The Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Lipavský, whose country holds the rotating Presidency of the EU Council, called, on Saturday 17 September, for the “speedy establishment of a special international tribunal that will prosecute the crime of aggression” in Ukraine. The minister shared a tweet after the discovery of some 440 graves in the Ukrainian town of Izum. He said that “ we should not ignore” such acts by Russia.
He thus joins the Ukrainians in their demand for a special international tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression, which the International Criminal Court (ICC) is unable to do. The Ukrainian Prime Minister had reiterated this in Brussels on 5 September (see EUROPE 13014/2).
The Czech minister’s statement comes as EU justice ministers have so far refrained from advocating the establishment of such a tribunal. At the July EU Council of Justice Ministers under the Czech Presidency, they recalled the need to ensure the effective collection of evidence to investigate war crimes and supported the role of the ICC (see EUROPE 12991/6).
The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, has condemned the Russian atrocities in Izum (see EUROPE 13023/28). The Kremlin, on the other hand, called the discovery of the graves in Izum a lie. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)