Numerous Russian media professionals have moved to Ukraine in the last decade. These migrants can be seen as contemporary mobile, highly skilled, transnationally connected professionals who made a lifestyle choice by relocating to Ukraine. However, after the EuroMaidan, their move has also become increasingly political. Drawing upon a series of interviews with Russian media professionals living and working in Ukraine – and addressing their social relationships, professional practices and thoughts on return migration – I analyse the ways in which the lifestyles of these ‘middling transnationals’ can be affected by the political tensions between host and home countries. This paper draws upon the idea of transnational ties being not necessarily durable and supportive but, rather, flexible and multi-direc-tional. I argue that the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Donbas have altered migrants’ cross-border connections with Russia; however, instead of tying them to a place and excluding them from global networks, it might also push them towards inhabiting multiple transnational spaces. These observations highlight the political dimension of ‘middling transnationalism’ which is usually not con-sidered in migration scholarship.

This article is in tended to provide a legally sound explanation of why and how the contemporary International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law legal frameworks offer tools to address the uncertain ty, lack of in formation, and the consequences thereof in relation to missin g persons and victims of enforced disappearances in the context of armed conflicts which predated the adoption of such frameworks. To this end, three scenarios will be examin ed: the contemporary claims of the families of those who were killed in the Katyń massacre in 1940; the claims for in formation and justice of the families of thousands who were subjected to enforced disappearances durin g the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939; and the identification efforts concernin g those reported missin g while in volved in military operations in the context of the 1944 Kaprolat/Hasselmann in cident which took place durin g the Second World War. The analysis of these scenarios is conducive to the development of more general reflections that would feed in to the debate over the legal relevance of the distant past in light of today’s in ternational legal framework.

The aim of this article is to assess the military operation started on 24 February 2022 by Russia against Ukraine in light of the law on use of force, having in mind all the justifications officially expressed by Russian authorities and in light of international humanitarian law. The author claims that there is no justification for the Russian military action and thus it must be qualified as aggression. This, due to the serious violation of the peremptory norm, implies obligations on the part of states and international organizations (i.e. the international community). In addition, the current conduct of hostilities clearly shows that it is mainly Russian forces which neglect international humanitarian law principles, which might amount to war crimes.