STATE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON THE PREVENTION OF WAR CRIMES AGAINST THE CIVILIAN POPULATION

Abstract

The article emphasizes that developing effective measures to prevent war crimes against civilians is impossible without proper scientific elaboration. The analysis of the scientific development of this issue is conducted by systematizing scientific works. In particular, the author consistently studies monographs and dissertations, scientific articles, conference abstracts, and other scientific and practical publications that address the phenomenon of war, as well as criminal law and criminological aspects of preventing such crimes. The article emphasizes the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to studying the prevention of war crimes against civilians. The paper reviews scientific works that investigate the factors that preceded the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. The main approaches to defining the concepts of “war crimes”, “military criminal offenses”, “hybrid warfare”, and “violations of the laws and customs of war” are analyzed. The study explores works devoted to theoretical and practical issues of combating crime through criminal law and criminological means during wartime. It is stated that despite the existence of studies focused on defining the concept and types of war crimes, their criminal law characteristics, and certain aspects of documentation and investigation, the criminological characteristics and prevention of war crimes against civilians remain unexplored.It is emphasized that there is a lack of comprehensive studies on the state and trends of war crimes against civilians, the determinants of their commission, the criminological characteristics of individuals who commit such crimes, and the profiles of victims of these criminal offenses.