The US Department of Justice secretly informed European officials about the exit of the country from a multinational investigative group created to investigate the crimes of Russian officials responsible for invasion of Ukraine.
According to The New York Times, the decision was made by the Trump administration and is another step in changing the war policy in Ukraine. The publication emphasizes that the United States proceeds from a mechanism that was created to hold not only the Russian leadership, but also its allies from Belarus, Iran and North Korea.
The United States was the only country outside Europe that participated in the investigation by sending the senior prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice to the Hague. His task was to coordinate work with Ukrainian and European investigators. Now, according to sources, the decision to exit will be officially announced on Monday in the internal correspondence of Euras.
In addition to leaving the investigative group, the Trump administration reduces the work of a group of responsibility for war crimes, which was created by the former Prosecutor General Merrick Garland in 2022. She coordinated investigations of Russian crimes in Ukraine.
Washington did not provide official explanations about the reasons for such changes, but it is obvious that the White House is watching a policy on war in Ukraine and restricting its participation in international legal initiatives.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court in Hague issued warrants for the arrest of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Ombudsmenka Maria Lviv-Belova. They are suspected of forced deportation of Ukrainian children, which qualifies as a war crime.
Despite the exit of the United States from the investigative group, the investigation of Russian military crimes will continue as part of the work of European and national law enforcement agencies of European countries.
