 Welcome, my name is Lee Scrunde and I'm the President of the United States Institute of Peace, which was established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 as a nonpartisan public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We're honored to welcome the newly appointed Prosecutor-General of Ukraine, Andrei Kostin. In his first official trip to Washington, and to also welcome Ambassador Clint Williamson, who served with distinction as the U.S. Ambassador at large for war crimes, and who continues to be one of the world's leading experts on atrocity crimes, and Dr. Azim Ibrahim, a leading voice on genocide and extremism. USIP is proud to have supported U.S. efforts to prevent mass atrocities over many years, including the convening in 2009 of the bipartisan genocide prevention task force. It was co-chaired at the time by Secretary Albright and by Secretary Cohen. And that very important task force helped lay the foundation for what has become our country's current framework to stop atrocities and to hold perpetrators accountable. We're proud now to join with institutions across the U.S. and across the world who are determined to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine, and for the war crimes it has committed during the conflict, including killing and kidnapping of civilians and mass destruction of civilian infrastructure. As we'll be discussing today, there is a very strong argument that Russian conduct amounts to genocide. We encourage those of you with us in person and joining us online to use the chat box on our events webpage and the hashtag Ukraine-USIP on social media. I'm now very pleased to turn the floor over to my good friend, the Vice President of USIP and the head of our Russia and Europe Center Ambassador Bill Taylor, who will be leading today's discussion. Please. Thank you very much. I'm very, very pleased to be here with this group. It's great to be back. I've been traveling for some time, so I'm pleased to be back home. I was with Ambassador Williamson in cave a couple of weeks ago, a week ago, where we visited Prosecutor General, the places that you are working. We visited Butchah and Irpin and Hostamel. So the world has seen your job. The world has seen what you are doing. And now the question is, what do we do about that? What are the implications? What are the consequences? How do we hold people accountable for these atrocities? As Lisa just indicated, there's a strong case that can be made that we'll hear about here today that this is genocide. And we don't use that word term lightly. It has great implications that we will also talk about here today. But we face the facts. We face what's going on there. And as I say, I was there to see that. Atrocities that build up toward genocide lead us to think about intent. And intent's hard to prove. There are a couple of lawyers, I suspect, in this room. And there are probably a couple of lawyers online with us. I know there are a couple of lawyers on this panel. And they will describe intent and proving intent, difficult, important that we address this. These three people that we are lucky to have with us, Lisa's already generally introduced. Let me just go into a little more detail on Andrey Kostin, who has been the prosecutor general in Ukraine since the end of July. Graduate of Odessa, national university, faculty of law, international bar association, elected to the RADA, head of the legal policy committee in 2020, distinguished lawyer, understands this job very well. Long support from President Zelensky. Ambassador Clinton Williamson, again, Lisa's introduced. Clinton is the senior director for international justice, Georgetown center for national security, which I understand is a revision of the new title. As of yesterday. As of yesterday, senior director for international justice, Georgetown center for national security. Glad to have you here. Also the U.S. leads the U.S. participation in the atrocity crimes advisory group established following the Russian invasion of Ukraine to support war crimes units of the office of the prosecutor general of Ukraine. Clinton and I saw each other in Kyiv a week ago. He was also senior fellow at the McCain Institute, ambassador at large, as Lisa has already indicated for war crimes issues. And finally, we have Dr. Azim Ibrahim, who is the director of special initiatives. Azim, very glad to have you here, special initiatives at the New Lines Institute. Adjunct research professor, strategic studies institute, U.S. Army War College, PhD, University of Cambridge, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a world fellow at Yale. So three people with incredible experience and background to be able to help us walk through this thing. So, Adry, like I said to you, again, welcome to Washington, first trip as prosecutor general. You have a message for the United States, for the world, on your job. You've been on it for coming up on two months. What's the challenge? What do you see right now? What's the progress? What's the challenge? Where are you going from here? Should be on. Yeah. Thank you, Ambassador, and thank you for inviting me and meeting here. And thanks for all of our participants who are online. It's very important to talk in person. This is the main aim of my visit. Of course, you understand that we have a lot of to do in Ukraine, and our teams in Kharkiv region are working from early morning to late night, prosecutors, investigators of state security services, investigators of national police, experts. They work on the ground in different towns and villages of liberated Kharkiv region. I have already mentioned the territory which was liberated by our army from the beginning of September. This is about 8,000 square kilometers. It's like the territory of the state of Connecticut. So just for you to imagine. And in each of these hundreds of villages and towns, we know and we see and we already fix our cases of war crimes committed by the aggressor. But we immediately understood when I get the reports from our teams on the ground, when they immediately come to the liberated territory, we saw the same conduct of the aggressor. The same which the world have seen when Bucha, Irpin, Vostomir, Borodyanca were opened. Absolutely the same, starting from bombing of residential multi-storied buildings as we see in Izum, for instance, and as we saw in Borodyanca near Kiev. And then coming to shooting of civilians with striped hands, rapes, tortures. So the bodies which we are exhuming every day from 50 to 60 bodies per day, you may imagine how big work is done. Because we need to identify everyone and we need to identify the reasons of death of all of these people. And coming to what we found at the moment, we understand that the same as I say conduct, it's the pattern of Russian aggressor towards Ukrainians. I don't at the moment see any difficult challenges in this work. I'm always asked, we just fix this at the moment. We are very well prepared with the help of our partners and experts to accurately collect evidences since we need everyone to be, everyone from Russian aggressor to be make accountable, to be punished for what they did. And then now we are close to more legal issues. So for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, we have full facilities to make them punished, I mean perpetrators in Ukrainian legal system, either in person or in absentia. While we hope that we will have more convictions in person since we have a lot of war prisoners or let me say potential war criminals of Russian army captured because of our counter offensive, which is successful because