Florence Hartmann, the lead coordinator of the complaint filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) by a French non-partisan association

Florence Hartmann is a French journalist, author, and human rights advocate. From 2000 to 2006, she served as the official spokesperson and Balkans adviser for Carla Del Ponte, the ICTY's chief prosecutor. She was also involved with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The ICTR investigated and prosecuted individuals responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. She authored a number of books, including Milosevic: La diagonale du fou (Milosevic: The Madman’s Diagonal), which is based on her extensive experience covering the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The biography documents Milošević's role in orchestrating and controlling Serbian actions during the wars. Hartmann details how Milošević maintained overall authority over underlings and paramilitary forces in Croatia and Bosnia. She currently teaches international and transitional justice, a field that encompasses the documentation of war crimes, establishing the truth and holding perpetrators accountable.

Florence Hartmann is the lead coordinator of the complaint filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) by “Pour l’Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre!” (“For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!”) – a French non-partisan association founded by members of civil society in response to Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The organization's mission is to raise public awareness about the conflict's far-reaching implications. In July 2025, the organization filed a complaint with the ICC regarding Russia's systematic, large-scale and organized looting of Ukrainian cultural heritage in occupied Ukraine. Ukrinform’s correspondent in France met and talked with Madame Hartmann about the progress in the proceedings and the consequences it may have in the future.

OUR RESEARCH WILL HELP INVESTIGATE ALL CRIMES OF ERASING UKRAINIAN IDENTITY

- You are the lead coordinator of the complaint filed with the ICC in July of this year. What area of the work fell on your shoulders?

- Yes, I am the coordinator, and I was mainly engaged in research, that is, the information we collected for this submission. However, we worked as a team. We have lawyers who formulated legal qualifications that correspond to the statute of this court. And two or three more team members helped with the bibliography, all open-source data, references to articles, etc. Because in a complaint to the ICC, it is essential to provide documentation, as well as to show that many people on the ground witnessed the looting of museums, for example. In fact, there were only five of us.

- But it’s too few people for such a big job. And how do you monitor the progress of the proceedings now?

- Yes, we were a small team, but we managed. A properly prepared complaint supported with evidence and facts was submitted to the prosecutor. And the prosecutor can use them, but he is not obliged to inform us about it. That is, this is a way to encourage him to add these crimes or include other possible sources simultaneously with the investigations that the court is conducting independently. In a broader sense, this is a way through which civil society contacts the International Criminal Court. We have already done this as an association in the case involving abducted children from Ukraine and Russified children. Then the ICC Prosecutor's Office received numerous reports and evidence from both the Government of Ukraine and our association. And you know what decision the Court made. That is, our investigation can be considered separately, and can also illustrate all crimes, regardless of their qualification, that are related to de-Ukrainization and the erasure of Ukrainian identity.

A CASE IN WHICH EVIDENCE CANNOT BE GATHERED ON-SITE

- And what exactly did you add to the evidence? Did you use, for example, the UNESCO database, which maintains a register of cultural buildings destroyed by Russia and lost museum treasures?

- As for the evidence, our approach was as follows. The Ukrainian authorities, UNESCO and a huge number of people are working on an inventory, that is, compiling a list of Ukrainian cultural treasures that were destroyed by bombing attacks or subject to destruction during the military occupation of the liberated territories or territories that are still under occupation. But the work on cultural treasures, which concerns not their destruction, but their theft, had been poorly thought out.

We understood that if we cannot move freely, cannot work in the occupied territory, then there is a full arsenal of legislative acts that accompany and organize the theft of these treasures. And this work consists in studying the legal framework in which it takes place, so it could be carried out remotely. So, we added testimonies about the seizure of museums, some specific cases involving the evacuation and disappearance of works of art, as was the case in Kherson, for example. There are other evidence. But in Kherson, it was even filmed on video, and colleagues from Kyiv Independent did their own investigation. There were also many testimonies from former museum directors. And such actions by the Russians are actually regulated by their own laws.

RUSSIAN LEGISLATION THAT LEGALIZED ROBBERY

- In other words, they legalized the looting of Ukrainian museums?

- Yes, these laws were developed by the Russian Federation and are related to the annexation of the territories it had occupied. So, from the moment Russia considers these territories to be part of the Russian Federation, it introduces legislations that clearly explain how to Russify a museum that was previously Ukrainian and remains so under international law. And Ukrainian works of art are officially included into the Russian registers of national heritage, that is, they are appropriated.

