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Indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas. Deportation of Ukrainian children. Summary executions. Torture. Rape. Mass looting. In the past year and a half, Ukrainian prosecutors and investigators have worked around the clock to document more than 100,000 war crimes apparently perpetrated by Russian troops on Ukrainian soil. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in March for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the path to justice is anything but clear.
How can Ukraine and its allies hold Russia accountable for the atrocities it has committed against Ukraine? How does the search for justice fit into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s broader peace strategy?
Please join Carnegie President Tino Cuéllar for a conversation on these topics with Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin. Ukraine's ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova, and American Society of International Law (ASIL) President Gregory Shaffer will provide introductory remarks. This event is organized in partnership with ASIL and the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States.
Event Transcript
Note: this is a rush transcript and may contain errors.
Tino Cuéllar:
Good afternoon. My name is Tino Cuéllar. I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It is heartening to me to see so many people in the room and I know many are watching online. This event with the prosecutor general of Ukraine comes at a critical moment for Ukraine and for the world. It's an important moment because a terrible and tragic war that began with an invasion has dragged on for a tremendous amount of time, cost huge amounts of money. The cost to reconstruct Ukraine at this point runs probably more than $400 billion. But the human toll of the war is far greater and far more important. If we think about more than 500,000 belligerents who have been in some way hurt or killed, millions of lives that have been disrupted and continue to be disrupted. For those of us who have spent time thinking about international law, we know that one of the bedrock distinctions in international law is between combatants and civilians.
Those distinctions have been routinely disrespected by the invading power, in this case, creating a situation that has harmed a great many civilians across small towns, large cities, everywhere in between. As the world copes with this situation, various different players, different countries around the world, social movements, international tribunals, the United Nations have all acted in different ways trying to take stock of what it means for the world to still be grappling with aggressive war well into the 21st century.
While the International Criminal Court is playing a role in all this and has issued in fact an arrest warrant, the Ukrainian government itself plays an absolutely critical role. In fact, over 80,000 cases of suspected war crimes are being investigated at this moment. Tragically, perhaps many more will be investigated. Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin is with us today to discuss all of this and the efforts that he and his colleagues are making as part of the Ukrainian government's effort to make sure that the rule of law remains meaningful even in the midst of war.
Day in, day out, as the war continues, as the fighting continues, as efforts to protect civilians continue, they gather evidence. They look around and try to document what's happening. So I think about how this event got started. We had an event right here in this room with Nobel Peace Prize laureates from Belarus, from Russia, and from Ukraine. There was much discussion then about accountability, about historical memory, about justice. This event grows out of that in an effort to understand how in a situation as complicated and challenging as Ukraine's, those words, justice, accountability, documenting for historical memory can be made a reality. Before I begin this conversation with the prosecutor general, I also want to note that the ambassador from Ukraine to the United States was unfortunately not able to join us because she's detained and busy in Congress continuing discussions about the situation and about how the US and other countries can continue to support Ukraine.
But I am very pleased to welcome my friend and colleague, Greg Shaffer, the Ginsburg Professor of International Law at Georgetown University who will speak in a moment on behalf of the American Society of International Law, which is co-sponsoring this event along with us and along with the Ukrainian Embassy. The American Society of International Law has a long-term tie to Carnegie—in fact, we were there at the founding to try to support that—and has played an important role in helping Americans understand how, day in, day out, even as many technologies and social practices change, our commitment to the rule of law, and ideally to international law, persists in this country. So welcome, Professor Shaffer.
Gregory Shaffer:
Thank you Tino, for those generous remarks. Mr. Prosecutor General, gentlemen, ladies, excellencies. My name's Gregory Shaffer and I'm the president of the American Society of International Law, also known ASIL. Our society is the world's largest convener and expert on international law and has been here for nearly 120 years. ASIL's thousands of members include the world's top academics, attorneys, judges, government officials, and leaders of NGOs and international organizations.
With Cambridge University Press, we publish the number one journal in the field, the American Journal of International Law, along with other important titles. Each year here in Washington, D.C., where the ambassador has spoken as a keynote, we host our annual meeting, over a thousand people attend, and we're having the 118th annual meeting this year, scheduled for April.
Our mission is to foster the study of international law and to promote the establishment and maintenance of international relations on the basis of law and justice, an issue which is under severe strain today. International law is a major important front in this conflict. Membership of our society is open to all who value international law, and indeed, some 40% of our members reside outside of the United States. I encourage you all to learn more about us given the importance of international law for Ukraine and for the world.
