Ukraine’s ambassador to the Netherlands Andriy Kostin has said that the process of setting up an international Special Tribunal on the crime of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has noticeably revived – despite the fact that the amount of funding needed is still unknown.
“Now we feel that the process is moving faster than it seemed at the beginning of the year,” Kostin told Radio Liberty on 22 April in comments following a discussion at the European Parliament in Brussels.
He said the decisive signal was that the so-called “major donors” – the main contributors to the International Criminal Court and the future tribunal – have announced their readiness to join an expanded partial agreement on its creation. As of 23 April, 21 states had already done so, passing the required minimum of 16 countries.
However, as explained in the Radio Liberty piece, the full budget of the tribunal has not yet been determined, which is holding back more countries from joining.
The Council of Europe press office told Radio Liberty in a commentary that the Netherlands had only provided initial estimates for the first phase of the work, and at this stage “no cost estimates or further details on the future budget can be made public.”
Dutch government special envoy Arjen Eijterlinde explained why the financial issue is so complex: “because it is about creating a very complex, highly political and highly secure tribunal, there are many practical and security aspects that have financial implications.” He emphasised, however, that the Netherlands had set a condition from the beginning: the work of the tribunal would only be possible if the costs were shared among the other states parties.
The next key moment will be the meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in Chisinau on 14-15 May. Ukraine expects that by that time the number of participating countries will grow to at least 25.
On 23 April, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga said that Finland had become the 21st country to join the agreement to launch the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
The minister noted that the vote in favour of the agreement would take place at a meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in Chisinau and added that all states, not only European ones, were invited – “the part of the world does not matter when it comes to the universal value of respect for international law and the need to ensure justice”.
In January, Council of Europe Secretary General Alan Burse said the Council of Europe and the European Union had agreed to set up an advance team for a potential special tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset signed an agreement on a special tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression against Ukraine on 25 June 2025. Subsequently, Zelensky said that he had instructed a team from the OP and the Foreign Ministry to form “a clear schedule of practical steps for the establishment of the tribunal”.
On 1 July 2025, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the documents to ratify the agreement on the creation of a special tribunal for the crime of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.