The International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an office in Kyiv, its largest outside The Hague, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriï Kostin announced on Thursday.
“The field office of the International Criminal Court has opened its doors in Ukraine,” Kostin said on X (ex-Twitter), adding that this represented “a decisive step in our journey towards restoring justice.”
Ukraine is seeking to establish a special court to indict Russian leaders following the invasion of the country, launched on 24 February 2022. Kyiv had announced in March that it would soon open an ICC office to “more fully investigate international crimes committed in Ukraine.”
“Unlike the criminal Russian regime, Ukraine has nothing to hide,” Kostin said, promising that his country would be “transparent” and allow ICC experts access to “crime scenes, evidence and testimonies."
“We are doing everything possible to ensure that the ICC experts can see with their own eyes the consequences of the aggressor’s crimes and draw independent conclusions,” he said. “Together with the entire civilised world, we are united by one goal: to ensure that the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes committed.”
The establishment of a new ICC office in Kyiv comes two months after the opening of an international office in The Hague to investigate the crime of “aggression” against Ukraine. That office was opened at the beginning of July, in what Kyiv described as a “historic” first step towards the creation of a special tribunal.
This International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA) brings together prosecutors from Ukraine, the European Union, the United States and the International Criminal Court.
The ICC, which is based in The Hague, also issued an arrest warrant in March for Russian president Vladimir Putin for the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children.
