The decision by the administration of US President Donald Trump to freeze funding for other countries has impacted international efforts to hold Russia accountable for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, reported the agency Reuters citing several sources.
This concerns six US-funded projects of the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine totaling $89 million, according to a Ukrainian document on US funding and cuts reviewed by the agency. Of this funding, $47 million was directed specifically to ensuring accountability for war crimes, the document states.
Funding for at least five of these projects has already been frozen, addressing various issues—from preserving evidence from the battlefield to anti-corruption initiatives and reforming Ukraine's prosecution system.
According to two sources, one of the consequences of the spending freeze was the cessation of work by nearly 40 experts provided by the Georgetown University International Criminal Justice Initiative, which is a leading organization in the field of criminal law.
Ukrainian non-governmental organizations have also been affected. Representatives of two such organizations told Reuters that their work in collecting victim testimonies and documenting damage may be impacted or already frozen. “Our organization... will continue to exist, but we will seek alternative sources of independent funding and, accordingly, continue to work in this area, only on a limited scale,” said Oleksandr Pavlichenko from the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, an alliance of Ukrainian human rights groups.
The loss of US funding could have various consequences, agency sources believe. “Criminals will gain new opportunities, and we will all lose,” said one of them.
Ukraine has opened more than 140,000 war crime cases since Russia's invasion in February 2022, which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and left vast areas of the country in ruins.