Saving Putin from justice. Who in Europe is stalling the trial and who is helping Ukraine

On 24 February, the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, leaders of all the key European states issued statements in support of Ukraine and highlighting the importance of establishing a "just and lasting peace".

This phrase has long become commonplace. In practice, however, many interpret it differently.

The official statements of the Ukrainian leadership on this matter have been quite consistent. The word "justice" means, in particular, that crimes – including the most serious ones – cannot remain unpunished, that there must be compensation for those affected, and those responsible must face verdicts for unlawful aggression – including the highest leadership of the Russian Federation.

However, several Western leaders and capitals are consciously stalling this process.

Yes, this is a serious accusation, but one that is supported by substantial evidence.

Moreover, among those acting disgracefully in this matter, are undisputed friends of Ukraine – those who are among the key providers of assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, whose support is one of the main factors keeping Ukraine economically afloat.

Some, such as the Netherlands, are openly delaying the establishment of the tribunal. The Hague has stated its intention to extend over several years processes that itself has previously completed much faster. It is doing this even publicly – for example, at this week’s Justice Conference forum in Kyiv. Privately, according to European Pravda’s sources, The Hague has been pushing for an unrealistically high budget for establishing the tribunal by including tasks whose necessity is doubtful.

Other leading countries are using the financial uncertainty as an excuse to leave everything in limbo. The Council of Europe – the very institution that took on the job of creating the tribunal – claims that "it has done all it could."

Ukraine, for its part, is insisting rather strongly that any compromise on accountability for the aggressor is unacceptable, and fortunately we are not alone in this position. In particular, the EU institutions are on Kyiv’s side.

The tribunal of broken promises

First, a very brief overview of the current stage of this story.

International lawyers began discussing the idea of creating a special tribunal for the crime of aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine as early as spring 2022.

From the very start of the full-scale war, the global community became convinced that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a grave violation of international law deserving of punishment – but the existing international law contains no provisions or mechanisms for an investigation that would legally prove the guilt of Russian leaders and bring them to account.

As a result, the leadership of a state that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council could act with impunity and not everyone was comfortable with this precedent.

The discussions on creating the special tribunal were not simple, but in spring 2025 a compromise was finally reached.

On 9 May, at a ceremonial meeting in Lviv, representatives of a few dozen countries made a decision to create a "new Nuremberg Tribunal" (European Pravda reported on the details of this arrangement). At the end of June, President Zelenskyy in Strasbourg signed an agreement with the Council of Europe (CoE) on establishing a tribunal for the crime of aggression (we explained the legal implications of this agreement here).

At that time, it seemed that the grinding wheels of international law had started turning and would soon be ready to break Russian immunity. Very optimistic assessments were voiced then. Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset said in an interview with European Pravda that by the end of 2025 several more stages would be completed. He asserted that by then a multilateral agreement with all the other participating states in the tribunal would have to be signed, and even suggested the possibility that the tribunal itself could actually start investigating the actions of Russia’s leadership.

"Our ambition is to create the tribunal this year," said the Secretary General. However, 2025 is already long over.

Now the CoE Secretary General is trying not to recall his own promises and denies the responsibility of the organisation. "The Council of Europe has done its part; now it’s up to the politicians," he said during a recent visit to Kyiv. Berset gave a similar explanation this week in his online speech at the Justice Conference.

But his statements are not entirely sincere.

In reality, the next legal and political steps must be taken by a CoE body – the Committee of Ministers (CoM), which is currently avoiding decisions. The CoM was supposed to approve the draft multilateral agreement establishing the special tribunal. Then the Council of Europe was to convene a diplomatic conference for its signing by the states that support punishing the aggressor. All of this was supposed to happen in 2025, but to this day it is unknown when the Council of Europe will even take the first step.

Therefore, Alain Berset is now trying to publicly distance himself from this delay, saying that he supposedly does not influence the positions of the member states. Those states also insist that they are not against the tribunal and, supposedly, just need more time. And as many have noted, this excuse from the capitals sounds maximally insincere.

The price of Russian impunity

The Netherlands have a particularly important role in the creation of the future special tribunal.

