On 14 July 2022, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba took part online in the “Ukraine Accountability Conference” at the level of foreign ministers held in The Hague by the Government of the Netherlands together with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the European Commission.

He called for the creation of a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine to bring the top military and political leadership of Russia to justice and revealed its future parameters.

Dmytro Kuleba explained that while international criminal justice has sufficient tools to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crimes of genocide, the existing institutions face objective legal obstacles in investigating the crime of aggression against Ukraine. That is why it is necessary to create a Special Tribunal that capable of holding the leadership of Russia accountable for this particular crime.

The Foreign Minister assured that the initiative to create the tribunal is not aimed at replacing or weakening the important efforts of the International Criminal Court and other international courts and tribunals, but rather will complement them.

Dmytro Kuleba named five main parameters that Ukraine proposes to form the basis of the future Special Tribunal:

• The Special Tribunal will be based on the rules and approaches applied by the International Criminal Court and set out in its Rome Statute. It will investigate and prosecute crimes of aggression against Ukraine committed on its territory, as defined by Article 8 bis of the Rome Statute.
• The jurisdiction of the Special Tribunal will apply to all events since February 2014, the beginning of the armed aggression of Russia against Ukraine.
• The Special Tribunal shall have jurisdiction over individuals who exercise effective control over or directly command the political or military actions of the State.
• The official status of the defendant, such as the status of the head of state, or the official status of another official of the state, will not exempt such a person from individual criminal responsibility and will not mitigate the punishment.
• The Special Tribunal will consider only crimes of aggression against Ukraine and will be established as an international special ad hoc criminal tribunal to consider Russia′s armed aggression against Ukraine.

The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine recalled that the initiative to create a Special Tribunal has already been supported by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO, the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE and the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy also joined the Ukraine Accountability Conference via video link. He called for the creation of a Special Tribunal for the crime of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, as well as of a special compensation mechanism for all the damage caused by the aggression.

The Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova, who participated physically in the Conference, addressed the participants with a closing speech.

As a result of the Conference, a joint Political Declaration was adopted, which was signed by representatives of the governments of Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Marshall Islands, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States.