YALE DAILY NEWS — Last week, a team of international lawyers including former Dean of Yale Law School Harold Hongju Koh represented Ukraine at the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, in the Hague. Koh is a Sterling Professor of international law at Yale Law School and has also served as Legal Adviser for the United States Department of State under Barack Obama. In an interview with the News, Koh refuted Vladimir Putin’s claim —  that he had sent troops to Ukraine on a special military operation to prevent genocide from being committed by Neo Nazis. Koh explained that there are two types of lies being made by the Russians: factual lies and legal lies. The factual lie, he said, is that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The legal lie is that the Russians were obligated to prevent this genocide, and that Russia had the legal right to invade Ukraine as a preemptive measure. “The whole world knows that that’s a lie,” Koh said.