International War Crimes Trial For Vladimir Putin Proposed By German President

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German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier pushed in a recent interview for a war crimes tribunal targeting Russian leaders including Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov over atrocities in Ukraine. In the more than a month since Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, Russian soldiers have consistently targeted the country’s civilian population, thousands of whom have died. In Mariupol alone, local officials recently said they feared the true death toll could reach the tens of thousands, and in the city, mobile crematoriums run by Russian personnel were recently reported to have begun operation. On Friday, Russian forces struck a train station in Kramatorsk used by civilians evacuating the area, and at least 50 people were reported to have died, including children, numbers that could potentially rise. The New York Times reported on a video from the scene in which a woman exclaimed, “There are so many corpses, there are children, there are just children!”

Steinmeier, the German president, remarked to the German publication Der Spiegel, discussing Russian actions in Ukraine: “Anyone who has responsibility for these crimes will have to explain themselves… That includes soldiers. That includes military commanders. And of course also those that have the political responsibility.” Fittingly, there would be worldwide support for war crimes investigations into the Putin regime’s actions. Even before evidence recently emerged in newly liberated areas around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, of mass executions of civilians by Russian soldiers, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated the Biden administration believed Russian troops to be guilty of war crimes. And then in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb, civilian corpses — many of which bore gunshot wounds — were found throughout the town. Some of those killed had their hands tied, and torture was reported. Hundreds died there, and hundreds more died in nearby jurisdictions.

A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv following the Kramatorsk strike added: “The Russian missile attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, a hub for civilian evacuations, which left dozens of people killed and more than 100 injured, is one more atrocity committed by Russia in Ukraine. The world will hold Putin to account.” Some 4,000 people were apparently at the Kramatorsk train station when it was struck, and the report on 50 deaths came with an accompanying report that nearly 100 people were wounded. Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko remarked following the attack that there “are a lot of seriously injured people without arms and legs.”

On the broader issue of war crimes, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently said the Justice Department would be involved in holding perpetrators to account. “The Justice Department sees what is happening in Ukraine,” he said. “This Department has a long history of helping to hold accountable those who perpetrate war crimes. One of my predecessors — Attorney General Robert Jackson — later served as the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Today, we are assisting international efforts to identify and hold accountable those responsible for atrocities in Ukraine. And we will continue to do so.”