For coming here this evening, Tino has mentioned how important the links are between the Carnegie Endowment and ASIL. We're in the room named after our founders, Elihu Root. Root was Andrew Carnegie's lawyer. But more broadly, he was a renowned turn-of-the-century statesman, having served as a senator from New York as well as Secretary of War under President McKinley and Secretary of State under President Teddy Roosevelt. Together with a small handful of others, Root and Carnegie founded the American Society of International Law in 1906. A few years later, in 1910, they founded this institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Root served as our first president for nearly 20 years, and simultaneously as the first president of the Carnegie Endowment.
And founding ASIL, Root and Carnegie had a novel idea. They believed that international conflicts might be resolved through international law, specifically through international arbitration. As we know there are many international tribunals now addressing issues which are central to the Ukraine conflict. In 1912, Root won the Nobel Peace Prize, and he did so for this concept of the importance of international law and the resolution of international disputes through international courts.
In closing, I'd like to say a word about Ukraine and what we are doing with regard to Ukraine. This December, in partnership with the Ukrainian Association of International Law, and the Ukrainian government, and civil society, we will convene in Lviv jointly a conference, timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the declaration of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. Leveraging these milestones to inform public opinion and catalyze concrete action, international law owes a great deal to Lviv.
Raphael Lemkin provided the conceptual legal framework for the crime of genocide. He coined the very term genocide. And he championed the adoption of the Genocide Convention. You may know that Lemkin's book introducing the word “genocide” was first published by the Carnegie Endowment. Sir Hersch Lauterpacht developed the concept of crimes against humanity for which Nazi leaders were held accountable at Nuremberg. In his seminal book, An International Bill of the Rights of Man, Lauterpacht advanced a notion that individuals could be subjects of international law and set forth many of the concepts that made their way into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Louis Sohn was instrumental in drafting the UN Charter and the statute of the International Court of Justice, but is perhaps best known for his extraordinary human rights advocacy. All three of these men studied law in Lviv. All three were members of the American Society of International Law. That's where many of these innovative ideas both were born and propagated.
In Lviv, a delegation of 75 legal experts, together with 75 Ukrainian counterparts, will unpack in December the complex legal challenges that we are identifying together. From our side, the initiative is led by our executive director, Michael Cooper, and with our international law fellow Svitlana Starosvit. Tino, the Society and the Endowment were always meant to work together in providing legal advice and policy advice with respect to the major conflicts of our time.
Tino, I hope you'll join us in Lviv this year if you are available. It is now my honor to call to the stage Tino Cuéllar and Mr. Prosecutor General. Thank you.
Tino Cuéllar:
Welcome, again. It's really an honor to have you at the Carnegie Endowment. You've had an extraordinary career. You've been a private sector lawyer, you've been a board member of the International Bar Association, you've been a parliament member, head of the Justice and Safety Committee in the Parliament, but this is no doubt a particularly challenging assignment. Could you share with us a bit about how these efforts to document war crimes fit into President Zelenskyy's peace strategy?
Andriy Kostin:
First of all, thank you for organizing this event. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your attention, and I really appreciate that we will not only discuss this war of aggression and all war crimes committed in [the] course of it. Not only discuss them from [a] legal point of view, but also discuss them from, I would say, [a] humanitarian point of view, because every victim and survivor has his or her name. And everything we're doing is for them, for restoration of their dignity, for restoration of their belief that justice is important, that justice exists, and that rule of law prevails over rule of force. And what we are doing, not only we in Ukraine, I say “we” meaning not only us but everyone who is helping and supporting us in all of our endeavors.
We are doing it not only for Ukrainian victims and survivors of this war. We need to ensure long-lasting peace in Europe and beyond when this war will be ended, we hope by our victory. But this is also our common obligation before us, our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren. We [are] also doing our job as a tribute to those victims and survivors of all previous wars and conflicts that have not received their [measure] of justice, because of [the] absence of international instruments or their inefficiency or because of many reasons, and we need to remember them.