Then they organize public awareness campaigns or exhibitions where they use these art works for propaganda purposes. The movement of art works, the registration and appropriation by Russia of Ukrainian works, as well as the work on Russification, propaganda, integration into Russia's official historical line, which denies Ukrainian identity – these three stages are regulated by laws that are public. Based on this, we have described the organization of this crime by which decisions can be traced – who and how initiated these laws, who voted for them, etc.

FROM PUTIN TO MUSEUM WORKERS – A CRIMINAL CHAIN

- What exactly did the investigation reveal?

- So, we have traced the chain – how exactly various entities of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Minister in person, as well as the government and various departments of culture, and finally the Kremlin, including the president and his advisers specializing in issues of history, propaganda, education and culture, were involved in this. We have evidence in the form of executive orders or strategic plans concerning Russia’s interests, which come directly from Vladimir Putin. That is why the complaint names Putin as one of the organizers of this mechanism.

The complaint to the court consists of approximately fifty pages, but it contains about 200 references to all these laws. We showed the connection – the annexation law, the law on the integration of new territories into the Russian Federation, and then Putin’s strategic executive orders, then the government order, then the report by the Minister of Culture, then the Duma vote for the law, and then the decree on the application of the law.

PROSECUTORS CAN EXPAND THE CHARGES

- But the ICC Prosecutor’s Office has already brought charges against Putin and Lvova-Belova regarding Ukrainian children and issued a warrant for their arrest. That is, a decision regarding Putin personally is supposedly there to enforce…

- Within the framework of the charges brought against senior leaders, there is a whole range of crimes that can be accumulated to bring new charges. The charges may not be made public by the court, but the investigation is ongoing, and prosecutors can immediately expand and update the charges for trial. But it was also important to name all the individuals from the hierarchical chain, and they may be among the suspects of the International Criminal Court for other crimes. I worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I know what a huge task it is. Therefore, the opportunity to warn, point out and encourage, prepare evidence greatly helps the prosecutor’s work.

- Did you transfer the results of your work to the Ukrainian authorities?

- Yes, we passed everything through the Ukrainian prosecutor. Of course, the Ukrainian authorities are currently focused on documenting the destruction of monuments in the first place, but later on this could be useful in other legal proceedings as well. For example, to prevent Ukrainian art works from being resold.

Russia's policy is to place all these works in the national museum collections, and not resell them on the black market. They are included in the Russian Federation’s register of works of art, so that they can never be returned. But it is important to place on record that these are stolen works, and if they are exhibited in the Hermitage, and then go to an exhibition abroad, then we will have a register and understand that this is Ukrainian heritage.

I think we have chosen a useful direction, and this is another way in which we could help Ukraine.

THE ICC IS NOT THE ONLY COURT – UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION ALSO APPLIES

- From what I understand, the ICC is not the only one empowered to try all Russian “museum workers” and officials who are thieves of our heritage, isn’t it?

- Yes, there is also universal jurisdiction. If museum directors or other prominent figures ever come to France, Switzerland or other countries, in particular to EU countries, most of which have ratified universal jurisdiction at the national level, then the association, which includes Ukrainians, Ukrainian victims, can demand their arrest. Therefore, it is crucial to have open cases, since international justice is carried out at different levels of jurisdiction. This could be Ukraine, France, Switzerland, Sweden.

- This is such a long wait for justice, we Ukrainians want it immediately…

- Yes, but look at Rwanda, for example. Most of the government ministers who committed the genocide have been convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

But here in France, there were around a dozen accomplices who were supposedly ordinary officials or business leaders, there was even a priest who lived quietly and thought all his life that nothing threatened him. And then one day, years later, the victims recognized him, and he ended up in prison for the crime of genocide.

JUSTICE MAY KNOCK AT THE CRIMINALS’ DOOR YEARS LATER

- So, when the war is over and Russian criminals who own real estate on the Cote d’Azur, for example, move to France, can justice knock on their door many years later?

- In my opinion, it is very important to do what I often talk about and what I try to encourage civil society to do. Journalists play an important role in explaining to any citizen that they can have an important role to play in activating justice. Will France want this? It is difficult to answer, and you are right, politically we are not sure. Which political party will win the elections then? We do not know. However, civil society organizations, associations, Ukrainian citizens, journalists from other countries – all of us collectively can gather evidence and say: “Here, there is such a case, such a wealthy Russian who lives in France or regularly travels there, and he is involved in international crimes that are subject to universal jurisdiction.” If Medinsky, for example, comes to Switzerland to ski, or if the director of the Hermitage comes for experience sharing to New York or a museum in Amsterdam. Then we, as civil society, can point to the authorities who he is and where he belongs, and file a complaint with the court.

