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Ukraine’s war effort has claimed another unintended victim — and the response from a senior Ukrainian military commander has shocked the international community and may now be headed to the International Criminal Court.
Savaş Çakar, a Turkish crew member aboard the coal-carrying cargo vessel MV Reyhan Sarı, was killed when Ukrainian forces struck the ship near Novorossiysk in July. The vessel was operating in international commercial shipping lanes. Çakar was not a combatant. He was a sailor doing his job.
What happened next was worse.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, allegedly sent an email directly to Çakar’s brother Abbas — a journalist — that read: “Your brother consciously chose this path. What they did contributed to enriching the Russian Federation, and he got what he deserved.”
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied the message.
Abbas Çakar indicated that the email increased his pain and his anger, and that his family will be filing a case with the International Criminal Court.
Setting aside whether the strikes against the ship constitute a war crime, it is more important to consider what the above cited message reveals about the people prosecuting this war on Ukraine’s behalf.
A prominent member of the Ukrainian military has essentially claimed that all civilians involved in the world economy are legitimate targets. The logic is chilling: a Turkish sailor transporting coal might have been contributing to the Russian economy, therefore he deserved to die. If that standard is applied consistently, then truck drivers, dock workers, grain merchants, and fuel traders anywhere on the planet become fair game. This is a war that has moved well outside the boundaries of international law and basic moral restraint.
Turkey is a NATO member. The dead man was a Turkish citizen. Kyiv’s military officially told the sailor’s grieving family that he deserved to die. The diplomatic consequences of this posture should concern every NATO capital — but they won’t, because the alliance has spent years shielding Ukraine from accountability for actions taken in the name of fighting Russia.
The expansion of this war keeps crossing new lines. British drones now target oil infrastructure inside Russia. Ukrainian forces strike civilian cargo ships in the Black Sea. A senior Ukrainian commander threatens and taunts the family of a foreign national his forces killed. Each provocation is absorbed, rationalized, and forgotten by Western governments desperate to maintain the fiction that this conflict has clean sides and a righteous cause.
It does not.
The ICC complaint, if filed, will test whether international institutions apply equal standards to all parties in this conflict — or whether those standards exist only for adversaries of the Western-backed order. The family of Savaş Çakar deserves an answer either way.
