International Law after the Russo- Ukrainian War: From the Zeitenwende to Multipolarity

This article analyses States' divergent responses to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and their impact on the global legal order. Western States have supported Ukraine by providing military aid, imposing sanctions, and advocating accountability. However, the non-Western world has exhibited ambivalence with many States critiquing Western double standards in violating the prohibition of force, emphasizing sanctions' negative effects on poorer nations, and advocating reform of multilateral institutions. Moving beyond three narratives about post-2022 developments - the idea of a Zeitenwende, the end of Western hegemony and the rise of the Global South, and a contest of democracies versus autocracies - this article argues that the Russo-Ukrainian war has amplified contestation over international law's universality, yet there is more continuity than rupture in States' normative positions in core areas of international law. Rather than a Zeitenwende in international law, which may in fact be a Eurocentric framing of post-2022 developments, the Russo-Ukrainian war has accelerated shifts underway prior to the 2022 invasion. The invasion has put the spotlight on divergent regional interpretations of international law, but claims of emerging multipolarity in international law flatten the complexities of individual States' normative positions, which mix legal principle, economic self-interest, historical precedent and shifting political alliances. A more regionalized approach may be emerging in areas like international criminal law, but perceptions of fragmentation and rhetorical denunciations of double standards should not be prematurely equated with support for multipolarity in international law, understood as an alternative normative ordering centred around regional hegemons like China, Turkey or India.