of, we all stand together because of your military and financial support. Since this is our joint victory. So having them captured, we will find, I believe that we will find more war criminals to be convicted in person in Ukraine. But moreover, we may find war criminals of the higher level, which we then can send to the international criminal court, to the, within our cooperation with Prosecutor Kham. Actually today it's in use. Today parliament voted, adopted with final vote, additional, let's say additional facilities for the office of Prosecutor Kham to work on the ground in Ukraine. I hope President Zelensky will sign this law in coming days and then the investigators of the office of Prosecutor Kham will have an opportunity to work on the ground in Ukraine. So which will widen his facilities to work on the ground in Ukraine and which will help us. And then we are coming to our next initiative, which is highly supported by every Ukrainian. We all understand that all of these war crimes could not be committed if aggression would have not occur. And we all understand that the crime of aggression is the mother of all other war crimes. And while the ICC have no jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, we are standing for and calling for international support on international tribunal to prosecute and to punish the aggressor with the crime of aggression. And then we are in parallel coming back to the same conduct, same patterns of Russian aggressor, we are moving closer to understanding that what was and is committed by Russian aggressor in Ukraine is genocide of Ukrainian nation. And coming back to other aspects of the accountability of the aggressor, we also understand that Ukraine should be rebuilt, should be reconstructed in after war time. That is why our team, as I say in many meetings, let's say accountability team, is dealing also with the international compensation mechanism. We know that due to our international thanks to our international relations and support of our partners, you have freeze a lot of assets, sovereign funds and the assets of oligarchs who helped to build this Putin's empire, who became an aggressor and who became the like the beast which want to ruin all international law in the world. He started to do it in 2008, then very actively did it in 2014 and now he try to ruin everything. So we also dealing with compensation mechanism because their money should be confiscated and sent to Ukraine to rebuild our country. We have a lot of other very difficult issues. The kidnapping of our people, especially children. Nobody knows at the moment, I'm very open now with you, the amount of them which were deported from Ukraine to Russia, Belarus or to temporary occupied territories. Nobody knows, we have a lot of figures. Something which we can on my level as prosecutor general office confirm. It's about 5.5 thousand children which we identified at the moment which were kidnapped. But we all understand much more were deported. And it's very difficult to find a mechanism how to take them back. But this is the future of Ukrainian nation, our children and one more element of genocide as we understand in Ukraine. So all in all what I mentioned, I come to our main goal. Our main goal, I believe our joint main goal is to prove to all of us, to the civilized world, to all of the Ukrainian that rule of law prevail over the rule of force. This is our main goal. And we will do everything possible to reach it in any direction of the accountability of the aggressor. So this is my message for you today. Andre, it's a great message. It's a heartfelt message. It's a passionate message. It's the right message. Another point about winning with the support of the West and the weapons that we've provided and the other support that you've mentioned, sanctions, that is the top priority. And you are forcing the issue of the accountability to maintain that at the fore. Great points on the international tribunal for the crime of aggression. It will come back to this, I'm sure. What you've raised, Lisa's raised, I've talked about this, I know Zim's going to talk about this as well. The kidnapping is just horrific, it is just horrific as you've described. Compensation is a big part of going forward. All of this in terms of both the sovereign wealth, the sovereign revenues that the West has frozen, that's there. That's there to be taken. There's some legal aspects of that, which we can probably get to, but that's going to be important. You've mentioned the support from the outside, and indeed, Ambassador Williams and Clint, you've got some thoughts on that, and I would love to get your reactions to both what the prosecutor general said and your sense of how the international community can help in all of these efforts. Clint. Well, thanks, Bill, and Andre, I agree. I think you stated where we are very eloquently, and this is going to be a long process. The scale of crimes is almost unimaginable. I went to, first went out a week after the war started, started working with the office of the prosecutor general on the Polish border, and we have continued this effort since then. It has grown into a multinational effort that started initially as a U.S. project, but was joined by the European Union and United Kingdom. Secretary Blinken, High Representative Burrell, then Foreign Secretary Truss have officially rolled this out on May 25th, and said this would be the official response from the transatlantic community to support efforts to investigate and prosecute war crimes in Ukraine. We've had a great working relationship with the OPG since Andre came in in late July. I think there's a new energy in the office. The tasks that they have faced would be overwhelming in any country, including our own. If you imagine crime scenes that stretch for miles, hundreds of bodies that you're having to deal with, there's no prosecutor's office in this country that would be able to handle this seamlessly. But I think the office of the prosecutor general has done a fantastic job. I think the trajectory of their work is a very positive one. But just going back to when I first met with them a week after the war started, they already had hundreds of cases at that time. Now the case, the war crimes type cases, number somewhere around 33,000. They're looking at another 15,000 cases that deal with collaborators. So this is a huge workload, but they are making progress. As Andre said, there's a good working relationship with the International Criminal Court. I think that dynamic extends to the work we're doing through the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, and there is a clear division of labor. What we see in Ukraine is somewhat unique, where we have an opportunity to use both a very robust domestic capability to investigate prosecute crimes as well as an international capability. This has been somewhat unusual when you look at situations of mass atrocities in recent years, but there are going to be thousands of cases that must be addressed. Very early on we saw indications of war crimes, even from the first week, the indiscriminate use of force by the Russians, the shelling of civilian targets, of apartment buildings, of hospitals. With the revelations in Bucha and Irpin after they were liberated, we started seeing evidence of crimes against humanity. People being murdered, tortured, sexually assaulted, illegally detained. And since then, we were seeing this just in the last week in Izium and other places. And sadly, I think this trend will continue. As more and more territories are liberated, we're going to have to confront these