The building of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Archive photoMOSCOW, May 19.Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law defining the procedure for cooperation between Ukraine and the International Criminal Court in investigating war crimes. Earlier, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said that the court had sent 42 officers to Ukraine to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity. amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine and other legislative acts of Ukraine regarding cooperation with the International Criminal Court,» the Verkhovna Rada said in a message on the Telegram channel. The parliament noted that the law establishes the procedure and mechanism for Ukraine's cooperation with the International Criminal Court, creates tools for collecting evidence and investigating war crimes that are under the jurisdiction of this court, bringing to justice the perpetrators of such crimes. «Earlier, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia categorically rejects accusations of Kyiv of war crimes on the territory of Ukraine and reminds that it is not a member of the International Criminal Court.The ICC sent the largest mission in its history to Ukraine. Russia signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not ratify it, and withdrew its signature in 2016 after the reunification of Crimea with Russia was recognized as an «occupation». Ukraine also signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not ratify it either. At the same time, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reported in March that Prosecutor Khan's latest actions demonstrate a desire to contribute to the anti-Russian hysteria now blazing in the US and EU, and that «neither the bloody anti-constitutional coup in Kyiv, nor the burning of people alive in Odessa, nor the many years of crimes against the inhabitants of Donbass have so far become a reason to intensify the investigation.» jpg» />The head of the European Commission discussed with Zelensky a plan for the restoration of UkraineEarlier, the DPR reported that Donbass public figures sent to the ICC case files on thousands of war crimes of Ukrainian security forces in the region. An investigation was never launched on any of the appeals. According to the LPR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the eight years of the conflict in the Donbass, the LPR and the DPR filed more than 3,000 lawsuits about Kyiv’s war crimes with the ECHR and the International Criminal Court. However, the court did not start investigating these cases. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported that representatives of Russian legal entities prepared and sent to the ECHR more than 7,350 complaints from residents of Donbass who suffered from the actions of the Ukrainian authorities. The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine also reported that there were more than 7 thousand such statements.
