Ukraine with its partners and the ICC created a dialogue group. It corrects the investigation of crimes in the Russian Federation

Ukraine, the European Union (EU), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the government of the Netherlands have launched a dialogue group to support investigations of international crimes in Ukraine.

This was reported by the correspondent of "Babel" from the first public meeting of this group, which took place at the United for Justice forum.

The dialogue group was presented by the Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan, European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands Wopke Hoekstra, the President of Eurojust Ladislav Khamran and the Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba.

The dialogue group will deal with four areas:

• technical, expert and other support of national investigative bodies;
• cooperation with international institutions, for example, with the International Criminal Court or the UN Commission for the Investigation of International Crimes, as well as with organizations engaged in collecting evidence of war and other international crimes;
• coordination between countries in the investigation of crimes, when, for example, there is a global problem that is seen in the investigations of crimes in different countries and it needs to be solved or discussed in a comprehensive way;
• cooperation with non-governmental public organizations that collect information about crimes.

Why is this important?

Currently, approximately 70 000 cases of war crimes committed by Russians have been opened in Ukraine. The collection of evidence and the investigation of crimes are not only handled by the the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office, but also by the International Criminal Court, prosecutors and investigators of third countries, as well as human rights organizations. The dialogue group will allow to coordinate and unite all these participants.

• On March 3, it became known that the United States is starting to cooperate with the joint investigative group investigating Russiaʼs serious international crimes in Ukraine. In addition to Ukraine, this group includes Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia.
• On the same day, on the sidelines of the United for Justice conference, the plans of the International Criminal Court to open an office in Ukraine were announced.