crimes. As to genocide, I think there are very compelling indications that we are seeing a genocide. Oftentimes there's this misperception that a genocide determination is based on threshold numbers of victims. And it's understandable. There's an association that tends to be made between genocide in the Holocaust or events in Rwanda, but it's really based on intent. Obviously, the intent has to manifest itself, and you get back to the question of numbers a bit then, but it is the intent or its acts that are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national group, race, or religion. The rhetoric that has come out of Moscow from the very beginning, from President Putin, from the Russian media, clearly indicates an intent to destroy Ukraine as a nation, to not even recognize Ukraine as a nation, to not recognize the Ukrainian people. And it has extended to acts that are being committed on the ground. And certainly what we're seeing with these forced deportations, these filtration efforts, trying to identify and then persecute people who are not willing to embrace this Russification of Ukraine. So the challenges are huge. We have a robust international partnership that's working with the OPG. We will continue to do this going forward. And I'm quite confident that this undertaking is going to be successful. But we will see over time, and we will face the challenges together. Thanks, Clint. Ukraine will win. When Ukraine wins, then the accountability can really be clear and be enforced. This is going to be important. Clint, you raised this question of genocide. Azim, it's a good lead-in to you. You've done some study of this and have looked at the elements. We talked about the issue of intent. What can you tell us about that and how did you address this issue of intent? Thank you so much, Bill. The word genocide is often used very loosely and is often used interchangeably with mass murder. People use a term without understanding what that actual term is, and I understand why they do that. But the word genocide has actually got a very precise legal definition. And that definition is presented to us in the 1948 Genocide Convention. And as Clint mentioned, at the centre of this definition is intent. The intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. It doesn't have to be the whole group. For example, during the Holocaust, the Nazis were not trying to destroy the Jews in Canada because that was not under their control, whole or in part. And this intent can be attributed to a state through evidence of a general plan, documents, statement, policy statements, etc. Or it can be inferred from systematic pattern of atrocities that are taking place. So there does not have to be an explicit order to destroy a particular group. It can simply be inferred from the pattern that you observe. These five genocidal acts killing, causing serious bodily harm, deliberately inflicting the physical destruction on the conditions of life, birth prevention, and forcibly transferring children. So out of the five, only one of them is killing. Now people think there has to be numbers, or how many people have been killed. There's nothing to do with numbers. It's about intent. Killing is only one of the indicators. So you can kill one person or you can kill a million. It does not change the definition of genocide. Now let me just give you a very quick background of why I'm sitting here. A couple of years ago, we did a very extensive and detailed report on the Uyghur genocide. We put together a coalition of over 50 of the top legal scholars. And this report was produced by the New Lines Institute, and it was subsequently used by the U.S. State Department to come to its genocide determination. Subsequent to that report, I was invited earlier this year by the Ukrainian government to visit Ukraine and try to ascertain if a similar situation is occurring there. So it was invited by the Ministry of Health. I went to Ukraine in late March, early April. I spent some time there. On my return, I put together three teams of experts. They were open source intelligence experts, language experts who could translate Russian radio communications telegram channels, and a group of legal experts. So we put together 35 of the top legal scholars from around the globe, and these included some of your former colleagues, prosecutors from the ICC, ICJ, former ambassadors, et cetera. And the conclusion we came to after applying all the evidence, examining all the evidence, was that the first of all, that the Russian Federation is in breach of the Genocide Convention. Secondly, that the Russian Federation bears state responsibility for inciting genocide. And thirdly, that the pattern of atrocities indicates an intent to destroy Ukrainianness, which is in breach of Article 3 of the Genocide Convention. And it's very important to understand that incitement to genocide is a crime in itself, is a crime, even if genocide does not occur, the incitement to commit genocide is a crime. And we can see this in the rhetoric, it's all there in the public domain. For example, Putin in July 2021 wrote an essay himself saying that Ukraine is an artificial creation. So he does not recognize Ukraine. They deny the language, culture, history of Ukraine ever existed. The chair of the Duma, for example, in February 26th, Vladislav Sorkov said that, there is no Ukraine, there is no Ukrainianness. This is a disorder of the mind, there is no nation. These are just two examples, and we have so many more examples of the rhetoric that we do not recognize Ukraine. So this is the rhetoric laying the foundations of incitement to genocide. And then we've seen this translated into action. Now the prosecutor general mentioned the transfer of children. You know, when we were doing our report, the numbers we came to were 180,000 Ukrainian children were forcibly transferred into Russia, and they were dispersed throughout Russia. They were dispersed so they cannot coalesce as a single identity group. We have heard soldiers being given orders and using terminology saying rape the Nazi whores. Rape them so they do not want to have Ukrainian children anymore. So the actions, the rhetoric and the actions match up. Now our report looks at the genocide convention. Article one of the genocide convention is the duty to prevent. Now this is very important. The purpose of the genocide convention is to prevent and punish genocide. The prevent always comes first. The purpose is to prevent. All state parties are signatory to the genocide convention. The obligation is on them. When the threshold of serious risk of genocide has been reached, when all the indicators have been reached, the obligation is on all states to do whatever is in their power to prevent the genocide. So there's lots of discussion on prosecutions, evidence collecting, tribunals, ICC. All of this is very important. All of this should continue. But the priority and the number one purpose of the genocide convention is to prevent. And unfortunately what we are seeing today is nation states not living up to their treaty obligation of preventing genocide. Now there's a complete misunderstanding that the genocide determination has to be made by some sort, some court. And nation states, you have heard them, I have heard them. They'll say, oh, we have to wait until the ICC or some court makes this judgment. The reason nation states say this is to get out of their duty to actually do something about the genocide that is occurring. They're essentially obfuscating and avoiding their responsibility. Because if you're waiting for a court to make a decision, it