Fredrik Wesslau is a distinguished policy fellow at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies and former chairman of the board of The Reckoning Project.
With a bad peace deal for Ukraine possibly on the horizon, holding Russia accountable for war crimes seems a more distant prospect than at any time since Russia’s full-throttle invasion of Ukraine.
But that accountability has never been more important than it is now, not only for Ukraine but for Europe too. And as a matter of urgency, the bloc must take action to shield the country’s accountability efforts from a bad peace deal — which means finally establishing the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
In its desire to normalize relations with Moscow, the Trump administration has shown it is willing to negotiate a peace agreement largely on Russia’s terms. Moreover, with the recent announcement that the U.S. is withdrawing from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which is investigating the leaders responsible for the invasion, there’ll certainly be no place for holding Russia accountable in Ukraine during upcoming negotiations.
The current U.S. administration is hostile to international justice and has been acting accordingly. For instance, it imposed harsh sanctions against the International Criminal Court for its investigations into Israeli officials. And those sanctions are also now hampering the court’s ability to investigate war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Hence, in negotiating a peace deal for Ukraine, we can’t discount the possibility that Trump may go even further and accept an amnesty clause for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin and senior military officials involved in the war’s execution. Such a move would be consistent with the U.S. leader’s worldview — that might makes right — and in line with his strongman admiration of Putin.
Make no mistake, an amnesty clause for serious international crimes would break international law. But in strong-arming Ukraine and Europe to accept a deal, Trump may well demand they drop their cases against suspected Russian war crimes and halt other accountability efforts.
Such a concession would make a mockery of international law. It would also reinforce the worldview that great powers can act with impunity toward their neighbors, opening the door for other autocrats to seize others’ territory without consequences.
All of this would run counter to the EU’s strong interest in a normative international rules-based order. So, what can it do?
Firstly, the bloc needs to act now, before a peace deal is negotiated, in order to lock in and protect accountability efforts in Ukraine. And this should include a swift establishment of the proposed Special International Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is the original crime that paved the way for all other international crimes committed in Ukraine. And unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, there’s no international tribunal that can prosecute the crime of aggression — which means an ad hoc tribunal does, indeed, need to be set up.
Since 2023, a group of nearly 40 countries — mostly from Europe but also from Asia, Oceania, North America and Central America — have all been working with Ukraine to establish this tribunal, and they’re now close to agreeing on how it would operate.
In short, the tribunal would be mandated to investigate Russia’s top leaders for their role in preparing and launching the war of aggression against Ukraine. It would be created by the Council of Europe, and it would be based on a treaty between Ukraine and the Council of Europe, drawing from a combination of territorial jurisdiction stemming from Ukraine and international law.
Such a tribunal would be valuable not only for its prosecutions but because its actions — indictments, in particular — would set the historical record regarding how the war started and who was behind it, much like the Nuremberg trials did for World War II.
As for timing, establishing the tribunal now, before any serious peace negotiations, would help ring-fence any attempts to roll back accountability. And once the tribunal is in existence, it would take on a life of its own, largely operating beyond political bargaining, making it virtually impossible to shut down.
Under such circumstances, an amnesty clause for Russian leaders in a peace agreement wouldn’t mean much, as the tribunal would still have jurisdiction to operate.
If Europe waits until peace negotiations start, however, there’s a risk the tribunal would be sacrificed as part of the negotiations. And politically, it would be much more difficult to set up after a peace deal — especially one that includes an amnesty clause — was already agreed.
Meanwhile, with Trump back in the White House, the special tribunal’s establishment has taken on even more meaning. His comments that the U.S. will get Greenland “one way or another,” or make Canada the 51st state, must be taken seriously.
Thus, setting up the special tribunal now would be a powerful signal to strongmen everywhere, demonstrating that countries won’t accept invasion and annexation, and that international justice can find ways to hold leaders accountable for crimes of aggression — no matter who they are.
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