The EU Project Pravo-Justice Took Part in the Preparation and Holding of the International Conference United for Justice: Bucha – The Hague, which took place in Bucha

On March 31, anniversary of the liberation of Bucha from the Russian occupiers, a one-day session of the United for Justice (U4J) international conference was held in that city under the slogan “From Bucha to The Hague.” It discussed currently available and possible new ways of bringing to justice the Russian military and politicians involved in massive war and international crimes committed since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

The meeting in Bucha was a continuation of the wide-format international U4J conference, the first sessions of which had been held in early March in Lviv and informally called the “legal Rammstein”.

The EU Project Pravo-Justice participated in the preparation and holding of the international meeting in Buch the same as before, it contributed to the organization of the U4J conference in Lviv.

“Kyiv region was the first one liberated from the Russian occupier by the Defense Forces of Ukraine. One year ago, in Bucha, we saw for the first time the true cruel face of a regime that for decades claimed to be civilized. Although it acted exactly the opposite, disregarding all norms of international law ... The prosecution of Russian criminals is the answer to the question, in what world our children will live? It comes not only to Ukrainians in Ukraine, but to all our children who want to live in a civilized world. We have no right to allow impunity for the crimes of the Russian regime,” said Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin, when opening the event.

According to Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin, the punishment of all those who have had a hand in the atrocities of Russians in Ukraine, including specific individuals in the highest military and political leadership of the Russian Federation, is the only guarantee that such tragedies, as the one of Bucha, will never repeat anywhere in the world.

According to the Office of the Prosecutor General, during the 33 days of occupation of the Bucha district, the Russian military committed over 9,000 war crimes; more than 1,400 local residents were brutally murdered, including 37 children.

The participants to the conference in Bucha could learn about the horrors of the occupation not only from the reports of law enforcement bodies – three eyewitnesses of the crimes agreed to talk about last year events. One of the eyewitnesses miraculously survived when the car she was riding in was fired upon by the Russians. The second one lost her husband, whom the Russians killed in front of her eyes. And the abbot of the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called, Father Andrii, told about how the churchyard had to be turned into a mass burial for the murdered residents of Bucha.

“Bucha is only one of dozens of names of Ukrainian tragedies. One of the first tragedies the world learned about. Every Ukrainian carries inside his or her own Bucha for the 13 months of the invasion," said the wife of the President Olena Zelenska.

She emphasized that fair punishment of Russian war criminals is important not only for Ukrainians; it is necessary so that no dictator would ever think of repeating the genocide. Olena Zelenska is convinced that the word “Bucha” should be associated not only with a tragedy, but also with the inevitability of punishment for those who committed it. As of today, the Office of the Prosecutor General sent indictments to the court against 35 Russian soldiers and notified of suspicion war crimes almost one hundred Russian soldiers.

A few days before the conference in Bucha, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan in his speech at the Bucha forum, stated that the punishment of the Russian dictator and the perpetrators of war and international crimes is the duty of international justice and “this is neither matter of politics nor matter of controversy nor political interests.”

The International Court of Justice in The Hague incriminates Putin the forcible removal of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, which has signs of the crime of genocide.

“These children should get home, because the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Geneva Convention, states that the rights of children shall come first. We must think of these children not just as Ukrainian children, but as of our own children. Children all over the world may also find themselves in such a situation. And we should treat them as if they were our own. Can we sit calmly and watch them being taken away, being endangered? Will we finally get serious about this and make sure that children’s rights are really respected? We will continue and do everything that depends on us. And we will continue working to find out the truth. We will concentrate on the evidence; we will continue investigating and collecting evidence,” said Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the ICC.

Karim Khan assured that the International Criminal Court will intensify cooperation with the Office of the Prosecutor General, government and non-government organizations in Ukraine with the purpose of investigating war and other international crimes and bringing cases before court.

Right before the United for Justice Conference in Bucha, the agreement was signed to open an office of the International Criminal Court in Ukraine. Being a prosecutor, Karim Khan said, forty experts from the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Czech Republic will start working there in the near future.