And in some occasions, when we fight for justice in very difficult dimensions of it, we are doing it once again not only for victims and survivors in Ukraine but also for those who still suffer from the same crimes in the other parts of the world. I've been asked sometimes [a] very difficult question. People from the places of the world where still conflicts, wars are ongoing [are] asking me, I don't know why me, but they [are] asking me why the world is helping Ukraine in justice and accountability efforts and didn't protect us in our situation. And it is [a] difficult question. Maybe it's not very fair that I need to respond to it.
But what I tell them, first, we've been supported because we did and do our best to ensure justice for all victims of this war. And if you do everything on your side, then anyone who is ready to help to assist you will do it with more and more energy. And I feel it throughout these 18 months. I feel that we are supported more and more. I hope that we will have time to speak about it in detail. And second, I told them that with this very wide support, if we succeed in our situation, then you will have a chance in your countries, in your societies, because we will create this successful practice.
Very few elements: We are talking about [a] special tribunal, we will have time to talk about it in detail. What is important, [for the] first time [since the] trials in Nuremberg, trials [in the] Far East, first time we try to make [an] aggressor accountable on [the] international level. A lot of wars and conflicts [have] happened in the world during these 80 years. And there was not even an attempt. Many tribunals, many courts, special tribunals, but they were dealing with other war crimes rather than the crime of aggression. Now we have [the] ICC, [an] independent judiciary institution, the strongest one to deal with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. But we understand that [the] international mechanism that could prosecute and punish those who are the architects and masterminds of this supreme international crime, this mechanism is not efficient. We have no hope that [the] Security Council of [the] United Nations will refer our case to the ICC. We know that ICC rules vis-a-vis jurisdiction on the crime of aggression are not efficient.
We need to create something new, based on previous experience, but to create something new and to be the first [since] the Second World War to prosecute and to punish the aggressor. Second, we are the first who are prosecuting now environmental crimes as war crimes. Never done before. Even with some piece of existing legislation. I'm not even speaking about the crime of ecocide, just environmental crimes as war crimes. And we, for one year, we engaged huge international support and we are moving together because we have no right to make a mistake. And even our friends and our partners, I can say this from the team of Prosecutor Khan, we commend their independent work but we are partners for them providing them with evidence in a very speedy and efficient manner. Even they had no [prior] experience.
And third, cyber attacks as war crimes. Never done before in history. We need to be prepared because [by] making them accountable, we can deter any future aggressor [from even trying], because any future aggressor will know that there is [an] existing efficient mechanism in place to prosecute and to punish them. It's not, of course, a guarantee that there will be no wars and conflicts. We are not naive, but we need to do what we can do as lawyers, not only to prosecute and punish or to ensure fair prosecution and [a] fair trial, but also to deter.
And with this, I want to say that our discussion with [the] humanitarian element in it, we will speak about it later, is very important because we all understand [that] our predecessors did a lot in order to establish international system of law and order to prevent future wars, conflicts, to prevent [the] commission of international crimes. But we understand that this system, unfortunately, is not fully efficient, and this is our obligation once again to do our best to improve, to adjust in parallel with documenting, investigating, and prosecuting war crimes of this war.
Tino Cuéllar:
There are those that you have probably encountered, I have encountered them, who ask the following question. They say, it may be important to document atrocities, but isn't it more important to get to peace? And isn't the focus on documenting the atrocity something that may ultimately complicate a peace agreement? What do you say to people who would say that?
Andriy Kostin:
First of all, we all understand there could be no just peace without justice. It's impossible. It'll not be peace, it'll be a cease fire, something like this. If we are talking about peace, and this is very explicitly indicated in [the] peace formula proposed by President Zelenskyy, where restoration of justice is one of the important elements. And my president always says that we are fighting on both frontlines to restore our territorial integrity, independence, and freedom, and to ensure justice for all victims and survivors of this war. These two elements are interlinked, and they are—how [can you] feel at peace from the point of view of [a] person in Ukraine who suffered from this war, who suffered from war crimes? Just [an] end of the war and no justice, and looking at the TV screen where perpetrators from Russia will laugh at them.
I'm not speaking now about something strange. These are real cases of wars and conflicts on the, let's say, at large on the territory of former Yugoslavia. Then victims of sexual violence meet their perpetrators on the street and can do nothing. These are real stories. When someone proposes [to] us peace without justice, I will propose these people to come back to his or her city, community, country, and ask him or herself, are you ready to live in a community where people are killing, torturing, and raping others, and just leaving them do what they want without any punishment, without any order on your streets? Do you want to live in this community?
