Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for the creation of an international tribunal against Russia. He made such an appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague during his official visit to the Netherlands, reports Suspilne Novini.
“It is the court, and not something hybrid, which can formally close the subject, but it will be a compromise. <…> We must have a real court and full-fledged justice,” the Ukrainian leader said.
He urged using the experience of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
On March 17, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. The court in The Hague suspects them of having expelled children from Ukrainian territory. Russia (as well as the United States, China, India, Turkey) does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov called the decisions of the court in The Hague invalid from the point of view of the law.
In July 2022, the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin urged organize an international tribunal on Ukraine.
“Given the position of the ‘collective West’, which openly sponsors Ukrainian nationalism and supports the Kiev regime, the establishment of such a tribunal under the auspices of the UN in the current perspective is extremely doubtful. It would be more appropriate to work on this issue with Russian partners in organizations such as the CIS, CSTO, BRICS and SCO,” he said.
In November 2022, at the G20 leaders’ summit, Zelenskyy outlined ten steps he believed could lead to peace in Ukraine. As one of those steps, he called for the establishment of a tribunal for Russia’s actions.
At the same time, the President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, took the initiative to create an international anti-Russian tribunal for Ukraine under the auspices of the UN. In addition, she proposed to create a Russian asset management structure. According to the head of the EC, the blocked funds of the Russian Central Bank and the assets of the Russian oligarchs confiscated due to the sanctions should be consolidated into a fund, the funds of which should be invested and the profits from these investments should be used for the payment of compensation to Ukraine.
In response, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya appointed the court’s initiative as an attempt to legitimize lawlessness against Russia. The Kremlin spoke the same way.
“As for the attempts to establish some kind of courts, they will have no legitimacy, they will not be accepted by us and will be condemned by us,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
As Bloomberg wrote, some EU countries are wary of the idea of creating a tribunal – they believe that the tribunal created to try war crimes in Yugoslavia in the 1990s “was ambiguous”.
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