Several international organisations including the European Union and the Council of Europe are setting up a new international court to prosecute Russian leaders for their involvement and planning of the Ukrainian invasion.
The new court is called the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. Its creation has been championed for a while by Ukraine, as a way to fill a gap in international law that the existing structure can’t fill. The International Criminal Court (ICC) can only prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Plus the 2002 Rome Statute of the ICC allows prosecution for act of military aggression only when committed by country-members of the court. Russia is not a member and thus its citizens can’t be prosecuted on this violation.
“The accountability gap for the crime of aggression must be closed right now because the lid of Pandora’s Box is blown off completely and our world is plunged into chaos and darkness,” Ukraine’s deputy minister of justice Iryna Mudra said during the presentation of the new court.
The Council of Europe is planning to have the new court ready by the end of 2025. Logistically, the court is yet to have its headquarters. However, the Netherlands offered to be the new host. The country already hosts several judicial international entities, like the ICC, the International Court of Justice, the European Union’s International Centre for Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression and the Council of Europe-backed register of damages, used to catalogue the financial harm that Ukrainians endured.
“When Russia chose to roll its tanks over Ukraine’s borders, breaking the UN Charter, it committed one of the gravest violations: the Crime of Aggression. Now, justice is coming,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen commented in a statement issued to present the new court.
