Von der Leyen supports a special court for Russian war crimes in kyiv

The President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, ratified this Tuesday from her Kiev her support for the creation of a special court to judge Russia's war crimes in Ukraine, a role that, she added, will correspond to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

“We work daily to collect evidence and record all the crimes,” he said, after meeting in the Ukrainian capital with the country's president, Volodimir Zelensky, to insist that the objective is “to do justice” and “to make sure that the criminals of war” will not escape this.

The EU supports the creation of a dedicated tribunal to try Russia's crime of aggression.

As a first step, we must collect, store and analyze evidence.

For this, we are setting up an International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) May 9, 2023

The president of the EC referred there to the creation of what she called an International Center for the persecution of the war of aggression against Ukraine, integrated into a joint investigation team.

Von der Leyen thus picked up the claim expressed last week by Zelenski himself during his visit to the ICC headquarters in The Hague and his allusion to the recognition of the war of aggression launched by Russia to avoid other future wars of aggression..

During her visit to Kiev, the president of the community executive advanced that the EC is working on a new package of sanctions that will include new mechanisms to guarantee that Russia and its allies do not manage to circumvent those already in force.

“The focus of this package is to put an end to the evasion of these sanctions,” said Von der Leyen, referring to the eleventh European sanctions package proposed last Friday by the Commission..

Among the novelties of this new package, the president highlighted the inclusion of “advanced technology products and aircraft components”, which cannot enter Russia even if their final destination is in other countries.. “They will no longer end up in the hands of the Kremlin,” he said about the effects of the measure.

Von der Leyen explained that the Commission has recently identified “a very unusual increase in EU trade flows with certain third countries”. “These goods end up in Russia,” said the president of the EC.

“If we see that products going from the EU to third countries end up in Russia we will be able to propose to member states to sanction the export of these products,” announced Von der Leyen, who stressed that this new instrument will be used with “caution.”

The new package also provides for sanctions against “Russian and third-country shell entities that intentionally evade our sanctions,” the EU executive chairwoman explained.