completely defeats the purpose of the convention. When do courts make decisions on this? It takes sometimes decades. By that time, the genocide is over. The obligation is on states to use everything within their power, politically, economically, diplomatically, culturally, to put pressure on Russia to stop the genocide. That means that if you are in a trade relationship, you have a legal agreement to buy Russian gas, for example, then those agreements can be suspended. And this is why nation states do not want to live up to their obligation. So the genocide convention, the trigger, it is not triggered by a court decision. I cannot emphasise this enough. It is triggered when there is a serious risk of genocide. And we have often repeated, and every nation state now is aware. Every day we are seeing areas that are being vacated, that are being liberated, and we are seeing evidence of mass graves. There is nobody that is not aware. Our report has been translated into 13 languages, 13 languages presented to parliaments all over the globe. Every nation state is fully aware of the triggers of genocide. And it is our responsibility to ensure that they live up to the obligations and the genocide convention to prevent the genocide. All the prosecution and stuff, very important, all comes after. But at this moment, we have to put pressure on all nation states to prevent. Otherwise, the genocide convention is completely redundant. Azim, very powerful, very powerful. Andre, I'd like to give you and Clint an opportunity to address this issue of genocide, the obligations of nations who signed up to the genocide convention to try to prevent. One can argue that this coalition that the United States has put together, that the Biden administration has put together to oppose the Russian aggression, to support the Ukrainians, to allow them to win, is an effort in that direction to prevent the continuation of the genocide. Love to get both of your thoughts, Andre, starting with you on this question. First of all, thank you for this very substantial and very strong position. Since its echo, something which I, from time to time, transfer from my side, that it's important to be politically strong, not only to wait for decades for judgment of the court, but if we all understand that we are talking and we all agree, for instance that this is genocide, why should we wait? Until people who suffer from the genocide will have no chance, maybe even to stay alive before this judgment will be taken. So this is very important. We have, actually we have no time once again to restore the international law and to prevent being very strong politically to prevent the acts of genocide in the future. I will let me commend the figure of children deported. You mentioned 1,180,000. We know, we heard a lot of figures and as I mentioned, something which we fix, 5.5, I mean, identify these children. It's, you know, several times less than you mentioned. And this shows, actually, I believe that the number of children is much, much more that we identified legally at the moment with evidences. And this is another example of genocide because they kidnap and they make it secret. And what they do, they forcibly give citizenship to these children. They give citizenship to orphans, which from legal point of view, it means that they keep secret of their previous biography. It will be very difficult then to identify these children as kidnapped, forcibly deported from Ukraine. Especially if they just ignore this fact. So from my point of view, the elements of genocide intent, which you mentioned, they are, they don't need any additional approval. I just add one more. They're absolutely absurd, but open and official position about so-called denazification. So when they intentionally said that Ukraine, Ukrainian country, has something like a Nazism ideology or so, this is absolutely absurd. Let me just, I understand that this is open discussion, but I will allow myself to say like this. I've been the member of Ukrainian delegation in negotiations with Russia from the very first day of war because they asked for this negotiation, been very difficult times, and I was the member of this delegation. And when we met first time and they started to tell about denazification, it was so absurd. I said, okay, I was born in Odessa, my mother tongue is Russian. Yeah, what are you talking about? Or David Rahamia, who was his Georgian, he was born in Georgia. So his mother tongue is Georgian. We are all citizens of Ukraine, we are Ukrainians. And when they talk about this denazification, it was so absurd. And the absurdness of this being publicly, explicitly mentioned by Putin and his team, as we say, the absurdness is also the element of this genocide because they tried to explain, explain why they want to kill all of Ukrainians by these absurd ideas. So thank you, and I'm absolutely with you, I'm absolutely on your side with your main message, not to wait until decades will come for the judgment. We need to act now. And we are very close to collect, I think, the number of evidences to prove the intent of genocide, which happened and which is ongoing. Thank you, Andre. Clint. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, if you go back and you look at what is coming out from Moscow, at all levels, whether it is its members of the Duma, it's Putin, it's the military leadership, state-owned media, it is the same message. It is laying the groundwork for genocide. R.I. Novosti, a state-owned media, in April was saying denazification will inevitably include de-Ukrainization. It's one in the same. It's a euphemism that they are trying to instill in the minds of soldiers that there is a justification for doing this, for murdering, for raping, for kidnapping children, for deporting them. And Azim raised the point, I think, which is a very important one, of the crime of incitement to genocide. We have now jurisprudence that's come out of the international tribunals, particularly in Rwanda, where media there, Radio Milkolin, was used to incite people to commit genocide. This has been coming out of Moscow well in advance. I mean, as Andrei said, he's been involved in these negotiations, going back years. This is a message that did not appear overnight. This goes back for many, many years, preparing people who are willing to implement these acts. And it has to be confronted. And I think another point that Azim made is a very critical one, that oftentimes people tend to think that the obligation for nations to act when they determine that a genocide is occurring is really one of military intervention. But it is much broader than that. I think there has been, in large part, a military response to this. Certainly from the United States and NATO partners to provide military assistance to Ukraine, I think many of us would agree that more could be done in this regard. But there has been that type of response. But as Azim said, it can go further than this. It can be canceling contracts for importation of Russian gas and oil. There are a whole range of actions that can be undertaken by governments that will help to undermine the Russian position and to confront genocide as it's happening. And it is very important for that to occur as we continue to build evidence and compile evidence and build a case against the Russians who bear responsibility for this. And it seems to be starting. President Putin, all of a sudden, out of the past couple of days, has faced some real criticism from his supporters, from the Chinese, from the Indians, from the right in Moscow, from the left in Moscow. This is beginning to be clearer