The Trump administration could be distancing itself from an international effort to prosecute Vladimir Putin for war crimes, refusing to label Russia as an “aggressor” for its invasion of Ukraine at a recent meeting of a core group of countries preparing a tribunal to prosecute the Russian president.
The administration also is unwilling to co-sponsor a United Nations statement that supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and demands Moscow to withdraw its forces from the nation, The Telegraph reported Friday, citing Western officials. Further, the administration has not signed off on a planned G7 statement calling Russia the “aggressor” in the war, which will mark its third anniversary Monday.
The U.S. under President Donald Trump has dramatically shifted its stance on the war, offering an olive branch to Russia in hopes of negotiating a peace deal. U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, much to the frustration of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy because his nation was not invited. Zelenskyy said that President Donald Trump had fallen for Russian "disinformation," and Trump called the Ukraine leader a dictator for not holding elections and blamed Kyiv for the war starting.
Trump and Putin are expected to meet in May in Moscow, and European officials fear Trump’s tightening relationship with Putin could lead to Putin being let off the hook for the invasion as part of any peace settlement, according to The Telegraph.
Losing the U.S’s backing for the war crimes tribunal will be a major blow to the project’s international reputation and standing.
“This is quite a drastic shift,” a European diplomat told The Telegraph. “Rewriting history and pretending that Russia wasn’t the one who started the war is something that we simply cannot and will not agree to.”
The U.S. has not yet officially withdrawn from the tribunal and is expected to attend the next meeting for the core group of nations next month in Strasbourg, France. A diplomatic note viewed by The Telegraph revealed that European officials were “shocked” at U.S. claims at a series of international meetings that Russia should be invited back into the “civilized world.”
European capitals are now holding talks over a possible collapse of the special tribunal if the U.S. does walk away, according to The Telegraph.
The core group is leading a 40-nation coalition to form a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, modeled on the response to Nazi war crimes after World War II. It would involve the U.S. and other countries joining Ukraine to grant jurisdiction to a dedicated criminal tribunal to investigate the perpetrators of the crime of aggression and those complicit in that crime.
The International Criminal Court at The Hague in 2023 issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, for war crimes. But Russia, like the U.S., China, India, and Israel are not signatories to the ICC, and its unlikely Putin and Lvova-Belova would travel to a country where they would be arrested.
Newsmax reached out to the State Department for comment.