Kostin in USA: Special tribunal to prosecute Russia should be created based on UN General Assembly resolution

A special tribunal for the Russian crime of aggression should be established based on a resolution of the UN General Assembly.

Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin said this during a meeting with Beth Van Schaack, Ambassador-at-Large of the U.S. Department of State for Global Criminal Justice, Richard Visek, Acting Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, and Dereck Hogan, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, during which the parties discussed the format of the future tribunal.

"We believe that the tribunal should be based on the resolution of the UN General Assembly which will authorize the Secretary-General to hold negotiations on the conclusion of a corresponding agreement between the UN and Ukraine. Then the immunity will not prevent Putin and other high-ranking officials of the aggressor state from appearing before the court," the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office quotes Kostin as saying.

As noted, in Kostin's opinion, the fact that the US acknowledged the need to create a tribunal for the crime of aggression is an important step on the way toward holding the leadership of the Russian regime to account.

He noted that there are cases in international legal practice when the international court brought the head of state to justice. The Special Court for Sierra Leone, established on the basis of the UN–Sierra Leone agreement, sentenced the incumbent president of Liberia.

As reported, the U.S. Department of State supported the creation of a "hybrid tribunal" to investigate the crime of Russian aggression.

In September 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky formed a working group led by Head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak to work on the issue of creating a special tribunal to prosecute the leadership of the Russian Federation for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. The creation of such a tribunal was supported by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and individual states.

Photo: Prosecutor General’s Office