THE PUSH FOR WARTIME JUSTICE
As the war between Russia and Ukraine drags on, officials in Kyiv are pinning their hopes on Western support – and not just on the military front. Ukrainian policymakers are watching closely efforts by the Council of Europe to establish a special tribunal to prosecute the leadership of Russia, as that of Belarus and North Korea, for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. "The special tribunal may start operating next year," says Iryna Mudra, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "This year we are completing the legal formalities, and the Council of Europe will begin to form - recruit judges, a secretariat, prosecutors, implement rules and procedures."
The immediate targets of the tribunal, Mudra notes, are "approximately 20 people who planned, prepared, and directed the conduct of an aggressive war against Ukraine," among them Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is now awaiting "final political endorsement" for the establishment of the tribunal from the European Union. (Reuters, May 8, 2025)
TAKING AIM AT RUSSIA'S SHADOW FLEET
London has levied new sanctions on Russia, aiming to cripple the operation of the country's "shadow fleet" of tankers by which the Kremlin is continuing to carry out illicit oil trade. The new measures proscribe an additional 100 vessels which, since the beginning of last year, have helped Russia transport more than $24 billion worth of cargo, despite an array of international sanctions aimed at isolating the country from global markets on account of its aggression against Ukraine. "The threat from Russia to our national security cannot be underestimated," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in announcing the new measures. "That is why we will do everything in our power to destroy [Putin's] shadow fleet operation, starve his war machine of oil revenues and protect the subsea infrastructure that we rely on for our everyday lives." (Meduza, May 9, 2025)
RUSSIA AND THE TALIBAN, CONTINUED
In recent weeks, following the lead of countries like China, Russia has softened its stance toward Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement. Late last year, the lower house of Russia's parliament, the State Duma, even passed a bill paving the way for the group to be removed from the country’s terrorism list. And last month, in a further softening, Russia's Prosecutor's Office formally requested that the country's Supreme Court end a ban on Taliban activities in the country.
That normalization trend is continuing to progress with the backing of Russia's leadership, which sees the Islamist movement as both a potential counterterrorism partner and an economic asset. To the latter end, Moscow recently concluded a series of agreements with the Taliban paving the way for Russia to begin oil extraction operations in Afghanistan. Energy firm Inteco has already reportedly carried out geological exploration surveys in the country, and will soon begin drilling operations. (Afghanistan International, May 18, 2025)
PUTIN'S PLAN FOR THE YEAR
Although the battlelines in Ukraine's east have barely moved over the past year, Russia's leadership is confident that major breakthroughs are to come. Meduza reports that, according to a "person familiar with the Russian president's thinking," Putin believes Russian troops could fully seize control of the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia by the end of 2025. That thinking, in turn, helps explain why Russia has been reticent about moving toward ceasefire talks with Ukraine – and why Putin's recent two-hour phone call with President Donald Trump failed to yield a firm commitment from Moscow for de-escalation. "Rhetorically, Russia presents itself as open to negotiations and publicly welcomes US efforts, to avoid irritating the US government," explains Maria Snegovaya of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But in practice, it sticks firmly to its original position" – that is, eliminating "the very existence of the Ukrainian state in its current form." (Meduza, May 19, 2025; Bloomberg, May 19, 2025)
PILLAGING UKRAINE'S TREASURES
In November of 2022, amid military advances into the country, Russian troops looted six museums in occupied parts of Ukraine, seizing nearly 33,000 artifacts in the largest such heist since the Second World War. The looting was well known within Ukraine, but a two-year investigation by authorities in Kyiv yielded little by way of leads into the whereabouts of the stolen items. However, a new investigation by the Kyiv Independent has now shed light on the wartime pillaging.
In it, journalist Yevheniia Motorevska posed first as a Russian TV producer and then as an official investigator, speaking with Artem Lagoysky and Oleksandr Kuzmenko, the current and former so-called "ministers of culture" in occupied Kherson, as well as with Andriy Khodchenko, the Kherson Local History Museum’s former director. All confirmed their involvement in the operation, which was overseen by the FSB. According to them, some 70 specialists from occupied Crimea also participated in the looting. The list includes Elena Morozova, the director of the Chersonesos Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Mikhail Smorodkin, director of the Sevastopol Defense Museum. These two museums, as well as Crimea's Taurida Central Museum, are believed to now be the holding sites of the stolen artifacts. (Kyiv Independent, May 18, 2025)
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