Justice no longer waits for the war to end. For the first time in modern history, an aggressor is going to be held internationally accountable before the war is over.
The arrest warrant for Putin and his associates, along with efforts to establish a special tribunal are not symbolic. They are concrete steps toward a new legal reality.
Here, we answer three key questions to explain that while this work is tough, long, and sometimes feels endless, it is, in fact, tremendously important.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not only a series of war crimes - it isthe crime of aggression. This means a deliberate act of one state attacking another, a grave violation of the UN Charter and a crime committed by individuals at the highest level.
Here, accountability must apply to the very act of aggression, to the political will that launched the war.
But under the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court (ICC) cannot prosecute aggression unless both states involved are parties to the treaty. Since Russia is not a party, it remains legally untouchable in this case.
Because of that, in 2023, Ukraine called for the creation of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression.
Earlier, in March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. For the first time in history, the leader of a country, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has been officially charged with a war crime. Lvova-Belova was named a co-perpetrator in the deportation of children.
This also marks the first attempt to hold a modern leader of such rank accountable during an ongoing war, a process previously reserved for post-war justice.
On May 9 2025, during Europe Day celebrations in Lviv, nearly twenty EU foreign ministers gathered to express support for Ukraine and formally back the creation of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression. This was a powerful legal and political signal: Russia's aggression must be qualified and punished.
That same day, while justice was being discussed in Lviv, Moscow staged a military parade with the usual narratives like "we can do it again". Ukraine, tragically, knows - they won't just try again someday, they are already trying.
In the 20th century, justice came after war. The Nuremberg Trials only began after Nazi Germany's surrender in 1945.
Ukraine's case is different. Legal and moral work on accountability is performed during the war. This enables the collection of documentation from crime scenes, immediate witness testimony, and the preservation of digital and forensic evidence.
Ukraine is leading this effort: initiating the special tribunal process, building legal frameworks, and uniting global support. Ukrainian prosecutors investigate over 120,000 war crimes
, with 78 convictions already issued, as stated by Andriy Kostin, who was Ukraine's Prosecutor General at the time, during the international conference Russia's War on Children in Riga.
Meanwhile, the Children of War and Bring Kids Back databases report 19,546 cases of children forcibly deported
to Russia or occupied territories since the invasion began.
For the first time, the world is proving that an aggressor can be and should be prosecuted during a war, not after.
This is not about revenge, but about restoring justice for over 120,000 documented crimes, each tied to a real person with a name and a story.
It's also about setting a powerful global precedent: aggression always must lead to accountability.
This publication was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It's content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.
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