and clearer of the magnitude of these crimes. So that is the beginning that we need to push on. And as Clint just pointed out, it's not just military. Military is part of it because that can stop genocide, but it's also the sanctions and broadening the sanctions and tightening the sanctions that are going to be important to do this. Azim, are you going to make a point? I would just like to follow up from what the prosecutor general said about the accusation that the Ukrainians are Nazis. So this is actually a tactic in genocide. This is actually recognized in genocide incitement. And I'll just read out very quickly. This is referred to as accusations in a mirror. Accusations in a mirror is a powerful historically recurring form of incitement to genocide. A perpetrator accuses the targeted group of planning or having committed atrocities like those the speaker envisages in terms of what they're planning to do. So whatever you're planning to do on the targeted group is what you're essentially accusing them of doing. Look, we're under an existential threat. Ukraine's going to invade us. They're all Nazis. We need to wipe them out. This is precisely what the speaker is planning. So this is a recognized genocidal tactic, accusations in a mirror. So we've seen this. And I'd just like to point out very quickly from what you've said, Bill. I have no fault of the Americans, the British, and some other European countries. I think they are doing the absolute utmost to assist Ukraine in this situation. But there are other nations who are not meeting their obligation. They are still purchasing oil and gas from Russia. They are still trading with Russia. They're still fixing their wind turbines. And they are still engaging in some sort of diplomacy with Putin that we cannot humiliate him. We need to give him a ladder to climb down. We need to give him an exit route. This is all completely in breach of their obligations to the Genocide Convention. What we need is for every country, and of course every country is different, but the convention clearly states they must do everything within their power within their abilities for maximum pressure, sanctions, blockades, cutting off oil and gas, funding, whatever it may be. This is their obligation under the Genocide Convention. And this obligation falls upon every single state that's signatory to the Genocide Convention, all 151 of them. Just one other point that you had made that I wanted to pick up on. And that was the mention of sanctions. And we all know right now as we look at the potential for prosecutions, it is going to be difficult to get senior Russian officials into custody to get them in the dock. Andre already mentioned this earlier that under Ukrainian law there is an option for trials in absentia. But what is going to be very important is for us, for the OPG, for the ICC to develop these cases that clearly lay out the evidence against these officials to indict them, to make it impossible for them to travel, to put Interpol red notices, to make it very difficult for them to engage on the world stage in a way that they have been used to. And certainly to bolster sanctions against these people. So even if we don't have the prospect of lots of trials, lots of high-level defendants in the dock in the near term, there are other sort of collateral benefits that can be derived from this investigative and prosecutorial process. And hopefully it will cause countries to take a stronger stand if you're able to lay these cases out. I think it's really important. The case for sanctions could be strengthened so broadly, so significantly by making the point about genocide. Because it goes exactly in that direction. I would like to see if there are questions from the people first in this room who would like to ask questions. You have made the effort to come here in person. Glad to have you here. And you get the right to ask the first several questions. We do have a microphone to enable you to do this. If there are then, aha, we already have the first question right here. And then we will have opportunity for anybody online to ask questions, and then we will continue to go in that direction. Yes, ma'am? Thank you very much. I'm Jane Strump-Seth a professor at Georgetown, and we're delighted to have Clint on board, and this was a terrific panel. And my question is specifically to the prosecutor general. You've made a strong case, your president has made a strong case for a special court to prosecute the crime of aggression, which you said is sort of the beginning of all the other crimes, and probably more likely to lead to an indictment against Putin given the clear role he's played in this aggression. So could you say a little bit more about how you envision such a court being created, the mechanism, how it would come to pass, and what sort of support you'd like to see from civil society, from governments to help with that? Thank you for this question. First of all, we start to prepare this case at the middle end of March. So first months of the white-scale aggression. We have a team. Now this team is working. They are actually visiting capitals and they're visiting international organizations. Last week we have had a supportive resolution from the Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe and Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe. So we try to go different parallel tracks. I use the word parallel and I will use it always because many things are done in parallel because we have no time. We have several options. First option is as it may be ad hoc tribunal based on international agreement. And for this, of course, we need the white number of big countries, first of all, to support this idea. Of course, this would be a political decision. It may be difficult for some of big players and I openly say this because the difference between the assistance of our partners to the ICC and to the work of Prosecutor Han and the tribunal is understandable. Helping the ICC, the government of specific country is not somehow linked with the result of this work because the judgment is taken by international independent judicial institution. So they just help financially to work and they are not somehow linked with the result. But being a party of international agreement for the ad hoc tribunal means that specific government say yes, we think and we believe that the crime of aggression was committed and we are ready to be part of this process. So this difference is not, as I always say, the Ukrainians don't understand this different approach in case some countries support the ICC and are a little bit resistant at the moment supporting the tribunal because everyone here understand that the crime of aggression was committed and many organizations, even the GA has already, General Assembly has already pointed out that yes, the crime of aggression was committed. So then to be active and to support the idea of tribunal is logical from the point of view of every Ukrainian. So this is one option. The second option is of course to have it under the auspices, under the umbrella of international organization. So that is why we use once again parallel tracks Council of Europe and with General Assembly. So we're preparing this and our president will speak about this at his address to the General Assembly which is taking place tomorrow I think. He starts today. Yes, starts today but he will address tomorrow. So different approaches because we need the result. We use every possible mean to reach the result and we'll see which approach will be most successful. Thank you. Thank you. Answer your question, Jane. No, that