The prosecutor of the International criminal court (ICC) announced that he will be launching an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed in Ukraine.
While Ukraine is not a part of The Hague’s ICC, it had awarded jurisdiction to the court. There are grounds to open an investigation because there was a previous preliminary investigation on Crimea and the Donbas, which was published in 2021.
Prosecutor Karim Khan said that he could ask ICC judges to approve the inquiry, but it will be a faster route for an ICC member state to directly refer the case to his office. Khan said this would allow the ICC to immediately and actively proceed with independent investigations.
Former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced in 2020 that there was enough evidence from the conflict in Crimea and eastern Ukraine to launch an investigation, but the ICC judges did not issue approval. Khan said that he had reviewed this previous case, and that he is satisfied there is a reasonable basis to believe war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Ukraine.
Several groups have started to collage war crimes evidence in order to use them in future trials, whether at the ICC or elsewhere.
On Monday, Lithuania called upon the ICC to launch an investigation into possible war crimes committed by Russia and Belarus in Ukraine.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is committing murder, and he hopes Putin will see his day in court in the Hague.
There is mounting evidence of Russia’s use of indiscriminate cluster bombs in cities across Ukraine, flattening residential buildings, especially in the second-largest city, Kharkiv. Horrendous rocket attacks have been reported that killed civilians. Footage shows dozens of missiles raining down on the city’s center, killing at least nine and injuring at least 37.
Mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said that the attack on the city shows this is a massacre of Ukrainian people, as the missiles hit residential buildings and killed civilians.
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