And probably everyone will say no. Everyone who committed [a] crime should be accountable or should be isolated if these crimes are very severe and atrocious, because these people want to live in [a] secure community, in [a] secure space. Why [don't they] wish [for] us Ukrainians to live in [a] secure community? International crime means that [the] community where these crimes are committed is our planet. Are we ready to allow international criminals to live with us? To go to the same restaurant? To go to the same kindergarten? I believe no. That's why I think that those who want peace without justice just need to close their eyes and to imagine this picture when killers, rapists, are going with them [to] the same streets, and they just allow them to do what they want.
Tino Cuéllar:
That's a very clear answer, and that then brings up a practical problem, which is, you are in the midst of war and yet at the same time you and your colleagues are gathering information on tens of thousands of cases. We're up to about 100,000 now. Just say a little bit about how you're organizing your team to do that volume of work.
Andriy Kostin:
Yeah, this is really, very important, because first of all, together with everyday work on documenting, the most important is of course documenting. And the quality of documenting is also important. What I always say to my prosecutors and to investigators, you never know, this case, whether it will be prosecuted here in Ukraine or it will be lifted then to the ICC. So you need to apply [the] high standards of the ICC. At least [the] ICC, I would say. But I think that everyone here will say that standards of the ICC are absolutely okay, yeah? So our communication and cooperation with [the] ICC and their structures, even training courses provided by [the] ICC to our prosecutors and investigators are very important in order to ensure that evidence [is] documented in [the] proper manner.
It is also very important when we document war crimes to be in collaboration or cooperation with civil society organizations. This is very important, because sometimes they have even more resources than we, because we are limited. Because we have time slots, we have limitations in time, we have procedural limitations. [On] some occasions, they can provide us with more information, and survivors trust them more than governmental authorities. So we are now changing this approach.
But anyway, cooperation with civil society organizations and NGOs is very important. In my office, we have a platform. It's called [the] International Council of Experts where we have more than 45 NGOs and civil society organizations who have divided their activity into six groups [that] they chose by themselves, from children, journalists, sexual violence, and others. We have added two more this August on environmental crimes and civilian detainees. I hope we will talk about them a little bit later, this is very important. And when we have interaction, when we exchange information, this is very important, because people who approach NGOs and civil society organizations, they also want some result. And they’re not always ready to provide this result because they can't apply the law in [the] procedural dimension. So documenting.
Second, of course, when you prioritize investigation. Of course for us, the priority is cases where civilians are killed, where civilians are wounded, when civilians are raped, humiliated, illegally detained, and so all types of war crimes where civilians really were physically damaged or physically harmed. These are our priorities, and of course, we prioritize these efforts. Actually, in my war crimes department we have three main groups. [The] first group [is] prosecutors for the crime of aggression, second for the crime of genocide, and all others are working with war crimes, so this is to understand how we distribute. We have also established nine units in the regions close to the war, where we provide a specialization in war crimes investigation and prosecution within regional units in order to ensure unified practice, because practice is formed in [the] central office, and then we ensure that these people are also properly trained on [the] regional level, and we are using the unified practice, because some of the cases were very new for us.
Yes, they are in our criminal code but they're new because there was no practice. Therefore, these vertical and horizontal links are also very important. And in order to prioritize it not in case-by-case method, we also [are] preparing strategic documents. We have strategies of investigating international crimes. I just approved it several days ago, just a week ago, before my visit. This was created by our prosecutors, by our partners from our international expert community, and also discussed with civil society organizations and NGOs in order to be [a] systemic document. We also prepare strategic documents for specific types of crimes. We started with conflict related to sexual violence. We also prepare documents for the cases where children are affected, environmental crimes, because once again, when we do something new, even based on previous experience, but [there are] so many incidents, we need to make this work more systemic.
What we also do as an element of this strategy is [combining] cases. [There are] a lot of incidents... For instance, I will give you an example, the blow-up of [the] Kakhovka Dam. I created maybe the biggest in history group of investigators and prosecutors, because it's not only about the initial blow-up. Yes, initial case of when it was blown up. This is [a] difficult story from the point of view of [the] evidentiary base.
