Constructing a Sustainable Just Peace: Post-War Accountability for Russian Atrocities in Ukraine as Tools of Trauma Healing and Conflict Transformation

Abstract This paper addresses the construction and maintenance of a sustainable just peace in a context characterized by Russia’s war of aggression and systematic, widespread atrocity crimes. With Ukraine’s defensive resistance adhering closely to just war traditions, much conflict literature based on intra-state conflict paradigms fails to capture the anomalies of the Russia-Ukraine war, including for post-war accountability issues. In this paper, I argue that acknowledging and addressing Russia’s willful deployment of severe, sustained atrocity crimes as a central military strategy is a necessary precondition for sustainable regional peace and the recovery of global norms. While limited accountability has been suggested as a bargaining chip, such actions would undermine international legal obligations and rights, while failing to address practical realities such as the return of forcibly deported Ukrainian children and adults, without which this war cannot be considered resolved. Drawing from trauma healing, conflict transition, and transitional justice literature, I argue that atrocity crimes accountability should not be conceptualized as a punitive “victor’s peace” condition, but rather a necessary mechanism for ensuring peace through victory in Ukraine, the region, and beyond. To enact such recommendations, I suggest a combined framework of individual perpetrator judicial accountability and State responsibility to incorporate best practices and limit the fallout of judicial accountability limitations.