Putin's tribunal: The Hague takes on the war's biggest case
A special tribunal to prosecute Putin for the crime of aggression against Ukraine is now a legal reality — backed by 36 countries. The obstacles are real.
Thirty-six countries have signed on to an unprecedented special tribunal tasked with prosecuting Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. The court will be seated in The Hague, the Netherlands — home to the International Criminal Court and the world’s principal international tribunals. The agreement was sealed May 15 at the annual ministerial meeting of the Council of Europe — a pan-European human rights organization with 46 member states, entirely distinct from the European Union — which spearheaded the effort to fill a critical gap in international jurisdiction. Moscow has dismissed the tribunal as a politically motivated body lacking legitimate jurisdiction. The signal from its backers is bold. The obstacles are real.
At a Glance
Thirty-six countries — the vast majority of them European, joined by Australia and Costa Rica — have formally joined the special tribunal’s governing committee, which will oversee the court’s budget, internal rules, and selection of judges and prosecutors.
The tribunal targets Ukraine’s war leadership chain — but cannot try Putin in absentia while he remains in office. A prosecutor may file charges; the chamber will hold proceedings in suspension until the accused leaves power.
Four EU member states — Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta, and Slovakia — declined to sign, while the absence of the United States under the Trump administration raises serious questions about the court’s long-term funding.
Why the ICC wasn’t enough
The International Criminal Court, whose existing arrest warrant against Putin remains unenforced, runs into a precise legal wall: it can only prosecute the crime of aggression against nationals of states party to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty. Russia is not a signatory, and its veto power on the United Nations Security Council blocks any modification through the UN system.
The crime of aggression — unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, which target the individuals who commit atrocities — is a leadership crime. It is attributed not to the soldier who pulls the trigger, but to those who ordered the war: the presidential “troika” and senior military commanders who directed the assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The tribunal’s governing committee, established by Friday’s resolution, will approve the annual budget, adopt internal regulations, and elect judges and prosecutors. The European Union has already pledged €10 million (approximately $11 million at current exchange rates) to fund the court’s early operations.
A list of signatories that speaks in its silences
The 36 signatory states cover most of the Western European bloc. Australia and Costa Rica are the only non-European participants — a sign that mobilization beyond the continent remains limited.
The absences are telling. Four EU member states — Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta, and Slovakia — did not add their names. Hungary’s case is the most politically charged. The Fidesz government of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — defeated in the April 12 legislative elections by Péter Magyar’s Tisza party — had spent years cultivating economic and political ties with Moscow while blocking EU aid to Ukraine. Magyar was sworn in May 9. Whether the new, openly pro-European government will ultimately join the tribunal remains an open question; no position has been stated publicly at this stage.
The United States, whose administration under President Donald Trump has pulled back from multiple multilateral justice mechanisms, is absent. That gap is more than symbolic: a tribunal without consolidated financing risks operating at reduced capacity before its first investigation opens.
What the tribunal can — and cannot — do
The court’s most striking constraint is also its most deliberate design choice: Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and the other members of the ruling troika cannot be tried in absentia while they remain in office. A prosecutor may file charges, but the chamber will suspend proceedings until the accused either leaves power or appears in person.
In absentia trials are available for figures outside the troika who fall within the tribunal’s jurisdiction — among them Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces; Sergei Kobylach, commander of Russia’s military aviation; and Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council. Senior Belarusian and North Korean officers, whose forces participated directly in the war, could also face prosecution.
Penalties for those convicted would include life imprisonment, confiscation of personal assets, and fines directed into a dedicated victim compensation fund — a mechanism designed to link criminal justice with civil reparation.
Analysis — what Strasbourg actually changes
The precedent. The tribunal’s existence is itself a long-range political act. The explicit invocation of the Nuremberg trials by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha was not rhetorical excess: Nuremberg established that waging aggressive war is a crime for which individuals — not just states — are personally accountable. This court makes the same claim, in real time, about a sitting head of state. No conviction may be imminent. The norm, once set, is harder to erase.
Deferred pressure on Putin’s successors. The argument that Putin will never face trial in his lifetime is plausible. It is not a closing argument. Any future Russian leader seeking to normalize relations with the West will have to contend with a pending indictment. International justice rarely operates on the short timelines of political cycles — but it operates.
The EU’s internal fault line, in transition. Four absent member states complicate the picture of European unity — but the Hungarian case has shifted since the tribunal was conceived. The Fidesz government that systematically obstructed EU support for Ukraine is gone. Its successor has yet to define its position on the court. That open question could resolve in either direction, and its answer will say something significant about how deeply the new Budapest realigns with its European partners.
Financing as the decisive variable. Ten million euros from the EU, a governing committee still being constituted, signatory states that must still allocate funds through their own legislative processes: the judicial machinery is not yet running. How quickly it does will depend less on the political declarations signed in Strasbourg than on budget decisions made in national capitals over the coming months.
The bottom line
A tribunal now exists on paper — and in international law, paper carries more weight than it appears to. The real question is not whether Putin will appear before it anytime soon: he will not. It is whether this mechanism survives the peace pressure Washington may apply in the months ahead — and whether Hungary’s new government, freed from sixteen years of pro-Moscow obstruction, becomes the most telling test case of Europe’s commitment to justice over pragmatism.
Sources: Euronews · Council of Europe