KYIV (Reuters) – The head of a Ukrainian human rights group that won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday called for an international tribunal to be created to try Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.
Shortly after Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties shared the prize with jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski and Russian rights group Memorial, Oleksandra Matviychuk also called for Russia to be excluded from the U.N. Security Council.
“The U.N. and participant states should address the ‘accountability gap’ and ensure a chance of justice for hundreds of thousands of war crimes victims,” she said in a Facebook post written while on a train journey from Poland to Kyiv.
“Sustainable peace in our region is impossible without this. We need to create an international tribunal and bring Putin, (Belarusian President Alexander) Lukashenko and other war criminals to justice.”
She added: “Russia should be excluded from the U.N. Security Council for systematic violations of the U.N. charter.”
Moscow and Minsk have dismissed allegations of human rights abuses, and Russia has denied allegations that some Russian soldiers have committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Nataliia Yashchuk, the group’s coordinator of national projects, told Reuters television in Kyiv that the award showed the importance of its work “for building peace, democracy and freedom” in Ukraine.
Anna Popova, the group’s civil liberties project manager, said it meant “the whole democratic world has acknowledged the terror of the Russian Federation against Ukrainian people and territories.”
(Reporting by Kyiv newsroom and Reuters television, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