But the consequences for people, for [the] environment, it required the work of hundreds of investigators simultaneously in many regions in order to document and to fix everything. And then many of the victims, they also reported to their local police stations, and now we are collecting all of these reports, all of these cases into one big case. Or when we know that, for instance, missile attacks were committed, as we have information or we have evidence, by one specific unit of [the] Russian army, then we can combine these cases of different attacks into [one] big one. These, of course, make our work more efficient. So we use a lot of techniques. And [as] we are coming from investigation to prosecution during the ongoing war, we have identified more than 400 perpetrators. We have already 58 Russian war criminals convicted in Ukrainian courts. And this is only our national part of [the] accountability web.
Tino Cuéllar:
Yeah. And this brings up a subject of much debate now, which you alluded to, which is you are documenting these cases, building these cases, and there's still some uncertainty about where they're going to be heard. So one of the debates as you know very well is whether ultimately the international crime, particularly the aggression side of it, is best dealt within a tribunal that is based on Ukrainian law that's internationalized or a purely international tribunal or maybe an international tribunal based on the law of another country. What does Ukraine most want to get out of that process? How would Ukraine like to see that process of figuring out the right system of tribunals to deal with this?
Andriy Kostin:
You mentioned I think one of the most important elements of our accountability web as we call it. It actually first was presented also in Lviv, in our United for Justice Conference in March. It was [a] historic conference because we combined all of the elements of [the] accountability web at one place, it lasted three days. And Lviv was also chosen by us intentionally, yes, for the reasons you also mentioned in your opening remarks.
The crime of aggression. We know the [proposal] of [the] G7 about [an] internationalized type of tribunal based on Ukrainian criminal law. We are in discussion, I hope, even to say in dialogue. Okay, I'm in this process from the very first months of the war. And let's come back to September last year when there was no country who officially supported the idea of [the] creation of [a] tribunal. We have some friends and allies that unofficially supported it. But first official support appeared only in October. Let's not forget about it.
One year, now we are in a very precise, sophisticated, very difficult discussion on the legal modality of [a] future tribunal. One year ago [there] was discussion [about] whether we needed it or not. I remember [on the] 5th of October, I was in Paris for one day. It was the big event, the biggest legal event in France. It's like Night of Law, something like this, and it was all [the] legal elite, and I was together with Prosecutor Khan and two other presenters at the panel, and all the time I've been asked, ICC or tribunal, whether we need tribunal if we have ICC.
I said, "Look, ICC and tribunal, they are complementary mechanisms. We will deliver everything to Karim and his team, you will never imagine what will be the result of our work."
Now everyone saw. March this year, first arrest warrants of the ICC. It took us only five months to build this case. Five months, never before in [the] history of the ICC. This is [the] second, actually historical angle of this arrest warrant. And [the] third is a 100% partnership from the state, because let's not forget, ICC is [a] complementary mechanism. ICC intervenes when the national authorities are unwilling or unable. We are willing and we are able unless there is a person who [enjoys] personal immunity, like Putin, members of Troika, have personal immunity, therefore, [the] first arrest warrant of the team of the ICC, but prepared by team of Prosecutor Khan, is a matter also of respect to [the] work of our prosecutors. Because it's [the] first arrest warrant, it's complementary in its nature, because we cannot touch Putin.
We can touch people below him but we cannot touch Putin. I intentionally come to the issue of immunity because if someone will use national criminal law, then Putin and other members of [the] Troika will enjoy immunity. I hardly believe that Ukrainians will accept the idea of [a] tribunal where Putin is not prosecuted. To those who propose us this, I say, "Okay, look. Don't tell this to me. Come to Kyiv, come to Bucha, come to Kherson, come to Kharkiv, gather Ukrainian people and say, 'Look, we want to establish [a] special tribunal for the crime of aggression but without Putin.' And then hear what Ukrainians will say." This is when I'm speaking about [the] legal and humanitarian aspects. Fair is [a] combination. We think something is fair because we are lawyers, but people treat something [as] fair because they're people.
Tino Cuéllar:
Yes.
Andriy Kostin:
Something which is fair for you, may not be fair for the other. That's why it's very important to be fair at large, not only legally, but when you're talking about people, and they want to restore their sense of dignity. So only two conditions are important. Putin and [the] Troika should be prosecuted by this tribunal. And we all know ICC cannot try them in absentia while [the] tribunal potentially can do it.
