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International lawyers have “laid the foundations” for a special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression, the EU has said, hailing a significant step towards holding Vladimir Putin and his top officials accountable for the invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement late on Tuesday, the EU executive declared a breakthrough that it said would mean the Russian political and military leaders “who bear the greatest responsibility” would be held to account.
The tribunal’s creation was initially proposed by Ukraine just days after the full-scale invasion, but for nearly three years lawyers have wrangled over finding the right courtroom.
“There is no doubt that Putin has committed the crime of aggression, which is deciding to attack another country,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters.
“And without that crime, there wouldn’t be any killings on the ground. There wouldn’t be any attacks on civilian infrastructure, civilians, rapes.”
Setting up a tribunal, she said, was also about “putting pressure” on Putin and the regime “to really stop this war, and also to give a clear signal to other aggressors or would-be aggressors who are or may be contemplating attacking neighbouring countries”.
Talks, which began last June between the EU, Ukraine, pan-European human rights body the Council of Europe (CoE) and 37 other countries, had been held up over whether Putin and other Russian leaders should be granted immunity. As a compromise, it is understood that Putin and senior figures would not be prosecuted while in office.
In a separate development, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would agree to direct talks with Putin to end the war that will reach a grim three-year milestone later this month.
British journalist Piers Morgan asked Zelenskyy how he would feel if he sat opposite Putin at a negotiating table.
“If that is the only setup in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and not lose people, definitely we will go for this setup,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he would also require other “participants” to be present.
In the interview with Morgan, Zelenskyy put the Ukrainian death toll at 45,100, with 390,000 injured since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. He estimated the Russian dead to be 350,000, with between 600,000 and 700,000 injured, and said Russian forces had “many” missing in action.
The international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and other senior Russian officials over the abduction of Ukrainian children. But it does not have the power to try crimes of aggression, as Russia has not ratified the ICC treaty.
Another mooted option is the amendment of the ICC Rome Statute in the UN general assembly, but many experts argue that would be unworkable, as many members of the court have not submitted to its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression.
To break the logjam, the CoE, which has 46 member states and expelled Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has offered to host the tribunal.
The talks sped up as Donald Trump prepared to return to the White House, throwing uncertainty over US support for Ukraine. Nearly 40 countries have been involved in the talks, after a plea for justice from Zelenskyy, who has cited “burned cities and tortured people” during the atrocities of Bucha and Mariupol, and missile strikes against ordinary civilians.
Iryna Mudra, the deputy head of the office of president Zelenskyy, said Ukraine’s people wanted to hold the invaders accountable “and to show the world that such horrible war crimes will have serious consequences. [Zelenskyy’s] message is clear,” she went on. “Evil must not remain unpunished. Peace must be just. Ukraine cannot and will not compromise on justice.”
A Ukrainian Nobel peace laureate, Oleksandra Matviichuk, has also called for the swift creation of a tribunal to try Putin, arguing that it could deter Russian forces from inflicting atrocities on Ukraine.
The CoE’s secretary general, Alain Berset, said he hoped work on a text to create the tribunal would be finished this year.
Berset, who met Trump in Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame in December, said it was “not so clear” how the tribunal would be affected by any peace talks launched by the US administration: “We try to go as fast as possible in a highly uncertain context.”
Berset, a former president of Switzerland, signalled that US support was needed if the tribunal was to work. “I think it’s also clear for everybody that without the G7 [the tribunal] will never fly.”
In a related effort to make Russia pay for the damage it has inflicted on Ukraine, the CoE also proposed joining possible talks on an “international claims commission” for Ukraine.
