.- The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced its intention to investigate the situation in Ukraine, a country involved in an internal armed conflict since 2014.
“After a thorough and independent review, I can announce that the legal criteria for initiating an investigation in Ukraine have been met,” said the institution’s attorney general, Fatou Bensouda, from Gambian, in a statement released on Friday.
The ICC examines whether war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Ukraine, which is not part of this international body.
Since April 2014 Ukraine has been carrying out an operation against the militias in the east of its territory, where the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics were proclaimed in response to the violent change of government that occurred in Kiev in February of the same year.
The Minsk Accords, signed in September 2014 and February 2015, laid the foundations for a political solution to the conflict, but have so far not resulted in the cessation of violence that has claimed some 13,000 lives, according to estimates by the UN.
Thousands of Donbas residents fled to Russia to seek refuge.
Bensouda specified that the evaluation also took into account information about the judicial processes opened by Russia in relation to the events in Ukraine.
The Gambian prosecutor was included in September on a list of those sanctioned by the United States for investigating the alleged war crimes of her soldiers in Afghanistan. (Sputnik)