And second, this tribunal should be [at the] international level. It's not about the name, but this is [a] global war. And the response [to] the crime of aggression should be global, because then the other potential aggressors in other parts of the world will start this. I don't want to threaten you, but we are living and we are breathing the air of war. You [can't] imagine what will happen if Ukraine loses this war. You will see these wars and conflicts in the other places of the world. These potential aggressors are looking very carefully at our collective response. If [the] response [is] weak, you will see more and more. And someone will pay for this.
Tino Cuéllar:
You bring up a powerful point, which is that for us who are lawyers, we have a technical way of understanding what's legitimate, but if we don't find a way to tell a story to the larger public, it's very difficult for something to be truly seen as legitimate. I want to raise one more question for you before we go to questions from the audience, which is about the special difficulty of simultaneously dealing with the war, documenting war crimes, investigating potential war crimes, and at the same time, there are people who say that Ukraine is fighting two wars, there's a war against Russia, and there's a war against corruption. And say a bit about how your team is approaching the corruption challenge and promoting the rule of law generally in the midst of the war.
Andriy Kostin:
It's because [of] the demand [for] justice. Ukrainians' demand of justice is not only, let's say against Russia, it's in general. Because how can you divide your demand of justice? "Okay, I need justice for the atrocities committed by Russia, but I will just leave it unattended when it's happening in Ukraine." Of course it's challenging, but how [do] we deal with this? First of all, let's not limit [the] fight against corruption only to corruption. It's also about perception, actually, because when we start some legal discussion, [about] what is included in the word corruption, it's a set of the articles of our criminal code. Some of them are literally corruption, some of them are others. But [the] perception of people is even wider. People think that corruption is about many other cases where [the] state does not perform properly and someone earns something from this. And even if someone doesn't earn something when [the] state is not performing properly, it's [the] perception of people that it is corruption.
And we cannot limit people [by] saying, "No, you are wrong. It's not corruption, it's the other." It's wasteful discussion. If their demand for justice is to fight against this evil, this internal evil, of course we try to deliver. But we cannot limit it only to [the] fight against corruption. Actually, you mentioned these two wars, I mentioned the same in my inaugural speech in the Parliament when I was appointed that we have two enemies. External, Russia and its collaborators and traitors who help Russia, and second is corruption. And we need to win in both wars, because we are fighting for [a] better country, for successful Ukraine. And how can we have a successful Ukraine after [the] war if it is corrupted?
But [the] fight against corruption alone is not enough. We understood that there are three elements which are destroying every society. Corruption, organized crime, they're so interlinked. These organized criminal groups, they are infiltrating all the governmental authorities, they're infiltrating law enforcement authorities. And if you are just looking at specific cases of corruption, you are not breaking this system, because organized crime is very powerful and strong not only in Ukraine, everywhere. I'm speaking about it with colleagues here in the United States, in Europe. Believe me, I know quite a lot of what's going on in Europe and [the] United States. And this is a big problem and we need to fight both.
And third is, I would say a Ukrainian specialty, which our president started to fight even before the war, creating [the] first anti-oligarch legislation. [The] fight against oligarchs because oligarchs, their structure is [the] same [as] organized crime’s. And they also have political influence, have media influence, have a lot of businesses, are monopolists in many businesses, infiltrate governmental authorities with people who work not on the high positions, they work on medium level, but they're experts who know where to input specific provision in [a] governmental decree in law, in some instruction which will work for years.
And these monopolists, these oligarchs will receive money, will receive super profits and no one will understand what's going on. You can change people on the top, politicians will be changed, but these people in the middle will stay because they're paid by these oligarchs. So what we do, we fight simultaneously on three fronts internally. Corruption, organized crime, and oligarchs. The biggest case of corruption in Ukrainian history, [the] bribing of the president of the Supreme Court. Who organized this bribery? One of the oligarchs. So this is an explicit example [of] how it works in Ukraine. So that's why our commitment is to clean our country as much as we can from these three elements which could destroy any society.
Tino Cuéllar:
Thank you. I'm going to go to some questions from the audience.
So the question about how Ukrainians may be unaware that they may seek justice for war crimes committed against them or disillusioned about whether that will be effective, and the questioner wants to know what Ukraine can do to raise awareness that people can make such claims and have justice done.
