Human rights lawyers, together with Ukrainian prosecutors, are preparing a dossier of Russian war crimes for submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing Russia of deliberately causing famine in Ukraine during the 18-month war.

This was reported by The Guardian.

Yusuf Khan, a senior associate at the law firm Global Rights Compliance, said that "the use of food as a weapon took place in three stages."

At the first stage, the occupiers laid siege to Ukrainian cities, due to which the supply of food there was greatly complicated or stopped. Prosecutors documented the death of 20 people in Chernihiv who were queuing for bread on March 16, 2022.

Investigators are also collecting data on the siege of Mariupol. Food supplies to the city were stopped, and the occupiers blocked the exits from the city for trapped people.

The second phase includes the destruction of food and water supplies, as well as energy sources throughout Ukraine during the fighting. Lawyers remind that the Russians destroyed objects necessary for civilians.

Cities such as Mykolaiv in the south have been without drinking water since the beginning of the full-scale invasion after Russian forces seized the pump station that supplied it. The remaining residents were forced to rely on the water that was brought to them every day.

The third stage is Russia's attempts to prevent or restrict the export of Ukrainian food products.

"Then we saw Russia attacking grain facilities on the Danube and flexing its muscles on the Black Sea," Khan said, citing reports from Ukrainian officials that 270,<> tons of food were destroyed in late July and early August.

It will be recalled that from the warehouses of the temporarily occupied Berdyansk, the Russian invaders export grain by wagons to Crimea, and then to Russia.

The occupiers are also trying to take out Work has urgently begun on the repair of the railway track in Mariupol and the Sartana station.

The invaders, using the ports of the temporarily occupied Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, are exporting looted Ukrainian grain to third countries by sea.

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