was very helpful. I've talked about the importance of a web of accountability. A web of accountability. This is important. Multiple approaches to accountability and I think the tribunal for aggression should be part of the web of accountability that includes national prosecutions, that includes prosecutions at the ICC, the case before the International Court of Justice, universal jurisdiction prosecutions. There are many ways to build this web but I do think the prosecution of the crime of aggression should be part of it. Yeah, if I can just add quickly. Without denying the political challenges of creating such a tribunal, there actually is a precedent for doing something like this. As Andre said, you can still be supportive of the ICC but you have to recognize that the ICC has no ability to prosecute the crime of aggression right now. The last job that I held in government was actually on succumb to the European Union as a special prosecutor investigating crimes that occurred in Kosovo at the end of the aftermath of the 1999 war. So these fell outside the jurisdiction of the ICTY and therefore under normal circumstances they would have been dealt with by the Yugoslavia tribunal but they could not because of these jurisdictional constraints. So we ended up having to create a separate process to deal with this jurisdictional void which ultimately ended up in this EU-created Kosovo specialist court. So there is a prototype for doing something like this. It is going to be challenging politically and I think anything that is done it's going to be very important that it have international legitimacy. So you have to get the buy-in of key governments to do this. But as I said, there is a precedent. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. He had a question. He's had his hand raised for a minute or two. Welcome to you next, right over here. Good morning, Andrew Filipovic. I'm an attorney in Philadelphia, past president of the Ukrainian-American Bar Association. A question to the panel and kind of dovetails with the prior question about the web of accountability and then there was a comment about state responsibility. How do you define state? And the reason I ask that question in that way is there are people who say we shouldn't sanction the Russian state because it affects, quote-unquote, innocent Russians. How far does the concept of state trickle down within the state? Is it just a Russian federal employee? Is it the postman? Is it the average citizen? Can you comment on that? Andrew, it's a good question. Have you addressed this? Yeah, go ahead. So what we look at in our report is the general side convention and the states are the primary actors in international law, so it's not individual. So when we were looking at the evidence we were not looking at the prosecutorial bar of individuals and what they were actually saying is looking at the state and it was very clear to us that the Russian state, the Russian Federation is in breach of the general side convention. So the state in its entirety that has to be held accountable and not the individuals. That comes at a very different standard in terms of the prosecutions and so on. I think one of the most important things in all of these legal mechanisms that we're discussing is to have the effect of deterrence to ensure that actors around the globe that are looking at this are seeing what happens to, you know, when a nation, a powerful nation invades another one and commits these kinds of atrocities and for that deterrence to be effective we need to have these various mechanisms and prosecutions of individuals who made these decisions but also hold the state accountable at the same time. And one of the things I just want to touch upon which I think is very important which the prosecutor general mentioned is the issue of reparations. So one of the things that I'm doing at the moment with my institute is that we're putting together a reparations study group in terms of how compensation can be delivered to Ukraine. Now in the past all reparations have been done through the Security Council and take for example Iraq. Iraq was paid over $40 billion to Kuwait in reparations after its invasion. And this was done after Iraq was defeated by an international coalition and it was sanctioned by the Security Council. Neither of those things are going to happen in this situation. You know, simply Russia is the veto it's simply not going to happen. Another mechanism is required so we are developing the multilateral action model on reparations and what that means is that states have to work in a coordinated fashion to seize Russian assets after Russia is designated as a state sponsor of terror and this has to be done in a coordinated fashion to seize Russian assets which are then held for Ukraine for rebuilding Ukraine for reparations and compensation. This is extremely important because in the current political environment there is no politician in Europe, the US or anywhere else that can legitimately stand up that will stand up and say our taxpayers money is going to go towards Ukraine to rebuild Ukraine. It is Russian state assets and our report which will be done in a couple of weeks I put together a coalition of 25 of the top legal experts and economists and finance experts to develop this model is to essentially in a coordinated fashion to use Russian state assets. Just in Belgium we estimate there are 50 billion dollars of Russian assets just in Belgium so some here is substantial and this also has we are talking about deterrence this also has other effects on this for example before Xi Jinping based on any adventures in Taiwan you know the members of the Politburo almost all of them who have investments in the West none of them keep their investments in China none of them because they know what happens when you fall foul of the leadership they keep all their investments in the West all of the children have dual nationality when their assets are under threat they will think twice before invading Taiwan so this is a new model that the international community has to look at to seize Russian state assets and to use them as compensation for Ukraine and the estimation the early estimations are over 300 billion dollars worth of damage to Ukraine this will easily top about a trillion dollars when this is all done and dusted so who is going to be paying for this clearly it should be the Russian Federation Just quickly the point is to your point about how far sanctions should go is there a wide range of sanctions that can be applied and have been applied already and certainly if you can curtail Russian trade in natural gas and oil this is going to make an impact on the military machine a lot of times certainly the economic sanctions that have been leveled against Russia will have a limited impact on the population maybe over time they will have more of an impact I think one of the more effective sanctions are those that are just harder for Putin to hide the sorts of things of excluding Russian teams from competing in the European Cup or the World Cup restricting travel of Russian citizens these are things that it's hard for him to explain why is this happening to us why is this impacting things that we like to do and so having that package and I certainly saw this in the former Yugoslavia in my time as war crimes ambassador when I was dealing with this and this conditionality that was put on Serbia for example to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia having these types of broad based things that are more difficult for political leaders to spin sometimes have a