Zelensky: Russia must be hold accountable for the war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the Russian state and military leadership will one day have to take responsibility for the war of aggression against Ukraine.

Zelensky said, in his video address every evening, that this matter was the main topic of a conference held on Friday in the city of Lviv, which also included representatives of the European Union and other European institutions.

Zelensky stressed that the main issue was the responsibility of Russia and its leadership, personal responsibility for aggression and terrorism against our country and our people, noting, when they are held accountable, justice will return.

Ukraine has been trying for months to set up an international tribunal on the model of the Nuremberg Tribunal for Nazi war criminals, before which Moscow’s leading representatives would bear responsibility for the war against the neighboring country.

According to Zelensky, prosecutors and justice ministers of various countries discussed this issue in Lviv on Friday.

“We’re mobilizing maximum support for the Special Tribunal for Russian Aggression against Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

“We’re doing everything we can to ensure that the International Criminal Court succeeds in prosecuting Russian war criminals and that national law enforcement and judicial authorities guarantee fair trials for all Russian murderers and executioners,” Zelensky added.

However, the plans for this court, which Kiev aims to establish, have so far lacked effective measures with which to bring Moscow’s political and military leadership into the dock.

Last month, the European Union’s agency for cooperation in the field of criminal justice (Eurojust) announced the establishment of a center for criminal investigations into Russian aggression, nearly a year after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Eurojust said that the new center, which will open in The Hague next summer, will collect evidence for possible use in future trials.

Miroslava Krasnoburova, the Ukrainian prosecutor and member of Eurojust, said that the Ukrainian judiciary has so far documented more than 71,000 war crimes.

The United Nations commission of inquiry announced the documentation of war crimes committed by the Russians.

For its part, Russia denies it committed war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine.