The head of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, who is among three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, called on Friday for an international tribunal to try Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It is necessary to create an international tribunal and bring Putin, (Belarusian President Alexander) Lukashenko and other war criminals to justice,” declared Alexandra Matviïtchouk on her Facebook page.
“The UN and participating states must address the ‘accountability gap’ and provide a chance for justice to hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes. Without this, lasting peace in our region is impossible,” she explained.
According to her, “Russia should be expelled from the UN Security Council for systematic violation of the UN Charter”.
According to the NGO’s website, “The global initiative ‘Breaking Russia’s vicious cycle of impunity for its war crimes’ was created in response to the Russian Federation’s large-scale aggression in February 2022”.
Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, “we have been documenting the war crimes of Russian soldiers in Ukraine throughout the country”, explained in kyiv at the premises of the NGO Anna Trouchova, communication officer .
“The Ukrainian people are today the main architects of peace, in which we must exist without aggression”, for his part reacted on Telegram the chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, Andriï Yermak.
The Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, still in prison in his country, to the Russian NGO Memorial – hit by an order to dissolve the Russian authorities – and to the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties.
“The Nobel Committee has an interesting understanding of ‘peace’ if representatives of two countries that have attacked a 3e all together receive the Nobel Prize ”, commented on Twitter the presidential adviser Mikhaïlo Podoliak. “Russian and Belarusian organizations could not organize resistance to the war,” he said.
The Russian organization Memorial and Belarusian rights defender Ales Bialiatski are the victims of repression in their respective countries.
Belarus loaned its territory to allow Russian troops to invade Ukraine.