The head of Ukrainian diplomacy this Saturday condemned the “deadlock” in negotiations with the West on the creation of an international court to convict Vladimir Putin, as well as on the transfer to Ukraine of Russian assets frozen abroad.
“Unfortunately, we are at a kind of impasse on these two issues, because on the first there are disagreements, and on the second there is clearly no will,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Friday in Kiev. Applications that were embargoed until today.
The G7 countries “firmly support (…) a hybrid court” based on Ukrainian legislation and which, according to Kiev, does not allow the lifting of immunity from Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, his Prime Minister Mikhail Putin. Mishustin and head of diplomacy Sergei Lavrov assured the minister.
“The hybrid court does not correspond to the question of how to prosecute the troika that I just mentioned,” he said during the annual Yalta Conference on European Strategy, which brings together supporters of Ukraine.
“It is impossible to explain to Ukrainians that such a trial can take place without Putin in the dock,” added Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andrei Kostin.
“Every Ukrainian wants to have a court where Putin will be prosecuted and tried. Our obligation to the civilized world is to create such a court,” he emphasized.
According to Kuleba, unlike the G7 (a group of seven world powers), Ukraine and a number of countries are insisting on creating an “international court” similar to the one in Nuremberg (Germany), which tried Nazi war criminals after World War II.
For Kyiv, such an institution would deprive Russian leaders of guarantees of immunity and prosecution for the “crime of aggression” against Ukraine.
Another point of contention between the Ukrainian leadership and its allies concerns the idea of using Russian assets, frozen in the West since the Russian invasion began, to rebuild Ukraine, valued at billions of dollars.
Western allies have frozen more than 300 billion in assets of the Russian Central Bank and tens of billions of euros in various assets belonging to sanctioned individuals and entities.
However, during a joint press conference with Kuleba on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that in addition to the new military package worth more than one billion dollars (932 million euros), Washington is going to transfer assets of sanctioned countries. This is the first time for Russian oligarchs, and this decision has already been sharply criticized by Moscow.
A number of Western countries continue to raise legal difficulties in carrying out these transfers, on which Ukraine also depends, while the conflict has continued for more than a year and a half.
“There is no desire to come to any conclusion. Therefore, we must change the situation,” Kuleba defended.
The Russian military offensive into Ukraine, launched on February 24 last year, has plunged Europe into its most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
Ukraine’s Western allies have supplied weapons to Kyiv and approved successive packages of sanctions against Russian interests in an attempt to reduce Moscow’s ability to finance the war effort.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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