A special tribunal to prosecute Russian leaders over Ukraine wins backing from European institutions

A project to establish a court to prosecute the Russian leaders who orchestrated the invasion of Ukraine took a step forward Wednesday, with an announcement from a group of international organizations, including the European Union and the Council of Europe. (AFP/File)
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Updated 05 February 2025
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A special tribunal to prosecute Russian leaders over Ukraine wins backing from European institutions

  • Legal experts agreed on the framework for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine
  • “Now, justice is coming,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said

BRUSSELS: A project to establish a court to prosecute the Russian leaders who orchestrated the invasion of Ukraine took a step forward Wednesday, with an announcement from a group of international organizations, including the European Union and the Council of Europe, working together with Ukraine.
Legal experts agreed on the framework for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which will allow for the prosecution of senior Russian officials for planning and coordinating the full-scale invasion in 2022.
“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 said in a statement.
The move to create a special tribunal aims to fill a void created by limitations on the International Criminal Court. While The Hague-based court can go after Russian nationals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, it cannot prosecute Russians for orchestrating the invasion itself.

The 2002 Rome Statute which created the court does include the crime of aggression but only for countries who have joined the court. The Russian Federation is not a member state.
“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 told reporters after the announcement was made.
Ukraine has been pushing for the creation of a special tribunal since early in the conflict. “If we want true justice, we should not look for excuses and should not refer to the shortcomings of the current international law but make bold decisions that will correct those shortcomings that unfortunately exist in international law,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a visit to the Netherlands in 2023.
There are still significant issues to be worked out, including how the tribunal will be paid for and where it will be located. The Netherlands, home to the ICC, the International Court of Justice and other judicial organizations, has offered to host the tribunal.
It is already home to the International Center for Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression, which supports evidence-gathering for a future tribunal and is overseen by the European Union’s judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust. The Council of Europe-backed register of damages, which allows Ukrainian victims of war to catalog the financial harm they have suffered, is also based in the Netherlands.
The tribunal will be established under Ukrainian law, which leaves the future court unable to prosecute the so-called troika, consisting of a country’s head of state, head of government and foreign affairs minister. International law grants that trio immunity while they are in office.
The ICC, which isn’t limited by immunity, has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and several military leaders for war crimes.
The Council of Europe aims to get the tribunal up and running by the end of the year.

 

 


Minneapolis mayor demands transparent investigation into ICE shooting as protests spread

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Minneapolis mayor demands transparent investigation into ICE shooting as protests spread

  • Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said on Thursday that Minnesota authorities had no “jurisdiction” over the investigation
  • Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said he could not be sure the government’s account was grounded in fact until an independent investigation took place

MINNEAPOLIS: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Friday demanded the federal government permit state authorities to take part in the investigation into a US immigration officer’s fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman in her car, an incident that has sparked nationwide protests.
Frey, a Democrat, accused the Republican Trump administration of trying to predetermine the investigation’s outcome after the state’s lead investigative agency, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said the FBI had reversed its initial cooperation and blocked the BCA’s access to scene evidence, witness interviews and other material.
“This is a time to follow the law,” Frey said. “This is not a time to hide from the facts.” He added that despite the lack of aid from federal authorities, state or local prosecutions of the officer were still “potential.”
Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said on Thursday that Minnesota authorities had no “jurisdiction” over the investigation. Frey’s comments underscored the extent to which President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in mostly Democratic-run cities — despite the opposition of their mayors — has severely frayed the trust between local and federal officials. Trump administration officials have defended Wednesday’s shooting as self-defense and accused the woman, Renee Good, a US ⁠citizen and mother of three, of deliberately aiming her car at the officer in an act of “domestic terrorism” — a narrative belied by video evidence and described by Frey as “garbage.” In Portland, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, a US Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the driver “weaponized” the car in an effort to run over the agent, who fired in self-defense.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, echoing Frey, said he could not be sure the government’s account was grounded in fact until an independent investigation took place.
“There was a time when we could take ⁠them at their word,” Wilson, a Democrat, said of federal officials. “That time is long past.”
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield told CNN on Friday morning that there is cooperation between federal and state investigators so far but that it was too early to draw any conclusions.

STATES ACCUSE FEDS OF SOWING CHAOS
In both cases, Democratic mayors and governors have called on the Trump administration to pull federal officers out, arguing that their presence is sowing chaos and needlessly creating tensions on the streets.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot Good was one of more than 2,000 federal personnel whom the Trump administration has ordered deployed to Minneapolis in what DHS described as the “largest operation” in its history.
He was identified as Jonathan Ross, based on comments by federal officials that the officer had previously been dragged by a migrant’s car during an attempted arrest last summer, suffering serious lacerations. The details matched those reflected in the court records of a case in Bloomington, Minnesota, in June 2025, in which a man was eventually convicted of assaulting Ross.
DHS has declined to ⁠confirm the officer’s name.
Bystander videos of the shooting appear to show Good turning her wheels away from the officer as she drives forward, while he fires three shots while jumping backward from the front of the car. The final two shots appear to be aimed through the driver’s side window, after the car’s front bumper has already passed by the officer’s legs.
Since the killing, Trump administration officials have doubled down on the government’s version of events. Trump said on social media that the car “ran over” the officer, while Vice President JD Vance on Thursday accused Good of “attacking” agents and praised the officer for his actions.
The two shootings have drawn thousands of protesters in Minneapolis, Portland and other US cities. In Minnesota, Democratic Governor Tim Walz has put the state’s National Guard on alert. While the Minnesota operation is part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown, the president has for months aimed political attacks at the state, particularly its large Somali-American community. Trump has called Somali immigrants “garbage,” railed against a sprawling welfare-fraud scandal and ridiculed Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024. Walz announced earlier this week that he would not run for a third term, citing the time necessary to address the fraud scandal.