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US to withdraw from group investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine: NYT

17.03.2025 11:00
The United States plans to withdraw from an international consortium that gathers and examines evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, The New York Times has reported.
US President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House with the son of Elon Musk, X  A-12, before boarding Marine One in Washington, DC, USA, 14 March 2025.
US President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House with the son of Elon Musk, X Æ A-12, before boarding Marine One in Washington, DC, USA, 14 March 2025. EPA/AL DRAGO

The formal announcement is expected later in the day.

The group, called the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, was established in July 2023 in The Hague with support from the European Commission and is hosted by Eurojust – the EU’s judicial cooperation agency.

It coordinates legal efforts among Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, and Romania to investigate Russia’s alleged crime of aggression.

Only non-European participant

The U.S. was the only non-European country collaborating with the center, having deployed a prosecutor to work alongside investigators from participating nations.

According to NYT, the Trump administration is also scaling back the work of the War Crimes Accountability Team formed in 2022 to coordinate Justice Department efforts to hold Russian perpetrators accountable.

In December 2023, U.S. prosecutors charged four Russian soldiers in absentia with torturing an American living in Ukraine’s Kherson region.

The crime of aggression is defined as a top-level political and military leadership’s initiation or execution of an act of aggression—such as invasion, occupation, or bombardment—against a sovereign state.

(jh)

Source: IAR, The New York Times