Putin's World 'Shrinking Around Him', Says Top U.S. Justice Envoy, Pledges Accountability

Washington D.C./28.06.23/Turan:    The U.S. Global Criminal Justice Ambassador-at-large, Beth Van Schaack, on Tuesday said that Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's recent remarks challenging the basis of Putin's invasion of Ukraine contradicted the official Russian justification for the war.

"it’s quite notable that Prigozhin said very openly that this war was based upon false pretenses and that Ukraine and of course NATO had no intention of attacking Russia, and that this is very much a war of Russia’s own making," she said when asked by TURAN's Washington correspondent whether Prigozhin's remarks would be impactful in any prosecution of Putin over the crime of aggression.

Ambassador Van Schaack was speaking to reporters during a virtual briefing organized by the State Department's Brussels Media Hub to discuss efforts to hold Russia accountable for its crimes in the war of aggression against Ukraine.

Asked by TURAN about the recent ICC warrant for Russian leadership, she said, although Putin would be hard to prosecute so long as he remained head of state and within Russia, his "world is shrinking fast” and many other world leaders who did not think they would appear in court eventually did.

"Slobodan Milošević, Augusto Pinochet, Hissène Habré of Chad – all of these men, I think, probably never thought they would see the inside of a courtroom and then ultimately did," she added.

The Ambassador also added she did not think Putin would dare travel to South Africa for the upcoming Brics summit if he feared there was a 10% chance that an independent-minded South African judge ordered his arrest.

“He is reckless with the Russian state’s resources, but not with his own skin,” she said.

ICC has issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest over his role in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. South Africa was obliged to enforce the warrant, Van Schaack said.

Alex Raufoglu