President's Office hopes to agree on special tribunal for Russian crime of aggression before end of year

Andrii Smyrnov, Deputy Head of the Ukrainian President's Office, believes that the format for creating a special tribunal for the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine can be determined before the end of the year.

Source: Smyrnov on the sidelines of the International Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine international conference, reports European Pravda with reference to Interfax-Ukraine 

Details: Smyrnov recalled that the next meeting of the coordination group would be held in The Hague in September. The meeting will include 38 countries and touch on the possible format of the special tribunal.

Smyrnov said that currently three models are being considered: one based on the decision of the UN General Assembly, which Ukraine considers the most correct; one on the basis of a multilateral treaty; and the so-called hybrid tribunal, which will operate on the basis of the Ukrainian judicial system and which Ukraine opposes.

Quote: "The key [reason - ed.] is that during martial law, the implementation of such a tribunal would require amendments to the Constitution. It will be impossible to do this," he explained.

According to Smyrnov, negotiations on the format of the future tribunal within the framework of the work of the coordination group are at the stage of the "ongoing debates".

"There are various other compromise options that we cannot tell you about at the moment, they are still a diplomatic secret, we are discussing them behind closed doors, but we and our key partners are on the way to finalising the agreements on the model and work of the tribunal," the deputy chairman of the President’s Office concluded.

Earlier in an interview with European Pravda, Anton Korynevych, Ambassador-at-Large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that a decision on how exactly the tribunal for the Russian crime of aggression will look has not yet been made.

Ukraine, along with its allies and partners, worked out three models of establishing and launching the special tribunal for prosecuting the Russian crime of aggression.

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