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Council of Europe takes ‘major step’ towards creation of special tribunal on Ukraine

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas (L) and Secretary General of the Council of Europe Alain Berset address a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER MATTHYS

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas (L) and Secretary General of the Council of Europe Alain Berset address a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER MATTHYS

The Council of Europe has hailed what it described as “a major step” towards the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine, having reached an agreement on the tribunal’s legal foundations, the Council of Europe’s Secretary General Alain Berset announced on Tuesday.

“The hard work is only just beginning,” Berset said, while stressing that “important progress” towards establishing the Special Tribunal for the Crimes of Aggression Against Ukraine had been made during meetings in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday. “We will not stop until Russia is held fully accountable and justice is done,” he added.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Tuesday that the tribunal sent a message that “no one from Russia’s leadership is untouchable”, and that it aimed to put pressure on Vladimir Putin and “give a clear signal to other aggressors … who are maybe contemplating on attacking neighbouring countries”.

“It’s essentially a tribunal against Putin,” an unnamed European official who attended the meeting told Ukrainian news outlet European Pravda on Tuesday evening, adding that the tribunal would be established under an agreement signed by Ukraine and the Council of Europe, with a fresh round of talks scheduled for April.

While calls for an EU-based special tribunal to prosecute Russian crimes in Ukraine have been made since the early days of the full-scale invasion, according to Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, no “practical progress” had been possible due to disagreements over the tribunal’s legal parameters.

Though the Kremlin has not yet addressed the Council of Europe’s announcement, the leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic party, Leonid Slutsky, who was a member of Russia’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe until Moscow’s withdrawal from the organisation in March 2022, dismissed the initiative as “yet another anti-Russian propaganda outburst” on Tuesday, state news agency TASS reported.

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