Thirty-Six Nations Back The Hague Tribunal for Russian Leaders Over Ukraine Invasion

Thirty-six countries and the European Union signed the statute creating a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine on May 15 in Chișinău, Moldova. The court will sit in The Hague and is meant to pursue the Russian officials who ordered the invasion, from Vladimir Putin to his senior generals.

It is the first international tribunal dedicated to aggression since Nuremberg and Tokyo. But creating a court is one thing; putting anyone in the dock is another. The coalition behind it is also thinner than its organisers wanted, and Malta is among the European states that stayed out.

What the Court Can Do, and Why It Was Necessary

The tribunal exists because the existing system has a gap. The ICC, the world's permanent war crimes court, cannot prosecute aggression if the accused state is not a member. Russia signed the ICC's founding treaty in 2000 but withdrew in 2016. The remaining route is a UN Security Council referral, which Moscow can veto.

The new tribunal gets around both barriers through an "enlarged partial agreement", a Council of Europe mechanism that allows willing states to move without unanimous consent (Jurist). The statute removes head-of-state immunity. Putin, his prime minister and his foreign minister can be indicted, although proceedings against those three are automatically suspended while they remain in office.

That protection does not extend to military commanders such as Valery Gerasimov and Sergey Shoygu. They can be tried in absentia immediately.

Participating states will elect 15 judges. A single independent prosecutor will serve a seven-year term (Cambridge International Legal Materials). Ukraine expects the first verdicts by 2028 (Ukrainska Pravda).

The Enforcement Problem

The tribunal has no police force. Every arrest will depend on a member state deciding to act. That is where international justice often slows down.

The ICC issued a warrant for Putin in 2023; Mongolia failed to detain him when he visited. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicted Hezbollah members in absentia in 2020 for assassinating former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. None were ever arrested.

The Yugoslav tribunal indicted Radovan Karadžić in 1995. Serbia arrested him 13 years later, only when EU accession ambitions made protecting him more costly than handing him over.

Moscow has already shown how it reads the new court. On May 13, the Russian Duma voted 384–0 to authorise the president to deploy military force abroad to "protect Russian citizens" facing prosecution in foreign or international courts (TASS, DW). The law puts into statute the same doctrine Russia invoked before entering Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.

A Coalition With Gaps

The tribunal's 36 signatories are overwhelmingly European (Council of Europe, DW). Only two non-European states joined: Australia and Costa Rica. No African, Asian, or major Latin American government endorsed it.

That absence matters because it strengthens a criticism already heard in non-aligned capitals: that this is selective Western justice, applied to Russia but not to NATO interventions in Iraq or Libya.

Within Europe, 12 Council of Europe members refused to sign. Four are EU states: Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Malta. For Malta, the choice places the country outside a European accountability initiative at a moment when small states usually argue that law, not force, is their main protection.

Hungary and Slovakia have repeatedly blocked EU sanctions packages and used the Druzhba oil pipeline as leverage. Bulgaria's caretaker government gave no public justification. GERB, the main opposition party, called the refusal a "political mistake" incompatible with NATO and EU membership.

Among non-EU holdouts, Turkey's absence stands out: a NATO member declining to endorse accountability for aggression against a partner state.

The United States, which is not a Council of Europe member, has stayed silent. Washington previously preferred a lower-profile hybrid tribunal and worries that normalising aggression prosecutions could expose American military operations to future legal challenge.

The Trump administration's non-engagement has raised concerns about budgetary shortfalls for a court whose estimated annual operating cost is €75 million. The European Commission has pledged €10 million for the initial setup, but long-term funding is still unresolved.

The Open File

The tribunal's value may depend less on immediate convictions than on timing. International courts build legal records. Those records become useful when domestic politics change.

France joined the steering committee in April, with Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot declaring "Il n'y a pas de paix sans la justice, ni de justice sans la vérité" (Le Figaro). The Netherlands confirmed The Hague as the seat, adding another layer to the city's role as the world's judicial capital.

Whether the court moves from indictment to enforcement depends on questions no statute can settle: how long Putin remains in power, whether his generals ever travel outside Russia, and whether Europe's coalition holds when enforcement becomes politically expensive.