US to withdraw from EU-led group investigating invasion of Ukraine

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By Glenn Thrush

 

The US Justice Department has informed European officials that it is withdrawing from a multinational group created to investigate leaders responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, including President Vladimir Putin of Russia, according to a letter sent to members of the organisation on Monday. 

The decision to withdraw from the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression (ICPA) against Ukraine, which the Biden administration joined in 2023, is the latest indication of the Trump administration’s move away from President Joseph Biden Jr’s commitment to holding Putin personally accountable for crimes committed against Ukrainians. 

The group was created to hold the leadership of Russia, along with its allies in Belarus, North Korea, and Iran, accountable for a category of crimes — defined as aggression under international law and treaties that violates another country’s sovereignty and is not initiated in self-defence. 

“The US authorities have informed me that they will conclude their involvement in the ICPA” by the end of March, Michael Schmid, president of the group’s parent organisation, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, better known as Eurojust, wrote in an internal letter obtained by The New York Times.  

The Trump administration is also reducing work done by the department’s War Crimes Accountability Team, created in 2022 by the attorney general at the time, Merrick B. Garland, and staffed by experienced prosecutors. It was intended to coordinate Justice Department efforts to hold Russians accountable who are responsible for atrocities committed in the aftermath of the full invasion three years ago.  

“There is no hiding place for war criminals,” Garland said in announcing the organisation of the unit. The department, he added, “will pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.”

 

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