The decision to withdraw from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine is the latest evidence of the Donald Trump administration's departure from Joseph Biden's commitment to hold Putin personally accountable.
Points of attention
- The US decision to withdraw from investigating Putin's war crimes against Ukraine signals a shift in the Biden administration's policy towards holding Putin accountable.
- The WarCAT group continues to support Ukrainian prosecutors in investigating war crimes committed by Russians, despite the US withdrawal from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
- The Trump and Biden administrations have made adjustments to their cooperation with international organizations in responding to war crimes in Ukraine.
The US is not going to hold Putin accountable for war crimes
The group was created to hold the Russian leadership, as well as its allies in Belarus, North Korea, and Iran, accountable for a category of crimes defined under international law and treaties as aggression that violates the sovereignty of another country.
The Biden administration joined the center in 2023,
The decision is expected to be announced on March 17 in an email to staff and members of the group's parent organization, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, better known as Eurojust, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The United States was the only country outside Europe to cooperate with the group, sending a senior Justice Department prosecutor to The Hague to work with investigators from Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Romania.
The Trump administration is also scaling back the work of the War Crimes Accountability Group, which was created in 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and staffed with experienced prosecutors to coordinate the Justice Department’s efforts to hold Russians responsible for atrocities committed after the full-scale invasion three years ago.
"There is nowhere for war criminals to hide," Garland said, announcing the creation of the unit.
He added that the ministry "will use all opportunities to bring to justice those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine."
During the Biden administration, the group, known as WarCAT, focused on an important support role: providing Ukraine’s overburdened prosecutors and law enforcement agencies with logistical support, training, and direct assistance in transferring Russian war crimes charges to Ukrainian courts.
The team did break one significant case. In December 2023, U.S. prosecutors used the war crimes law for the first time since its enactment nearly three decades ago to charge four Russian soldiers in absentia with torturing an American living in the Kherson region of Ukraine.
