Stephen Karganovic
The Ukraine Tribunal makes no secret of the fundamental task assigned to it, and in fact it flaunts it.
Kaja Kallas' delusional and laughably ill-timed announcement, made the day after Russia's 9 May Victory Day triumph in Moscow, that European puppet leaders are planning to establish a "special tribunal" within the framework of the Council of Europe to judge Russia for "aggression" and other alleged crimes in Ukraine jogs some memories from the Hague. ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, is located there, as the new Tribunal Kallas has mentioned will also be. This writer had spent some of the most interesting years of his life there.
An enduring memory is former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who was abducted by the vassal regime installed in his country after the October 2000 colour revolution and sent to the Hague to be put on trial. During his initial appearance in the courtroom, addressing the judges and Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, Milosevic referred to the court as a "false tribunal."
That phrase stuck in my mind. Milosevic's English was adequate, but it was not flawless. Hence the picturesque turn of phrase he used. Had he been more fluent in idiomatic English he would have called it a "phony" or "bogus" tribunal. Instead he translated what he meant to say directly from his native Serbian with a result that was more amusing than academically precise. But no harm was done. In fact, under the circumstances the glaringly unidiomatic locution made his profound point even stronger.
Regrettably, Kaja Kallas has not disclosed technical details about the projected Tribunal which should be made available before the credibility of this venture can be properly assessed. There are several parameters that must be established before any such "court" can be taken seriously.
The first of these is a clear definition of the new judicial body's mandate. It is not enough merely to say that it shall deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from the conflict in the Ukraine since February 2022. Whose crimes will be the subject of the court's investigation and ultimately judgment? Kallas' rationale behind the creation of this court raises serious issues in that regard. She refers exclusively to "Russian crimes," a reference also echoed by EU Commission President Ursula van den Leyen and EU Rule of Law Commissioner Michael McGrath. Has no one else been observed committing crimes in Ukraine during the period under consideration, or perhaps going back a bit further, to 2014? If there are any lingering doubts concerning this matter, which directly impacts the Tribunal's objectivity, they were settled by the clarification on the European Commission posted on its website:
"The Tribunal will have the power to investigate, prosecute and try Russian political and military leaders, who bear the greatest responsibility for the crime of aggression against Ukraine."
The side that Kallas speaks for has called the military operations in the context of which the crimes the Tribunal is preparing to deal with are alleged to have occurred a "full scale" war. Does it appear credible, in a conflict of such broad scope, to a priori confine the commission and adjudication of crimes to only one side, and that even before the court had begun its work and any proper investigation could have taken place? Can such an approach win the trust and respect of the international community for the judicial body which engages in it? By "international community" we mean the world at large, not the relatively tiny portion of it grouped around the leading powers of the collective West. The reaction to the projected court's proceedings of the international community in that inclusive sense of the term should be of some significance to Ukraine Tribunal's sponsors and creators. There is a saying that "justice must not only be done, but seen to be done." The customary judicial theatre, consisting of red robes worn by stern faced judges, no longer impresses anyone. The configuration of the world has changed and the 9 May event in Moscow was a vivid reflection of that transformation. A careless attitude to the appearance of justice would gravely undermine the new Tribunal's capacity to accomplish its propaganda purpose and would make it stillborn. Have Kaja Kallas and her colleagues thought about that? Common sense dictates that their Tribunal should either pretend that it is judging even-handedly, or refrain from getting involved altogether.
It is unlikely that this Tribunal will follow either of the two courses of action outlined above. It cannot, because unlike the other False Tribunals in the Hague it is being set up in a manner that deliberately disregards even the simulacrum of judicial independence that could possibly fool anyone. It is the product of a treaty concluded between the European Commission and Ukraine, one of the parties in the conflict, which furthermore, at least in the initial stages of the operation, will be supplying the Tribunal with the "evidence" it will require to conduct its business. That arrangement suspiciously resembles what prevailed in the summer of 1943, when under German auspices Katyn victims were exhumed. It was Nazi German authorities that were providing field evidence of the crime to the "international commission" that was specifically set up by Goebbels to establish responsibility for the execution of captured Polish officers. The Goebbels Commission's conclusions followed the predictable pattern.
Interestingly, the European Commission's timeline for the formation of the Ukraine Tribunal states that the project was launched in March 2022, only a few weeks after the presumed "aggression" commenced, with a mandate to investigate "core international crimes committed in Ukraine." It would be natural to ask how sufficient crimes of the required gravity and scope could have been committed in such short order to justify the initiation of such a complex undertaking? The answer is suggested further on in the same EC document: "Following the discoveries of atrocities committed in Bucha and other liberated areas of Ukraine, the Commission pledged to support the investigation and prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine." Doesn't that give the game away?
It also follows precisely the pattern originally introduced in Bosnia in the early 1990s to manufacture the rationale for establishing ICTY, the Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The Ukraine Tribunal's antecedents, as clearly admitted in the quoted text, go back to the false flag operation organised immediately following the withdrawal of Russian forces from Bucha in March 2022. As those with an unimpaired memory will recall, the propaganda mechanism used for the establishment of ICTY was also a false flag operation. It was staged in the Vasa Miskin Street in Sarajevo in May 1992, where as in Bucha innocent people were also callously sacrificed for a "higher" political purpose.
There is another highly indicative similarity which links the two fraudulent "Tribunals." The Ukraine Tribunal makes no secret of the fundamental task assigned to it, and in fact it flaunts it. It is to indict the Russian side before any evidence had even been considered. That obligation necessarily preordains the Tribunal's future verdicts. During the war in Bosnia, the same geopolitical actors were acting identically. Dubious " intelligence assessments" turned up in the hands of Madeleine Albright, who promptly disseminated them at the UN in order to set the stage for ICTY. These bogus findings claimed, without a shred of evidence or any methodological justification, that 90 percent of war crimes in Bosnia were committed by the Serbs, leaving but a tiny fraction that could have been committed by others. As in the present case, then also the designated culprits were marked in advance.
It is evident already, even before the Ukraine Tribunal's formal inauguration, which is expected to take place in 2026, that it is a faint copy of its infamous predecessor and that nothing of consequence is likely to result from it. Had it been launched earlier, whilst Ukraine mania was still at its height, perhaps it could have had an impact. Since then however, Ukraine fatigue has set in and even some of the project's major supporters are abandoning it, making the timing for this hare brained venture terrible. It will be a poor and ineffective imitation of a very flawed and largely useless original.
But there is no purpose in telling this to coke-snorting European leaders who have lost whatever creativeness they ever had, sound judgement being an attribute that they never could boast.