Andriy Kostin:
First of all, I think that in Ukraine, most of the Ukrainians, they definitely know where to apply, because for war crimes we have two investigative authorities. This is [the] state security service and national police, but if they apply to any office of any state authority, any prosecutor office, their case will be registered and we will work with this case. What we want to improve, I have created... Actually, I will take several minutes, it's important. In September, one month after I was appointed, I immediately organized a special unit in our war crimes department to prosecute conflict-related sexual violence crimes.
They are, I would say, most severe. And where the survivors... They're highly under-reported. What was the reason? I saw that we have huge support. And I understood that we need to change [the] approach though it was made before me, but I wanted to do it as a sustainable element. So we were in contact with Pramila Patten at that moment. She's a special representative of UN Secretary-General for Sexual Violence. And she helped us with training for our prosecutors, and we also changed our strategic documents to apply principles of so-called Murad Code. I hope that you know what this document is, so to ensure that we will use [a] survivor-centered approach with full respect, I will not go into details, to the survivor. And when I saw how it worked, by several months, we saw more and more cases, because we didn't only change this approach, we changed some techniques of communication. And for instance, we didn't just wait for reports. When we got information that [there] could be [a] case, our prosecutors and our investigators approached, communicated, and then they saw that the cases were real.
We also tried to ensure...comprehensive support for the survivors of these crimes. Medical, psychological, financial, immediate relocation from their community because of stigma and something. So this worked, and I understood that we need to ensure such [an] approach, survivor-centered, to all victims and survivors. I created a coordination center for victims and survivors. Now it's operational, they're going through substantial trainings. They're not prosecutors, they're state servants whose task is to communicate and to help victims and survivors.
And this is only [the] first stage. Thinking about peace every day, like our president, every day, I want to change this approach throughout [our] whole system of law enforcement, because in Ukraine we inherited [the] Soviet model where your KPI is more dependent on how many criminals you captured and sent to jail, while the interests of victims sometimes are somewhere aside. I want to change this approach. It's changing our philosophy that survivors and victims will understand that they are in the center of our attention. It will take time, it will take proper communication training, but it is possible.
Tino Cuéllar:
I think one important point to highlight to the audience is it's one thing to go out and gather information about atrocities to prepare cases, it's another thing to try to do that in a way that is profoundly respectful of the people who've been affected so that they never end up feeling like objects, and they're actually the ones who are partly being responded to. My staff are telling me we have time for only one more question, but I'm going to ask you two just in a package.
Andriy Kostin:
I will try to be short. Okay.
Tino Cuéllar:
And they're both about challenging issues, although one set of issues is more for your staff and one for you more.
So of course war crimes is a very broad category. There are a lot of specific judgements about how to charge particular offenses. So one question is, say a little bit about how your team thinks about mapping out fact patterns to specific charges. The other question is about reparations. We're already dealing with $400 billion. We may get to a trillion dollars. These are large amounts of money. And if you go back and look at World War I, World War II, these questions of reparations loomed very large. So as you think about assets that are frozen that are sovereign from the Russian Central Bank and other issues like this, how are you approaching the reparations issue and how are your discussions going on this issue?
Andriy Kostin:
Civil liability is I think an important part of our comprehensive accountability approach, or our web of accountability, because [all] harm, [all] damage caused by this war of aggression should be compensated by the assets of the perpetrator. This is the principle which we want to implement. How to ensure it, yes, we have sovereign funds of Russian Federation which are frozen. We have private funds which are frozen, and we have actually [the] first successful cases of confiscation. Small case, $5.4 million. Confiscation was announced on 3rd of February. I was, at that time, together with Merrick Garland, so he announced it in my presence. This was the first case of this war internationally.
Of course, this also should somehow inspire the other countries to follow this way. Canada has the same legislation or [similar] legislation, but they have quite [a] long procedure in court. We have more cases in United States. I cannot report, of course. You will see the results. But it's about private funds and these amounts are not very substantial in order to compensate... Actually, you mentioned $411 billion. It's World Bank. Yes, estimation. It's only about material damage of the state, of the government, of businesses. But from my point of view, the most important is for people who suffered, for people to receive their compensation, for their beloved relatives who were killed, for those who were wounded or humiliated or raped. And they need to be first to receive this compensation.
