Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a speech at the International War Crimes Tribunal (ICC) in The Hague, has called for the creation of a special court to try Russian war crimes in Ukraine and for the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin for his “criminal actions.”
“We all want to see a different Vladimir here in The Hague, the one who deserves to be sanctioned for his criminal actions here, in the capital of international law. I am sure this will happen when we win,” Zelenskiy said on May 4 during a rare trip outside of Ukraine as it fights to repel invading Russian forces.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin on March 17, accusing the Russian leader of being responsible for the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine, which constitutes a war crime, since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Zelenskiy said the special court should be modelled on the Nuremberg tribunal implemented by the Allies at the end of World War II to try Nazi war crimes.
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Zelenskiy’s surprise visit to the Netherlands came amid an escalation of Russia’s deadly strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets.
He said that last month alone, Russia committed 6,000 war crimes in Ukraine, killing at least 207 civilians including 11 children. The Dutch Foreign Minister said earlier in the day that over 85,000 Russian war crimes have been registered since the start of the war, according to Reuters.
Zelenskiy later met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
He told a news conference after the meeting that Ukraine wants assurances that it will be admitted into NATO once the war is over.
“We are realistic, we know we will not be in NATO during the war,” Zelenskiy said. “But we want a very clear message that we will be in NATO after the war.”
Russia overnight launched another drone attack overnight across Ukraine. Most of the incoming drones were shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses, the military said on May 4, a day after more than 20 civilians were killed by Iranian-made Shaheds.
Ukrainian defenders downed 18 out of 24 drones across Ukraine, the Air Force Command said, adding that the attack was again launched from two directions — from the western Russian region of Bryansk to the north and from the Sea of Azov to the southeast.
The capital, Kyiv, was targeted by drones for the third time in four days, the city administration said, but all were destroyed.
However, debris from the falling drones damaged vehicles and roads in parts of the capital, but no casualties were reported, the city’s administration said.
An air-raid alert that lasted for several hours was declared in Kyiv and other regions, and reports on social media said explosions could be also heard in the Odesa and Zaporizhzhya regions.
The overnight attack came hot on the heels of deadly drone strikes the previous day that killed at least 25 people — 23 of them in the southern city of Kherson.
Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin announced a 58-hour curfew to begin in Kherson city at 8 p.m. on May 5. The regional capital in recent weeks has been regularly shelled from Russian forces positioned across the Dnieper River.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, accused the United States on May 4 of being the mastermind of an alleged drone attack on the Kremlin intended to kill Putin.
The Kremlin on May 3 claimed Ukraine attempted to hit Putin’s residence with two drones that it said were destroyed “as a result of timely action by the military and special services.”
“Decisions on such attacks are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 4, without providing any evidence to support the claim of U.S. involvement in the alleged attack.
Ukraine denied any involvement in the alleged attack, suggesting Moscow staged it ahead of an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian forces continued to launch wave of unsuccessful assaults on the city of Bakhmut, in the eastern region of Donetsk, the Ukrainian military said in its daily update on May 4.
Russia’s main efforts remain focused on attacks on the Bakhmut-Maryinka-Avdiyivka front line, where the fiercest combat and incessant Russian shelling is under way, Ukraine’s General Staff said, adding that its forces repelled 40 attacks over the past 24 hours.
Separately, Russian state news agency TASS reported that a drone attack set ablaze product-storage facilities at one of the largest oil refineries in southern Russia, but emergency services extinguished the fire just over two hours later, and the plant was working normally.
On May 3, there also were reports of fires at various locations in Russia, including at a fuel depot in the Russian village of Volna near the bridge to Crimea.
