The United States announced it supports the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression – a significant development in the push to hold top Kremlin officials accountable for the war in Ukraine.
“At this critical moment in history, I am pleased to announce that the United States supports the development of an internationalized tribunal dedicated to prosecuting the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack announced Monday.
The announcement of US support for the development of such a body comes after Ukraine and other countries have for months pushed for the creation of the mechanism.
In that time, the US would not say whether it supported a special tribunal, with US officials instead saying there were reviewing the option and supporting other mechanisms like the International Criminal Court.
However, in her remarks Monday, Van Schaack said “there are compelling arguments for why” the crime of aggression “must be prosecuted alongside” crimes that are being investigated by the ICC.
She noted the past example of the Nuremberg trials prosecuting Nazi leaders after World War II, in which “the United States led the prosecution of the crime of aggression – deemed ‘crimes against the peace’ in the lexicon of the era.”
There are a number of different bodies like the ICC which can prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, but they do not have the jurisdiction to prosecute the crime of aggression by Russia against Ukraine.
As such, Ukrainian Ambassador at Large Anton Korynevych in December argued that these existing mechanisms do not do enough to ensure that the decision-makers in Moscow face punishment for their war against Ukraine.
“We have a loophole, a gap in accountability, when we talk about…
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