EU, US team up with Ukraine to prosecute Russian war crimes

The European Union and Ukraine have set up a team tasked with investigating and prosecuting Russian war crimes.

An agreement was signed Friday to set up the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in The Hague following a two-day conference in Ukraine.

The team will be a part of Eurojust, the EU’s criminal justice arm, which announced the formation of the group Saturday made up of seven countries that will be part of a joint investigation team and United States Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The joint investigation team is made up of prosecutors from the International Criminal Court, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, and Romania, according to Eurojust.

Garland said that the signed agreement “will formalize and facilitate coordination between the United States and JIT member countries on our investigations and prosecutions of atrocity crimes stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

“It is also a signal to the world that the perpetrators of this invasion will not undermine our shared values of a free and democratic society,” the attorney general added.

Eurojust President Ladislav Hamran said that the formation of the team demonstrates the interest for justice for war crimes in Ukraine “transcends national and continental borders.”

The U.S. set up its own War Crimes Accountability Team in June 2022 to investigate international crimes that it has jurisdiction over, such as the killing of an American journalist covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The team, which now joins the sever-member joint investigation group, helps collect evidence, conducts forensic investigations, and offers legal advice and analysis, Eurojust said.