We know how to establish the channel. Already, [the] first step is done. So register of damage, which is established in The Hague under the auspices of Council of Europe on the basis of enlarged partial agreement. 45 countries already support this idea. But this is only [a] register of damage, which will fix—once again, document—yes, fix the damage. We need [a] compensation commission on the top which will decide transparently and independently who will receive which amount of money, and [a] compensation fund. Because if you want to compensate, you need to compensate with funds, you need assets. And with this, we are approaching the issue of potential compensation [with the] sovereign assets of Russian Federation. Once again, this issue of immunity... So [the] two most difficult cases from [the] legal point of view, tribunal for the crime of aggression and confiscation of Russian assets. Both are related to the issues of immunity. In [a] tribunal, it's personal immunity of the Troika. In confiscation, it's immunity of sovereign funds.
How to explain... It appeared that two words which we use, immunity and impunity, only one letter is different. And if there will be impunity for damage, for compensation of damage, because of respecting [the] immunity of Russia as a sovereign state, I'm not sure this is fair. Of course, you will just return me to [the] legal aspect, but this is not legal. This is more political. Legally it's easy to do. It's about Parliament adopting the law. Of course, there will be legal consequences. More even economic or financial, because Russia can use this and make the same action as a matter of reciprocity. But [a] and a half year of full-scale invasion [has] already passed. And I still haven't heard very comprehensive arguments, counter arguments that it is dangerous for the countries of free world to start to touch [the] sovereign assets of Russia.
If it is an issue of mathematics, for instance, if one country can confiscate $100 of Russian sovereign funds and the other country can, as a matter of counteraction, confiscate $5 from this 100, maybe it's not bad. These [5] could be used as compensation by the first country and 95 can be transferred to the compensation fund for victims and survivors and to compensate the damage. I intentionally simplify this very complicated story, but it's very important for all of us lawyers to understand that once again, justice is not only something which is the result of the work of some judicial instrument. Justice is something which people feel is just and fair. And first question I...
Tino Cuéllar:
Was about how you map fact patterns on the charges.
Andriy Kostin:
We do it. This is very important. We use our cooperation with IT giants who are helping us in our accountability endeavors. We use systems like Palantir, we are working with Microsoft, we are working with some IT companies, because it's mapping. Of course we do it, but do it by hand. Yes, it's quite difficult and we can lose. I've been told by my team that the amount of evidence which [is] collected in different databases already is more than 500 terabytes at the moment. So this is the most documented war in history. And there, you have two challenges. First of all, you can't use every feed, photo, video, imagery as a matter of evidence. Sometimes it's not enough. Yes, but when you have [a] photo, which is not evidenced by itself, and when you have [an] additional photo and video from another site, yes, with metadata and something like this, yes, then you can add one to another and you have more evidence.
Once again, simplifying the story, but of course we are doing it. And you mentioned [a] very important story, establishing the chain of command. This is very important, because what Russians did... Once again, when we all saw atrocities committed in Bucha, Irpin, after Kyiv was liberated, they were all committed in [the] course of February and March. And Russians also saw them. Nevertheless, they were trying to brainwash their populations and some others that this is something like a movie, something like this.
Nevertheless, they all also saw. And their soldiers saw. When we liberated Kharkiv in September, and you saw the mass graves in Izyum, you saw torture chambers, you saw the people who were killed with hand strapped [behind] their backs. So the same types of crimes, the same rapes, the same killing, and when we started to exhume the bodies, and we started to do forensics, researchers understood that the same crimes were committed not only in March, like in Bucha, but also April, May, June, July, August. When we liberated Kherson in November, the same type of crimes were... After we all saw what happened in Izyum, in Kharkiv, the same type crimes were committed in Kherson, October, November.
On 19th of April, this year we had committee hearings here in U.S. Congress for international crimes. And we invited two survivors. They were witnesses before the Congress in person, and one of them was [a] lady who [experienced] sexual violence. And this crime was committed in January this year on [a] still occupied part of Kherson region. Her friends helped her to [flee], and then she came to the U.S. and she witnessed before U.S. Congress. So it means that these crimes are not committed by some soldiers who gone crazy, are not committed by some unit which was in Bucha, then somewhere and then somewhere, so [a] group of servicemen gone crazy. No. This is [an] intentional policy. And this policy is orchestrated from the very top and it's our obligation to find evidence of all those who ordered [the commission of] these crimes.
Tino Cuéllar:
I'm going to ask the audience to thank you in just a moment, but I want to thank you for your candor and also for making a powerful case that what is happening in your country affects everybody in the world. Thank you very much for your time here.
Andriy Kostin:
Thank you.
