Legitimate Exercise of the Right to Freedom of Expression or Unacceptable War Propaganda? The Prosecution of Verbal Crimes Related to the Russia’s War of Aggression against Ukraine

Abstract

The Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has triggered a massive wave of criminal prosecutions for war-related offences, including verbal offences consisting in the denial or justification of certain conflict-related crimes. This paper shows that current international law requires states to criminalize and prosecute a limited range of verbal acts linked to conflict-related crimes, though this range is further expanded under the EU law. The paper also identifies the legal standards that states have to respect when criminalizing and prosecuting verbal acts linked to conflict-related crimes and uses the example of the Czech Republic to show how Member States may proceed and what challenges they face when seeking to abide by these standards.