Zelensky told US, European law chiefs Russia must face court

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with US Attorney General Merrick Garland and top European law enforcement officials on Friday and called for Russia to face international justice for war crimes.

Zelensky announced the meeting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines of the war, in his evening video address to the nation.

“We are doing everything to ensure that the International Criminal Court succeeds in punishing Russian war criminals,” Zelensky said.

“The key to all these meetings and the Lviv conference is accountability,” he added. “The accountability of Russia and its leadership for aggression and terrorism against our state and people is personal.”

Zelensky said 70,000 Russian war crimes have been recorded so far.

“But, unfortunately, we don’t know about all the crimes at the moment,” he added. “A large part of our territory is still occupied and we currently cannot reliably predict how many Russian crimes we will discover after the occupiers are expelled.”

Along with Garland, other participants at the conference included UK Attorney General Victoria Prentice, Spanish Attorney General Alvaro García Ortiz and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

Meanwhile, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haque said UN humanitarian workers were reporting “intense hostilities” near the besieged Ukrainian town of Bakhmut and said some UN humanitarian partners were focusing on evacuating the most vulnerable people from the conflict zone.

Bakhmut has been the focus of intense fighting for months, with Russian troops, including large forces from the private Wagner group, closing in on the largely destroyed city.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war at ___ https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine