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Biden wants ‘war crimes trial’ for Putin — Analysis

Russia is a party to the International Criminal Court. USA is not

Joe Biden from the United States joined the worldwide outcry about the massacre of civilians in Bucha this weekend. “war crimes trial”Vladimir Putin, Russian President at a Monday press briefing

He mentioned the necessity to “gather the information” and “get all the details”Get ahead “an actual … war crimes trial.”

This comes as the US seeks to suspend Russia’s membership on the UN Human Rights Council “in response to allegations that Russian forces committed war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, announced on Monday, calling on the 140 nations that voted last month to condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine to “match our words with action.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) launched an investigation in March into alleged war crimes and other offenses committed during Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, having “already found a reasonable basis to believe crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court had been committed,”Karim Khan, the ICC prosecution lawyer, stated in a statement at that time.

Zelensky visits alleged mass killing site

Over the weekend, graphic footage of Bucha (a city to the northwest from Kiev) showed multiple civilian-clad bodies. Kiev quickly blamed Russian forces. Moscow categorically denied involvement and claims the incident was staged for the sake of the Western media, with Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN Security Council, Dmitry Polyansky, calling it a “blatant provocation by Ukrainian radicals.”

Despite Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s plea for “serious skepticism” and multiple inconsistencies casting doubt on the veracity of the evidence, US officials from both parties have echoed Kiev’s claims and accused Russian forces of “war crimes,”Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D–New Jersey) and Ranking Republican Member Jim Risch (R–Idaho), calling “accountability”Name Putin the person responsible. Last month, the US Senate passed a resolution deeming Russia’s president to be a war criminal.

But, the US does not have a State Party to the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court. This 2002 treaty established the organisation as “an independent permanent International Criminal Court in relationship with the United Nations system, with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.”

Although the Obama administration had a good working relationship with Court as an observer of the Court, US stance towards the international legal entity reached its lowest point under Donald Trump who decried the ICC as part his campaign for reelection. “unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy”With “no jurisdiction, no legitimacy and no authority”A 2018 address to the United Nations.

The truth about Bucha is out there, but perhaps too inconvenient to be discovered

The US placed sanctions against ICC officials in 2020 as a retaliation to its investigation into war crimes that the US committed during its twenty-year war with Afghanistan. When the Biden administration lifted these sanctions in 2021, it explicitly maintained its insistence on US autonomy, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken voicing Washington’s “longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel.”

Moscow launched a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. These protocols, which were mediated by France and Germany, had been created to regulate the state of these regions in the Ukrainian government.

Russia demanded Ukraine be declared a neutral state and refuse to join NATO. Kiev claims that the Russian invasion was unprovoked. It also denies any plans to seize the rebel areas by force.

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