greater impact than even those sanctions that go into kind of direct impact on the military Thank you Andre I will now talk not as a prosecutor general let me give this disclaimer I will say like this or let us imagine that we are talking two months ago when I was a politician at that time at that time I would answer your question like this there is no innocent Russians they even if they suffer think they suffer at the moment for what my colleagues also mentioned they can travel they can't invest they are money are frozen it's from my point of view if I would answer your question two months ago it's because we all maybe not Ukraine I'm sorry to say it but the international community did not respond in 2014 as it should respond and when I'm very open with you when now Europeans and US citizen now suffer economically from sanctions imposed over Russia imposed because it's really the only possible way to put pressure on them which is not a military pressure sanctions this is because we all did not respond in 2014 some countries some people thought that it's better to feed the beast than to make respond in 2014 at that serious even severe level that would prevent aggression and prevent this war of 2022 this could be my answer two months ago on your question when I was a politician well said Andrei as a politician two months ago now you have other responsibilities yes ma'am hi Anna cave also from George town national security my question is about case prioritization and I think one of the lessons learned from the tribunals is that their impact in some ways was lessened or not as great as it could have been because there wasn't sufficient outreach and engagement with communities and the populations were actually affected and so my question for you is how do you think about prioritizing cases given the huge workload the 33,000 cases in light of what will resonate with the people of Ukraine of course this is a very challenging task to prioritize of course we prioritize something which has a great impact the cases like we are now found in Kharkiv region the massive graves in Izhum they are the matter of priority all cases of war crimes committed near Kiev which we all remember Buche, Irpin, Gostomel, Baradjanka these are our priorities the all cases where now civilians are killed due to shelling, bombing which are everyday civil objects are hit by Russian army these are cases of our priority especially when big number of civilians are killed or perished due to missiles missile or air attack from Russia these are cases which we prioritize coming back to the number we are now looking and preparing the some IT solutions because we understand practically that from this number of crimes some of them could be duplicated because it happens like this actually we have two main sources first source is effect so hitting of some civilian object killing of people this is the fact which is fixed and which is then registered as the crime the other source is the reports or I would say it's a complain of people and this may happen that different people may complain about the same fact so that is why we are preparing some IT solution in order to check this system and to find out these applications because we all understand that it's really quite difficult to investigate and prosecute such big number of crimes but we fix everything we fix everything just in order to be sure that we don't miss anything Laura let me ask you if there are online questions we have patiently had our people standing by any questions from the online crew yes we have some good questions I'll give you two that are both directed to Prosecutor General Kostin does Ukraine have the technology it needs to rapidly identify human remains as it collects evidence to build cases for war crimes and genocide and a second question recently that you've created a team within your office to focus specifically on issues of conflict related sexual violence and can you talk a little bit more about that unit and the resources it has yes this is thank you for this question I will ask them to repeat first one to catch the exact question maybe I just missed it therefore the second yes I have created a special unit in the office of Prosecutor General which will be dealing with conflict related sexual violence crimes this this unit is within the department of prosecution of war crimes actually here is Yuri Biloza for our prosecutor the head of the department of the war crimes department as we say it has a longer name so within this unit within this department this specific unit is now organized we are also in communication with our international partners and we hope in New York as a side event of General Assembly we will have a special presentation of the strategy of investigating and prosecuting of conflict related sexual violence crimes together with the Pramila Patton and we will proceed this work we all understand the sensitivity of these type of crimes we all understand the challenges which prosecutors and investigators has and we all understand the real difficulties of people of different gender who are the victims of these type of crimes and we are also in contact with the civil society who helps us a lot in order to prevent additional yes, traumatization I mean additional say multi multiple testimonies yes, thank you, multiple testimonies because this happened and of course this makes the situation more difficult so we would like to put everything together and proceed with this work moreover we are preparing communication strategy from the office of Prosecutor General and hopefully from other very high level authorities of Ukraine to our Ukrainians who are now safely located in Europe and who could be victims or witnesses of sexual violence for them to report for them to report safely confidentially because we don't want to miss and we it's very important you know person who is a victim of any crime to get this feeling of justice it could be a long way but I as a professional attorney let me say like this as a professional lawyer I understand that keeping this inside may ruin the human being from inside our aim is to help them to talk and then we will take our this task in our arms to find the perpetrator and to make him accountable and I will ask to do you have the technology to identify identify human remains yes we have special laboratories and thanks to our French colleagues we have a mobile DNA laboratory now working in Harkiv region exactly where it's necessary and the speed of its work is much higher even than the laboratories which we have so actually we are in communication and negotiations to get more from our partners because we need more these mobile laboratories to identify the bodies yes sir thank you hi I'm Mitregen Georgetown working on the project along with Clint and Anna earlier who were leading the team there my colleague Jane Stromseth we have others here let me just see anyone else here students just stand up Sonja Geva who has Ukrainian American heritage speaks Ukrainian Maria Wong and Rebecca Ratner that's a great team yes it's a great team and there are more I wanted to ask the prosecutor unlike many attempts to provide accountability in the past which have been to a retrospective in looking at what happened and trying to uncover evidence years afterward here we live in an age as you know of 24-7 social media there's an explosion of information coming in from many sources almost in real time as atrocities are being committed and I would think that that could create a huge challenge just in terms of organizing and managing all that data and I'm wondering how you're thinking