The European Union has allocated an initial €10 million to fund a special tribunal expected to try Russia’s top leadership for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced the move during a visit to Kyiv on Monday, October 13.
“The evidence of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine is clear. Crimes left unpunished only encourage new atrocities,” Kallas wrote on X. She said the funds would “ensure that those responsible for the crime of aggression do not escape justice.”
Kallas also announced €6 million in assistance for Ukraine to support children deported by Russia and survivors of sexualized violence (which occurred during the war).
Work to set up the tribunal became public in February this year, and on June 25 Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an agreement in Strasbourg to establish it.
Investigators will examine events starting from February 2014, rather than 2024, when the full-scale war began.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said at the time that the tribunal would be the first international judicial body since the end of World War II with jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute individuals “regardless of their position.”
Such a tribunal can investigate Vladimir Putin but cannot try him, including in absentia, due to the personal immunity that international law affords high-ranking state officials. The same protection applies to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Prosecuting Putin is expected to become possible after he leaves the Russian presidency.
Russia does not recognize the war it launched against Ukraine as a crime and refuses to cooperate with Western legal institutions.
In March 2022, Moscow also ceased participating in the Council of Europe.
That makes extraditing any suspects from Russia virtually impossible.
Commenting in May on EU plans for a special tribunal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin “does not react to this.”
Alexander Venediktov, deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, called the special tribunal “another way to take money from European citizens.”
