A trial of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is “a possibility”, says French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna in an interview Parisian, published this Thursday evening.
“We are working with the ICC and the entire international community so that there is no impunity for the perpetrators and those responsible for war”, explained Catherine Colonna, adding that the ICC can trace the chain of responsibilities “up to the highest level”. She also recalled that this court had already implicated heads of state.
“I can’t predict that will be the case for Vladimir Putin, but it is a possibility if the facts and responsibilities are established,” she said.
The European Commission wants a special court
The ICC only has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine and not over Russia’s “crimes of aggression”, because Moscow and Kyiv are not signatories to the Treaty of Rome establishing the Court.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed the establishment of a UN-backed special tribunal to prosecute Russia’s crimes of aggression against Ukraine. “The International Criminal Court is investigating, it is she who will say the law”, also commented Catherine Colonna.
On the eve of the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, the French minister also believes that “the provisional balance sheet is negative for Russia”. Moscow “suffers a strategic, political and I would add, moral defeat”, she also commented. “The spectacle given by the Russian president on Tuesday, in the excess and the falsification of reality, attests to this. Russia has isolated itself. »
Faced with a conflict that is getting bogged down, she nevertheless felt that Vladimir Putin should be spoken to “whenever it is useful and necessary”. “As it was to allow international control over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant,” she stressed.