can be no peace without justice.”

So, how will the Ukrainians – not the government but the actual Ukrainian people – react if they receive no justice for years of Russian atrocities?

Ukraine may – hopefully – secure its independence. It may secure peace. It may even prosper. But unless Russia is defeated in a way comparable to Germany in 1945, it is unlikely ever to receive the kind of justice that the world came to regard as the gold standard after the Second World War.

And this is against the background of:

• A proud Ukrainian history of partisan warfare historically (against Nazis and Soviet occupiers) 
• Millions of Ukrainian army veterans who now know how to fight and kill
• With a frightening amount of weapons readily available 
• With an incredible innovativeness and ability that already today – during the war – mean that Ukraine has killed dozens of Russian military leaders on Russian soil (executions, car bombs etc), and 
• With several corps of the Ukrainian army that traditionally have been only loosely controlled by Kyiv

All of those point to the same conclusion:

It is ridiculous, even irresponsible, to pretend that Ukrainians will just take this – a lack of justice despite our promises -`lying down.’ 

They will not. Or rather, quite a few of them will not.

This morning, I talked to a former senior official involved in Ukraine’s justice and European integration policy in the Ukrainian justice ministry. This is a person who for many years worked with Ukraine’s relations with Western institutions. For obvious reasons, this person prefers to stay anonymous. 

“I do not want to say this openly, and our western partners do not want us to say this in public, but we cannot keep our eyes and mouths shut any longer – there is no way that the Ukrainians – the average Ukrainians – will accept less than a Russian Nuremberg.”

“How are we going to sell ‘justice’ to the people in Bucha and Mariupol if they see that historians and experts will investigate and publish books on how their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, were raped and killed – but no Russian will ever stand trial? Or go to prison. Or maybe a couple of show trials…”

“If you think that Ukrainians will be passive, and not take things into their own hands, and just sit and wait for a totally impotent so-called ‘international society’ to talk and do nothing, you are naive. Naive on purpose.”

A former Danish politician who has visited Ukraine on several occasions tells me that “we are, of course, well aware of the discrepancy between the justice that is realistic – and yes, you can put ‘justice’ in quotation marks – and the limited ‘justice’ that we, in the end, will be able to offer the Ukrainians.” 

“And to be honest, we are worried. This could potentially create a lot of trouble in our future relations with Ukraine, and for Ukraine’s integration into the rest of Europe… Things could get out of control.”

I hope I am wrong. I hope Putin ends up in a courtroom. I hope the architects of Bucha and Mariupol spend the rest of their lives in prison. 

But hope is not a strategy, and it is not a policy.

Comment from :

John D. Grove

Very astute and realistic assessment of what accounts for justice for Ukraine in a world where the guilty avoid it and we don’t have the will to actually occupy And defeat Russia.

© 2026 Andersen & Bonner

Michael Andersen and Brian Bonner have extensive experience as journalists and media trainers, as well as in other roles in Ukraine, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.

Michael Andersen covered Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet Union for Denmark’s Radio and Danish newspapers, mainly Politiken, for 15 years. He specializes in long-form features. He has produced almost 1,000 radio reports/podcasts, often covering people and places overlooked by other journalists. He focused on the consequences of political decisions on the lives of ordinary citizens. Since 2006, he has also produced several television documentaries from the region for Aljazeera English. Additionally, over the past 20 years, he has run several large-scale media development projects in the region for the Danish and British governments, as well as the European Union and the United Nations. He was trained as a political scientist and worked for 10 years as a professor of international relations at British, Ukrainian, and Central Asian universities.

Brian Bonner led the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper, from 2008 to 2021. He currently works for The Cipher Brief. From 2022 to 2024, he served as senior editor for Geopolitical Intelligence Services, a digital think tank. He is an American who substituted regularly as a Moscow correspondent for the then-Knight Ridder newspapers from 2000-2006. From 1983 to 2007, he covered international, national, and local news for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. On behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, he served as a political analyst on six election observation missions in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine between 1999 and 2013. He also was associate director of international communications for the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids in 2007-2008. He has a B.A. in History from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

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