The 'tribunal for Putin' is ready European officials have drafted a plan to prosecute Russia's top leadership — but there's still a long road ahead
The Council of Europe has finished drafting the concept for a special tribunal to prosecute Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials over the war in Ukraine, Deutsche Welle reports. However, there’s still a long road ahead: the U.S. appears to have dropped out of the project after Donald Trump’s return to office, and serious challenges related to jurisdiction remain unresolved. Here’s where the initiative currently stands.
Draft documents for establishing a special international tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine — unofficially referred to as the “tribunal for Putin” — have been completed and are now awaiting approval from European politicians, according to Deutsche Welle (DW).
On February 4, Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset announced that the tribunal would be created within the Council’s framework. The announcement came at a press conference during the 13th meeting of the Core Group working on the tribunal's establishment. Initially made up of 41 countries (now 38), the group also includes the European Commission, the E.U.’s diplomatic service, and the Council of Europe.
The tribunal is expected to investigate senior members of the Russian leadership. Early proposals named President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin as possible defendants. According to a DW source familiar with the process, the investigation will focus on approximately 20 Russian officials whom Ukraine has identified as “responsible for planning, preparing, initiating, and executing the crime of aggression against Ukraine.”
However, DW reported on Tuesday that the tribunal will not be able to prosecute Russia's top officials themselves — including the president, prime minister, or foreign minister — even in absentia, as the Council of Europe lacks the authority to lift their immunity. “The special tribunal will not try Vladimir Putin in absentia as long as he remains president of the Russian Federation,” a European official told DW.
The outlet notes that "jurisdiction has been a sticking point from the start," as it determines whether figures like Putin, Lavrov, and Mishustin could be prosecuted. “If the tribunal had international jurisdiction, it might have been feasible. However, in March, the European Commission officially stated that the tribunal’s jurisdiction would come from Ukraine,” DW reports.
Irish international law expert Andrew Ford said the plan is to establish a court with limited international jurisdiction, based on Ukrainian law but located outside Ukraine — though DW doesn’t say where Ford got this information. A separate DW source said the tribunal is expected to be located in The Hague. Ukraine will likely submit evidence from its investigations to the tribunal’s prosecutor, who will also consider material collected by the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression, also based in The Hague.
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The United States appears unlikely to be among the tribunal’s founding members. According to a DW source, the U.S. “simply disappeared” from the Core Group after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Hungary opposes the tribunal’s creation, and the positions of countries such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Serbia remain unclear. Approval requires a two-thirds majority in the Council of Europe.
Following that, “many countries” (not specified in the article) will need to ratify a “governance agreement” through their national parliaments. DW describes this as a matter of “finances and political positions” but provides no further detail. Ratification is expected to take several months.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov previously said Russia views the efforts to establish the tribunal as “one-sided and unconstructive.” According to him, the international bodies and “so-called experts” behind the plan are detached from reality. He also claimed that these same experts had "remained silent since 2014, when the Kyiv regime sent tanks against its own people.”
