So where does this leave Putin? I asked Faiza Patel, a former lawyer at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, now co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, whether Putin could be charged with war crimes. She replied, “Leaving aside the practical problems? Yes.”

The practical problems are several. First, as Solis suggests, it would be very difficult to drag Putin before a tribunal unless he’d lost the war or been ousted from power (a likely consequence of losing this war). It would also help if a Kremlin insider flipped on his erstwhile boss, testifying against him and handing the prosecutor incriminating documents; the prosecutors at Nuremberg and Tokyo had access to tens of thousands of captured documents.

“Intent is key,” Solis said. “Films and photographs of hospitals getting bombed or civilians being killed on humanitarian corridors—that’s not evidence. It’s evidence that war crimes were committed. But it doesn’t pin the charge on anybody, except maybe the field commander of the unit that dropped that bomb. To get the guys on top—and I’m speaking as an international lawyer—you need memos, orders, records of conversations. Did Putin write anything down? Would one of his confidants turn on him? These are the questions.”