Recent Developments with Russia and the ICRC

In March, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, urged world powers not to forget the Syrian conflict and warned that the new quarrel could increase dissent over Syria in the UN Security Council. But a worsening situation in Ukraine and in Crimea may also have repercussions on the relationship between Russia and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that had been improving since 2012.

Russia and the ICRC have not always seen eye to eye. For a good part of its post-Soviet history, Russia has been part of a deadly armed conflict in its North Caucasian republic of Chechnya, meaning that operational matters dominated the work of the ICRC in the country, having had to negotiate humanitarian access and attempt to minimize harm to civilians. Even after the end of large-scale hostilities, Chechnya remained the elephant in the room between Russia and the ICRC: In 2004 Russia suspended the ICRC prisoner visits in Chechnya. In 2006, an ICRC staff member told the BBC that the organization had yet to receive information about investigations into the killing of ICRC medical personnel that had taken place in a hospital in Chechnya in 1996. In the five-day war with Georgia in 2008, Russia did not let the ICRC access South Ossetia until after the hostilities were over.

Yet, for around two years, the frosty relationship between Russia and the ICRC appears to have thawed significantly.

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