Iceland and Poland confirmed their participation in the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine on 14 April, bringing the number of confirmed member states to 17 — the legal minimum required for the Council of Europe to formally table the agreement for adoption — Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha announced.
Threshold crossed, vote set for May
The 17 confirmations allow the Council of Europe to formally put the Enlarged Partial Agreement on the Management Committee of the Special Tribunal to a vote at the ministerial meeting of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers in Chișinău on 14–15 May 2026.
"This marks a turning point," Sybiha wrote. "With 17 confirmations we have officially crossed the bare legal minimum of Council of Europe member states required to put the agreement to vote."
He noted that less than a year passed between the launch of the initiative — when European foreign ministers gathered in Lviv on 9 May 2025 — and the completion of all legal steps needed to put the tribunal into action.
What the tribunal does — and what it cannot
The Special Tribunal specifically targets the crime of aggression — the decision to launch the war — filling a critical gap in international law. The International Criminal Court can prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, but cannot exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression against Ukraine because neither Ukraine nor Russia had ratified the Rome Statute when the war began (Ukraine ratified it later, in August 2024), and Russia's UN Security Council veto blocks any referral through that channel.
The tribunal was built explicitly to bypass that obstruction. However, under current international law, sitting officials, including Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, retain legal immunity and cannot be prosecuted while in office. The tribunal is designed to be ready to act when those protections end.
