Kremlin urges EU top diplomat to take note of Kiev’s crimes before talking about tribunals

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell needs to take cognizance of the crimes that the Kiev regime has committed in Donbass since 2014 before talking about tribunals against war criminals, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"On the whole, we would like to recommend that European diplomats pay attention to the crimes that the Ukrainian regime has committed since 2014, which can and should be the reason for the tribunal that the Europeans are talking about," Peskov noted, when asked to comment on the EU top diplomat’s remark about the need to create an independent tribunal to hold Russians accountable for their actions in Ukraine.

The Kremlin spokesman emphasized that "Mr. Borrell has never said a word about that since he was never interested in the fate of innocent civilians and children, who have been slaughtered." According to Peskov, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy "lacks any proper credibility with us given the completely unacceptable statements that he uttered in the past."

Borrell told Politico on Tuesday that an independent tribunal needed to be created to hold "the Russians accountable for what they have done" in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin signed an order in November 2016 saying that the Russian Federation did not plan on becoming a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. According to Moscow, the court failed to become a truly independent and credible international justice body.