A center for the investigation of crimes committed in Ukraine was opened in The Hague

On Monday, July 3, an international office for the investigation of crimes accused of Russia in the course of its full-scale war against Ukraine was opened in The Hague. This structure is seen as the first step on the way to creating a tribunal over Russian leaders.

The official name of the new structure is the International Center for the Investigation of Crimes of Aggression. Prosecutors from Ukraine, the European Union, the United States, and the International Criminal Court participate in the work of the center. It is assumed that they will collect evidence as an intermediate step to the subsequent launch of a special tribunal.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), also based in The Hague, does not have a mandate to investigate the broader crime of aggression. The Ministry of Internal Affairs deals with more specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, France-Presse notes. In March of this year, the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction Moscow does not recognize, issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin – in connection with the alleged forcible deportation of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Kyiv called for the creation of an international tribunal after announcing that it had received convincing evidence of war criminals in the Kyiv suburb of Buch, from which Russian troops withdrew in April 2022. The Ministry of Defense of Russia categorically denied the accusations of massacres of civilians in Buche. In Russia, dozens of criminal and hundreds of administrative cases have been initiated against those who shared information about the violence in Buche. Many defendants were sentenced to long prison terms.

• In a report released in March, prepared under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council, it was said that Russia has committed numerous war crimes and, possibly, crimes against humanity in many regions of Ukraine. At the same time, international experts recorded a small number of obvious violations by soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine. At least one was qualified as indiscriminate, at least two as war crimes. It was noted that these are cases of executions of prisoners by Ukrainian servicemen.