Back in 2023, in the early stage of negotiations on the tribunal, participants in this process agreed that the new judicial body would operate in The Hague, as then reported by European Pravda.

There were many arguments in favour of creating a "Tribunal for Putin" specifically in The Hague. There is the symbolism (The Hague is effectively the capital of international justice), and practical considerations (for example, the ability to use the staff and facilities of other international courts). After all, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where Slobodan Milošević and other war criminals of the Balkan wars were tried, has now ceased its operations, but its facilities remain.

According to European Pravda’s information, the Dutch government team was initially not thrilled at the prospect that their country would become the venue where Putin would likely be tried – but they did not oppose it, so everyone considered the matter settled. In fact, the idea of locating the as-yet unestablished court in The Hague began to be included in political statements and documents.

The Dutch also signalled that they took the idea seriously. The government created a position of "Special Envoy for the Special Tribunal," to which they appointed an experienced diplomat Arjen Uijterlinde.

This week he arrived in Kyiv.

There, the special envoy suddenly began hinting that the question of holding the tribunal in The Hague has not yet been decided.

According to him, The Hague is ready to host the tribunal only under certain conditions, primarily financial. And these conditions have not been met.

"We have been saying constantly since the negotiations that the Netherlands is ready to host the tribunal, but only if certain conditions are met," he declared in his address. Among these conditions, the diplomat listed "the presence of wide international political and financial support" and "sufficient financial coverage and backing from other states to ensure that the Netherlands can fulfil this task."

And the sums involved are truly hefty.

The Hague has presented partners with funding proposals that far exceeded expectations – both in total cost and in scope. For example, the government proposes that the partners finance the construction of a brand-new, ultra-secure detention facility for the detainees. Its cost, according to sources, has been estimated in the Netherlands at €70 million (!). And that is in addition to an annual budget estimated in the tens of millions of euros per year.

If you hadn’t heard these numbers – don’t be surprised. In The Hague and in Strasbourg they decided not to disclose them publicly. But it was enough to halt the process – because other countries said they were not willing to pay so much. Notably, the four largest contributors to the CoE budget – Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy – were not prepared to do so.

But instead of convincing the Dutch to lower their demands, the partners began dragging out the process. Allegedly, "without a budget we cannot ratify the documents." The dialogue continues, but very, very slowly – for example, Uijterlinde says that it will be only "in a few months" before he goes to Strasbourg to discuss this.

It is quite obvious, though, that the costs declared by The Hague are excessive.

"They say that for the possible detention of Russia’s leadership the facility must have extraordinary security. And this is supposed to delay the creation of the tribunal, seriously?! And this after we have already agreed that the key proceedings would be in absentia (i.e. with the accused not present)?" – such outbursts of indignation by one of European Pravda’s interlocutors involved in the tribunal’s creation have been heard repeatedly these days, including in the sidelines of the Justice Conference.

The consensus was the conviction that this was a deliberate, artificial stalling.

And while Ukrainians spoke about it only in informal conversations, Western politicians allowed themselves more openness on the matter.

"As we see, the Netherlands themselves do not really understand how much the tribunal will cost, and this has become a sort of pretext, an artificial explanation for European and other participants to say: ‘We cannot join because we cannot make financial commitments until we understand how much it costs,’" explained Estonian MP Eerik-Niiles Kross (the CoE Parliamentary Assembly’s rapporteur on the Special Tribunal) who spoke after Uijterlinde. However, the Dutch representative did little to hide that his government is in no hurry to launch a court for Russia’s leadership.

Not to refuse, but to stall

While disputes over funding (and whether the process is being stalled jointly by The Hague and key European capitals) had already been discussed privately, another statement by the Netherlands government’s special envoy appears to have introduced a new twist.

"We aim to see the formation of the skeleton of the tribunal in the Netherlands in the first half of 2028," Uijterlinde said. He did not make any further predictions, but if it takes until 2028 to form just the basic structure of the future court, then one can logically expect that full operation and formal charges will come even later.

Uijterlinde also assured that these timelines were based on the experience of other tribunals. But this is plainly untrue.

