Ukraine and the Council of Europe human rights body have signed an agreement on forming the basis for a special tribunal intended to bring to justice senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset signed the accord in the French city of Strasbourg at the Council’s headquarters.
“This is truly a very important step. Every war criminal must know there will be justice and that includes Russia. We are now boosting the legal work in a serious way,” Mr Zelensky told the ceremony.
“There is still a long road ahead. Today’s agreement is just the beginning. We must take real steps to make it work. It will take strong political and legal cooperation to make sure every Russian war criminal faces justice, including (President Vladimir) Putin”.
Ukraine has demanded the creation of such a body since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, accusing Russian troops of committing thousands of war crimes. It is also intent on prosecuting Russians for orchestrating the invasion.
The 46-member Council of Europe, set up after World War II to uphold human rights and the rule of law, approved the tribunal in May, saying it was intended to be complementary to the International Criminal Court and fill legal gaps in prosecutions.
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Mr Putin, accusing him of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
Mr Berset said the next step to set up the tribunal, which the Council of Europe hopes could start work next year, would be an enlarged agreement to “allow the widest possible number of countries to join, to support, and to help manage the tribunal”.
It has not yet been decided where the tribunal would be based.
“International law must apply to all, with no exceptions and no double standards,” said Mr Berset.
This is the first time such a tribunal has been set up under the aegis of the Council of Europe, the continent’s top rights body.
The 46-member Council of Europe is not part of the EU and members include key non-EU European states such as Turkey, the UK and Ukraine.
Russia was expelled in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
According to the Council of Europe, the tribunal will be set up within the framework of the body “with the mandate to prosecute senior leaders for the crime of aggression against Ukraine”.
It said the tribunal “fills the gap” created by the “jurisdictional limitations” of the ICC.
Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said that European supplies of arms and mercenaries to Ukraine had increased the threat of destabilisation in Europe, the Interfax news agency reported.
“Attempts to prolong military actions by supplying Ukraine with arms and mercenaries increase the threat of destabilisation. Including in Europe itself,” Mr Belousov was quoted as saying.
Russia airstrikes killed one person and wounded two others in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson, local officials said.
One person was killed in a strike on the village of Tavriyske, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram.
Guided bombs hit a residential building, wounding another man, aged 34, Kherson’s military administration said.
In the Korabelny district, overnight Russian bombing wounded a woman in her 70s, Kherson council reported on Telegram.
Meanwhile Russia’s air defence units destroyed 50 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian defence ministry said.
Nearly half of the drones were downed over the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine, while the rest were destroyed over several Russian regions, including three over the Moscow region, the ministry added.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said specialists were examining debris on the ground.
Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport suspended departures and arrivals in response to the threat, news agencies quoted aviation watchdog Rosaviatsiya as saying. Restrictions were also in place for a time at airports along the Volga River.
On the diplomatic front, talks are stalled despite pressure from the United States.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal in order to prolong its full-scale offensive and to seize more territory.
Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 , in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.
