May 15, Pozirk. Thirty-seven countries have approved the Enlarged Partial Agreement required for the launch of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine, the country’s foreign ministry announced on May 15, quoting Minister Andrii Sybiha as saying.
Sybiha pointed out that Vladimir Putin, Alaksandar Lukašenka and others have “all got their ticket to The Hague today” and will “go down in history as criminals.”
“Today is a historic day. We are making history. Just like the Nuremberg tribunal 80 years ago, this Special Tribunal in The Hague will restore justice from the ruins of war,” Sybiha said in a statement at a Ministerial Session of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in Chișinău.
Sybiha stressed that “the point of no-return” has now been passed. “The Special Tribunal becomes a legal reality,” he said. “One year ago, in Lviv, we approved the political decision. Just one year later, we have the implementation agreement. For international criminal justice, such a speed is a true legal record.”
An agreement to set up the special tribunal was signed on June 25, 2025 by Alain Berset, CoE secretary general and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Earlier, on May 9, a coalition of 35 Council of Europe member states announced completing preparations for establishing the tribunal. The announcement followed a meeting in Lviv between their foreign ministers and the EU’s High Representative Kaja Kallas.
On May 14, 2025, Belarusian opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja met with the then PACE President Theodoros Roussopoulos in Luxembourg to discuss bringing Alaksandar Łukašenka to justice at the special tribunal.
A month ago, Sybiha announced that Iceland and Poland had confirmed their willingness to join an agreement to launch the Special Tribunal, bringing the total number of confirmations to 17, enough to put the agreement to a vote.
The Enlarged Partial Agreement on the Management Committee of the Special Tribunal can now be tabled and adopted during the ministerial meeting of the CoE Committee of Ministers in Chișinău on May 14-15, Sybiha said.
While the International Criminal Court can prosecute war crimes and genocide, it lacks the legal jurisdiction to prosecute Russia’s leadership for the “crime of aggression” because Russia never ratified the Rome Statute. The Enlarged Partial Agreement closes the legal loophole by creating a specific judicial body needed to try that offense.