For example, the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia – often simply called "the Hague Tribunal" in Ukraine – was decided to be created in February 1993 by the international community, when the UN Security Council adopted a substantive resolution to that effect (an event analogous to the agreement that Ukraine and the CoE signed in June 2025). But within three months a substantive agreement was approved (a step that the Council of Europe now does not dare to take), by the end of 1993 the entire court structure had been built and its rules adopted, and in 1994 the tribunal delivered its first verdict.

Moreover, it is believed that organising the tribunal for Yugoslavia was particularly challenging, because it was the first international criminal special court since Nuremberg.

The special tribunal on Russian aggression does have precedent to draw on – but we are now being told that instead of the 10 months it took to fully launch the tribunal in 1993, now just assembling the basic team for the court will take three years (from June 2025 to 2028).

It is hard to see this as anything other than a deliberate stalling of the process.

And, it bears repeating, the question here is not only about the Netherlands.

The key members of the Council of Europe (from Germany to Italy and beyond) who tolerate and support the delay also share responsibility for the fact that the process of bringing Russia’s leaders to justice is being postponed.

Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset – who is trying to wash his hands of it and shift the responsibility onto vague "politicians" instead of pushing the process publicly at every opportunity – by doing this he only proves that this scenario is comfortable for him as well.

What is the real reason behind their joint actions aimed at delaying the process?

There is no proven answer, but in the sidelines of the Kyiv conference the most common idea heard was about the connection with the peace process. "We understand that this is what they are ready to sacrifice in negotiations with Putin first of all – so it’s better if the tribunal is not created," one of EP’s interlocutors explained as the possible logic.

"No dignified peace without justice"

The phrase highlighted in the subtitle is a quote from President Zelenskyy at a meeting with Secretary General Berset, which he recalled this week while speaking about his visit to Ukraine in early February. Despite the partners’ actions, Kyiv’s position remains unchanged.

At the forum in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials made every effort to convince the partners: no, Ukraine will not give ground on the tribunal issue. Moreover, it seems that sending this message was the main reason why this legal conference was convened in Kyiv on the anniversary of the full-scale invasion.

"Such wars either end with a just verdict, or the war inevitably returns again in an even larger and more dangerous form. Peace without accountability is a pause in hostilities, but certainly not a resolution of the problem. Peace without consequences for the aggressor is an invitation to repeat these actions in other parts of the world and a model for other authoritarian regimes," the new head of the President’s Office, Kyrylo Budanov, convinced the foreign participants.

"There will be no amnesty. International criminals have no right to amnesty," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha echoed him.

Furthermore, first Sybiha, and then the [First] Deputy Head of the President’s Office, Serhii Kyslytsia, each in turn assured participants that Ukraine had already rejected such a scenario in trilateral negotiations with the Russians. "One of the reasons why the so-called 28-point peace plan was transformed into 20 points is that the Ukrainian side declared that we would not discuss such a possibility (regarding abandoning holding the Russian leadership to account)," Kyslytsia recounted.

Whether their persuasion was successful is unknown. But it is also worth noting that Ukraine has like-minded allies on this path. In particular, on 24 February the Nordic and Baltic countries issued a joint leaders’ statement with Ukraine saying that "the Special Tribunal for investigating the crime of aggression against Ukraine is a priority task." "For example, we in Estonia have decided that we will be involved in the process regardless of the price, no matter how much the special tribunal will cost," said Eerik-Niiles Kross.

The European Union as an institution is also on our side. To break the silent blockade in the Council of Europe, the EU has allocated initial funds (€10 million) for preparations to launch the tribunal. But without real political pressure on those countries that make the key decisions, the process will not move from this standstill.

At the moment, two things are of key importance. First – will the insincere and even disgraceful position of the official Hague change after the new Dutch government is appointed? And second – will the slogan that justice, even if with in-absentia verdicts, is an essential part of the post-war settlement be voiced both publicly and privately? So far Kyiv is voicing this, but we need the support of our partners, which is currently lacking.

Sergiy Sydorenko,

Editor, European Pravda