More than 1.3MILLION people have now signed petition demanding Putin faces Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunal over Ukraine invasion
- Putin has faced global condemnation for alleged atrocities by Russian troops
- Invading soldiers ‘raping and torturing like Nazis’, according to Zelensky
- Putin war crimes tribunal at the Hague backed by John Major and Gordon Brown
- Petition vows to hold Putin ‘personally accountable’ with ‘worldwide momentum’
A petition calling for Russian president Vladimir Putin to face a war crimes trial has now been signed by almost 1.5 million people around the world.
Organisers hope the viral campaign, which launched just eight days ago, can compel the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) to begin proceedings against the Kremlin.
Campaigners initially wanted one million signatures and have steamed past that goal over the last couple of days. The new goal is 1.5million.
More than one million people around the world have now put their names on the viral petition
UK armed forces minister James Heappey said Putin was personally responsible: ‘The culpability for war crimes sits absolutely with … the man who decided to do all of this in the first place.’
Russian invaders in Ukraine have targeted schools, hospitals and buildings sheltering refugees.
Residential streets in Kharkiv and Mariupol have also seen continued, indiscriminate artillery fire over the past four weeks.
That led ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan to open an investigation into ‘potential Russian war crimes’ earlier this month, backed by 39 member countries.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC, although Kyiv has pushed for Russian leaders to face a war crimes panel for its actions in Crimea and the Donbass since 2014.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this month: ‘The Russian Armed Forces have committed and continue to commit multiple war crimes against the civilian population, as well as crimes against humanity.
‘These include indiscriminate artillery shelling, air bombardment and missile strikes on residential areas of Ukrainian cities, kindergartens, orphanages, shelling of nuclear power plants, shelling and destruction of critical infrastructure objects.
‘All of those and other crimes are being thoroughly documented, laying the groundwork for further probes of international and Ukrainian justice.’
Kyiv hopes to lay the groundwork for a Nuremberg-style tribunal before the end of the conflict.
Lawyers in London signed a declaration which later became the Nuremberg trials in 1942, more than three years before proceedings began.
The petition filed on site Avaaz has been shared almost 350,000 times on Facebook, 50,000 times via email and almost 25,000 times on Twitter.
The petition calls on Putin (pictured at a pro-war Moscow rally last week) to face justice in a ‘new Nuremberg-style tribunal’. Influential backers of a war crimes trial include Gordon Brown
Signatures continue to flood in every few seconds, with users registered on all four corners of the globe.
Human rights law professor Rebecca Hamilton told Reuters today that bringing war crimes proceedings can take several years – but initial progress on this issue has been promising.
Hamilton said: ‘It’s not a fast process by any means. The fact that things are moving already is a really strong sign.
She added that Russia refusing to join the ICC ‘will not stop the international court from pursuing its prosecution and issuing its arrest warrants’.
Influential western leaders who have backed a war crimes trial include ex-prime ministers John Major and Gordon Brown.
Brown wrote yesterday for Project Syndicate: ‘By beginning the process of investigating, documenting, and prosecuting Russia’s international crimes, we can give the people of Ukraine – and the world – a realistic hope that justice will be done and our common humanity acknowledged.’
Joe Biden has also described Vladimir Putin personally as a ‘war criminal’.
And UK armed forces minister James Heappey said last week that evidence ‘very much points towards’ war crimes occurring in Ukraine.
Heappey told Sky News: ‘The culpability for war crimes sits absolutely with the leader of the Russian government, the man who decided to do all of this in the first place.
‘It is not just Putin who ends up being responsible for war crimes as and when the evidence is gathered and people are held to account.
‘They too are involved in the prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine. This is a stain on the Russian nation.’
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