Lithuania, Austria discuss creation of special tribunal for Russia

The European Union must demonstrate its resilience in providing assistance to Ukrainians so that they can overcome the difficult winter, given Russia's missile attacks on critical infrastructure.

According to an Ukrinform correspondent, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said this at a press conference in Vienna on Friday, December 9.

"Now the winter that has started will show not only how resilient Ukraine is (and I think they will succeed no matter how Russia and nature freeze them), but it will also show how resilient we are in providing help and support," Landsbergis said.

According to him, Ukrainians now need a lot of things and not only weapons. He said that countries that "cannot directly supply weapons" can provide Ukraine with, for example, transformers and generators. "Yes, Austria is neutral. But there can be no neutrality when we are talking about a brutal aggressive war in Ukraine. And we all are doing what we can to support Ukraine," Landsbergis said.

He also added that one of the issues that was discussed at his meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg was Ukraine's initiative to create a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine.

"One of the issues that we discussed and that Lithuania considers very important is the creation of a special tribunal for the act of aggression. We call it the 'mother of all crimes'. This means that without an order to attack Ukraine, all other crimes obviously would not have been committed. We are convinced that great importance will be attached to the creation of a tribunal that will not undermine the current efforts of the International Criminal Court and other institutions, but will only expand these efforts. We exchanged views on this matter and the discussion will continue in the future," Landsbergis said.

He also noted that Putin, when he decided to launch a military attack on Ukraine, did not expect the West to demonstrate such unity in its response. He said that this unity must be maintained. "And I am sure that Ukraine will win with our help," the minister added.

Photo: DELFI/Kiril Chachovskij