I CANNOT FIGHT, BUT I CAN INVESTIGATE AND BE USEFUL

- Let me ask you a slightly philosophical question. Why are you doing this? Why are you in France not indifferent to Ukrainian cultural values, and what makes it important to do this for us?

- I worked as a journalist during the war in former Yugoslavia, I witnessed mass crimes there. Afterwards I was involved in international justice to put an end to impunity. These are the practices that developed during those years, I still work with civil society organizations in the Balkans, with victims' associations, etc. But they have already done almost all the work. So I know how important it is, and when I was asked to help by an association that supports Ukraine in France, our desires coincided, because I myself wanted to do something tangible for Ukraine.

I can't go to war, I'm not a doctor, and I can't donate a lot of money to buy drones. But I know how to investigate, so I can be useful at least in that way.

- Given your knowledge of the wars in the Balkans, did you understand the scale of the war in Europe after Russia attacked Ukraine?

- First of all, I was outraged that the war could not have been prevented, because we were among those who understood everything back in 2014. I worked a lot in Belarus and Georgia after 2008. And before that, for many years, I studied the war in Yugoslavia, worked with the tribunal that tried Milosevic, and wrote a book about it.

FROM MILOSEVIC TO PUTIN – SHARED LOGIC OF PROPAGANDA

- Then, you probably immediately thought of some analogies between Milosevic and Putin?

- Milosevic's army is no comparison to Putin's military might and scale. Not only because Russia is a nuclear-armed power. But in terms of the way of thinking, propaganda, there is a lot in common. A French colleague of mine has recently written a book about Putin's propaganda, and when I gave her mine about Milosevic, she read it, noting everything that reminded her of Putin. And there were a lot of parallels - even the words in the quotes coincide. It's all about dehumanization, denial of the existence of [another] state: in the context of Milosevic, it concerned Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the context of Putin - Ukraine. The same words the Serbs said to them – that you are actually also Serbs, you do not have your own state - this is what the Russians say to the Ukrainians.

- Yes, but returning to historical justice, Milosevic was convicted, punished by an international tribunal...

- There is much more that left out of focus. Regarding Milosevic, international leaders, especially European and American ones, never fully understood that he was already waging a hybrid war, because such terms did not exist at the time. Similarly, they did not accept the term “war of aggression,” and Ukraine failed to prove it in 2014, it was not until 2022 that this finally became obvious.

I authored a book about Milosevic, which was released in late 1999, and at that time the court had not yet indicted him, so diplomats told me that it was not Milosevic who was responsible, that these were local wars, civil wars between people, and that it was not the will of a state to destroy another state or to seize part or all of its territory. Do you feel it?

But it was the same imperial war. In the case of Serbia, it is difficult to say “imperial,” but you know that the Serbs called themselves Greater Serbia. These are similar things, although the Europeans do not understand it in the same way, because it is a much smaller territory and the threat does not go beyond the Balkans. In the case of Russia, the threat is obviously targeted to its neighbors, but it is also targeted against Europe. But convincing that these are local wars and that the local population is under threat because they belong to a different religion, different ethnicity or speak a different language is exactly the same method.

UKRAINE CAN ONLY ACHIEVE TRUE PEACE THROUGH VICTORY

- Ukrainians have made progress in communicating the fact that Russia’s aggression is actually threatening Europe as well, but we are not getting enough help to end it...

- I am fascinated by the fighting spirit of the Ukrainians. That is why you have our support. Because you deserve it. You have managed to show for the whole world to see that this is aggression, that war crimes are being committed. The trouble is that we know that a potential peace agreement that can be concluded will not bring peace. It may bring you respite so that you can sleep and not be afraid, but it will be short-lived. However, European leaders do not understand this. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a peace agreement was concluded, which is an American pact, for 30 years it kept the country in a kind of void where a lasting peace was impossible to establish. The agreement Putin will sign will be even worse than the one signed by Bosnia. Because Milosevic at least knew that he no longer had the means or capabilities, and so he was forced to make some concessions. He got what he wanted - half the country, Putin wants the whole country.

And such an “end to the war” will simply allow him to continue it by other means, hybrid, political. The only way to end it is for Ukraine to win and Russia to return to its borders, period. But we are not doing what is necessary to help you achieve this common goal.

Lidia Taran led this conversation

Photo via Wikipedia, pixsell and HINA/Lana SLIVAR DOMINIÆ.