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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and top European legal officials and called on Russia to face international prosecution for war crimes.
Mr Zelensky announced the meeting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, hundreds of miles from the front lines of the war, in an evening video address to the nation.
“We are doing everything we can to ensure that the ICC succeeds in bringing to justice Russian war criminals,” Mr Zelensky said.
“The main issue with all these meetings and the one in Lviv is accountability,” he added.
“Russia and its leadership are personally responsible for the aggression and terror against our country and people.”
More than 70,000 Russian war crimes have been documented so far, Mr Zelensky said.
“But, unfortunately, we don’t know all the crimes at the moment,” he added.
“A significant portion of our territory is still occupied, and we cannot currently predict reliably how much Russian crime we will discover after the occupiers are driven out.”
Along with Mr Garland, other participants at the meeting included UK Attorney-General Victoria Prentice, Spain’s Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz and EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reyndez.
Meanwhile, at the U.N., deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said U.N. humanitarian workers had reported “heavy hostilities” near the troubled Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, adding that U.N. A handful of humanitarian partners are focusing on evacuating the most vulnerable people from conflict areas.
Bakhmut has been the focus of intense fighting for months, as Russian troops, including large forces from the private Wagner group, moved ever closer to the largely destroyed town.
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