A “people’s court” found Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be tried “as soon as possible” for committing more than 1,000 acts of aggression against Ukraine.
The court’s decision, which it also refers to as the “Ukraine Tribunal,” comes one year after Moscow invaded its neighbor and is largely symbolic due to its lack of legal authority.
One of the three judges reading the verdict said, “The Court of the Citizens of the World… has heard sufficient credible evidence to support a finding that there exists substantial grounds to believe that the president of the Russian Federation used grievous and destructive armed force… against Ukraine.”
According to judge Zak Yacoob, it concludes that “substantial grounds for the confirmation of an indictment to be issued against President Vladimirovich Putin for more than 1,000 instances of crimes of aggression committed against the territory and the people of Ukraine” have been established. These crimes were committed against Ukraine’s people and territory.
The court pleaded with the “United Nations, the European Union, and all the peoples of this world… to ensure that a court with legal powers issue an indictment” in order to capture Putin and “put him on trial in an official Ukraine tribunal as soon as possible.”
The court began hearings on Monday in The Hague. The court’s organizers stated that, despite being symbolic, the goal was to “close an accountability gap” because there are currently no Ukrainian courts that can try crimes of aggression.
According to the Rome Statute, the founding document of the International Criminal Court, which is also based in The Hague, these crimes include the invasion or military occupation of one country as well as the bombardment of another country.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is looking into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine, but it has no authority to investigate the broader crime of aggression involving the invasion.
The judges of the people’s court expressed the hope that it “was a step toward prosecution.”
Yacoob, an anti-apartheid activist and former South African Constitutional Court judge, stated, “Hopefully we have the authority of moral force and moral persuasion which will take us somewhere.”
Ben Ferencz, a well-known Nuremburg Nazi trial prosecutor, Cinema for Peace, and Ukrainian rights activist Oleksandra Matviichuk, whose non-governmental organization shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, started the “People’s Tribunal of the Citizens of the World” in 2021.
Last week, Matviichuk urged the United Nations and European Union to support Kyiv’s request for a special tribunal to hear cases involving high-ranking Russian officials.