about going about doing that it's really a great challenge last week I have a meeting with the civil society organizations which are helping us the Prosecutor General in our work and this was also combined meeting in person and online I think were something like 30 more than 30 civil society organizations which helps us and also helps us with like finding and trying to fix the open source information which could help us in specific criminal cases this is a great job they do and we do also because we also have teams which are doing this in our office and in offices of law enforcement agencies the question is your question is very in time question very urgent how to analyze all of these since we have a lot of video other files how to analyze I understand that current level of the analyze of analysis of big data will allow us to do it what we need at the moment we need I think the IT once again IT solution first and then we need specific equipment we are in negotiation to get it from our partners because we need huge storage facilities in order not to first of all not to lose these files and then to keep them somewhere especially when we are talking about social media where these files could disappear in one day or one month forever so it's important to somehow listen and to store somewhere so this is a challenging task and we are dealing with this and I can't tell you now when everything will be fixed but I hope that it will be done in coming months thanks Andrei so we have time for one more question here then I'll give the opportunity for any final messages coming out and then we'll wrap up yes ma'am thank you Irina Palyashvili U.S. Ukraine Business Council chair of the legal committee we together as legal community with Ukrainian Bar Association are monitoring all the international efforts different institutions are proposing different solutions for the special tribunal for compensations etc and we have noticed that there are like with all the important work that is being done by international institutions there is a lack of coordination between NGOs between different proposals some of them are competing some of them are not on speaking terms with each other and that worries us and of course none of those proposals will go ahead without the consent of Ukrainian government so my question to the prosecutor general is how you are following all these different proposals are you trying to coordinate them how you are trying to sort out through them and see which ones the Ukrainian government will be able to support thank you thank you Irina thank you Irina nice to meet you here the question from the practicing lawyer of course I know that there is a wide range of discussion between lawyers in different teams proposing different solutions and it's not my personal responsibility to be a judge in the last instance to find out which which proposal is the best one I always say that I try to coordinate under my umbrella as much as it is possible in order to avoid demotivation frustration and overlapping I don't want people to really deliver something and then understand that it's not necessary but my question is also I will allow myself is also to send it back to you it's important for the lawyers to come to a same conclusion if it is possible because what I heard several times I've been involved in these processes from the beginning of end of March beginning of April compensation mechanism so I know what I'm talking about and I know a lot of ideas which came and it's quite difficult really to find out which is the best one so my answer my message to you is to try to find out common solutions on the experts level because different Ukrainian lawyers organizations has different views and different lawyers expert communities provide different expertise we have no time to really deeply analyze everything we have teams which are responsible and we know that the mechanisms which are preparing we hope that they would be practical and successful actually the compensation mechanism group is under the presidential decree it's the highest level of group which is dealing with all the direction of the web of accountability thank you for this term I used broad accountability it's much better because from my point of view I talked about this with president at that time from legal side this confiscation compensation mechanism is the most difficult one to establish it's really difficult and it needs a combination of legal solutions and political will which is difficult so once again I would like to coordinate anything possible and we are working we are meeting with Ukrainian Bar Association leadership in Kiev and I'm ready for further communication what is difficult for me is to receive different types of information and different solutions from different groups it's not because I don't want to read them I practically have no time to do it so let's try to prepare everything and to have a joint solution on the level of expert I know how difficult it is I'm a lawyer but I think it is possible it is possible thank you if I just add a very quick point to this Andrei won't say this but I want to give him credit as well for the way that he has approached this when we spoke right before his appointment he identified coordination of all of these efforts as a very important thing for the next prosecutor general and he has already made huge progress here there were a proliferation of initiatives to assist from the very beginning of the war and I think people were well intentioned they were motivated by the right reasons and just were not equipped to deliver the kind of things they were talking about that has died off a little bit and I think the efforts he has made already to try to get this into a more coherent approach to do it in a more coordinated fashion has paid dividends so again he won't say that for himself but I'll give him the credit for it last comment just very quickly within our lifetime we've seen so many of these general states actually cutting the cost of Bosnia, Rwanda Tigre, Rohingya Uyghurs and now Ukraine on every single one of these occasions we say never again and then shortly after we say yet again so this time let us make sure that this is going to be never again let us have the resolve all the information is out there all the data is out there and let us really say never again on this crime of all crimes and we look on this issue which brought a lot to it Clint final words Andre so let me just thank this crew let me just say a last last words which are one Ukraine must win in order to have accountability Ukraine must win and way to describe this way to rationalize this way to argue for this what we're talking about here today genocide is a strong word and it's a motivator it's a motivator for nation states that are obliged to do this work so I think that's important Ukraine can win this counter offensive up around Kharkiv as well as down here has demonstrated that the Ukrainians can win with the support from NATO and again this rationale is there rational is there that can allow it to win the rule of law is important we've talked a lot about legal implications of all this but if one large nation can invade its neighbor a weaker neighbor that's not a world that we want our kids grandkids to grow up in this is an important issue and we've given a lot of discussion today Prosecutor General you are on the leading edge I hope you have all the kind of support that you need you know you can count on us for more thank you all for attending here today thank you online for your questions and we look forward to continuing this conversation thank you