Challenges for Criminal Law in the Context of the Aggression of the Russian Federation Against Ukraine

Today, there are several problems in the field of criminal law caused both by the emergence of new types of legal relations and by the imperfection of legislation. Due to the emergence of new challenges in the field of criminal law, many of them require theoretical understanding. Some of these challenges, generated in the light of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, revealed several reasons for discussion in the Ukrainian and international legal community. The purpose of the study involves consideration of certain aspects of modern challenges in the field of criminal-legal relations, which arose against the background of the military aggression of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The first part of the study is devoted to the question of the qualification of war crimes committed by the Russian Federation in Ukraine as acts of genocide. The second part of the work is devoted to the issue of using existing international legal mechanisms to hold the Russian Federation accountable for war crimes. There are convincing reasons to say that the actions of the Russian Federation during the war in Ukraine have signs of the crime of genocide. Even though Ukraine is not a party to the Rome Statute, the Ukrainian government can use another tool to bring the subjects of war crimes to justice, by creating a certain mixed investigative mechanism or a criminal tribunal that could deal directly with the crime of aggression.