Lithuania's Landsbergis says war tribunal for Russian leaders "unavoidable"

VILNIUS – The establishment of a war tribunal, similar to the one that investigated Nazi crimes, for Russian leaders might be unavoidable, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis says, pointing out to many similarities between "Nazism and Putinism".

"It could be unavoidable to have that. Because, basically, there's a lot of debate on who is to blame in this situation. Ant I personally think that there's a lot of similarity between Putinism and Nazism," the Lithuanian foreign minister told reported upon his arrival to a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, asked to comment on proposals to set up a tribunal similar to the one during the Nuremberg trials of Nazis during WWII.

"It's a system where it has the ideology, it has the leaders, it has the followers, it has even the symbol. So I think we have to have a systematic approach to the Putinism itself, and it has to be assessed. And, probably, a tribunal could be a place to do it," Landsbergis said, adding that "the credibility of the West is on the line".

"And I would definitely ask my colleagues to participate in this debate, to invent new mechanisms," the minister said.

If one country cannot do that, than the issue must be raised with the United Nations to "reinvent the mechanisms that were there after WWII", Landsbergis said.

"Basically, this reality is that we cannot live with it and pretend that nothing has happened. I think we're entering a stage where we'll have to do it," he said.

Some 140 academics, lawyers and politicians, including ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Sir John Major, have called for the creation of a new international tribunal to investigate Russia's war crimes Ukraine, BBC reports.