Trump Administration sweeps initiatives tracking Russian atrocities in Ukraine under the rug

The Trump Administration has been engaged in a concerted effort to undo initiatives aimed at holding Russia and its leaders and allies accountable for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Since taking office, the Administration has moved to withdraw from an international group led by the European Union that was created to punish Moscow for violating international law in its invasion of Ukraine.

The White House has also reduced the work of the Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability Team and dismantled a program to seize assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

And in a previously unreported move, it has vacated a coordinator position - mandated by law - to gather intelligence from across the government on Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

That position was created by legislation co-written by Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado) and former congressman Michael Waltz (R-Florida). Mr Waltz is now President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

“The atrocities coordinator position is ... tasked with holding Mr Putin responsible for the crimes he’s committed against the Ukrainian people,” Mr Crow told The Washington Post in a statement.

“This position was created by Congress on a bipartisan basis, and the Administration must empower whoever serves in this position to carry out their duties as required by law.”

Mr Crow said that if Mr Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “want to achieve lasting peace, they must be willing to hold Mr Putin accountable for the crimes he’s committed in Ukraine. So far, this Administration has shown they’re willing to let Mr Putin off the hook.”

An inter-agency working group led by that coordinator has also been dismantled, according to three current and former officials.

Taken together, experts say, the actions signal to allies and adversaries a retrenchment by the United States as a global voice for the rule of law.

“It’s a very disturbing retreat from the US commitment to holding accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and aggression, particularly in the bloodiest conflict that Europe has seen since World War II,” said Eli Rosenbaum, the former head of the Justice Department war crimes team who retired in January 2024.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where the position is housed, did not immediately provide a comment.

Mr Trump on Friday said he was prepared to walk away - “just take a pass” - from peace talks between Russia and Ukraine “very shortly” if he didn’t see “enthusiasm” from both sides toward making progress. It was not clear what that could mean for US military support for Ukraine or sanctions on Russia.

In what was seen as a boost to Mr Putin, the Administration last month paused and then restarted weapons and intelligence assistance to Ukraine. The White House has called on the Treasury and State departments to draw up a list of sanctions against Russia that could be lifted as part of the talks, Reuters reported last month.

The administration made an effort to help Ukraine find children who were removed from their families and sent to Russia during the war. The Post reported last month that the Administration axed the Conflict Observatory initiative before it could complete transferring its repository of satellite imagery and biometric data of missing children to European law enforcement agencies to assist in ongoing prosecutions.

After the termination drew outrage from Christian evangelical groups and some Republicans, the Administration reversed course and temporarily allowed the program to continue until the transfer of the repository’s data is completed.

The Administration has also terminated initiatives to counter malign activities directed by Moscow, such as a Justice Department task force that seized assets of Russian oligarchs and that enforced export restrictions to Russia. Litigation in those seizures continues, but no new seizures have been announced.

The department has continued to enforce the export restrictions, despite the task force’s disbandment, an official said. And the Administration killed the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, which combated secret influence campaigns by Russia and other adversaries to sow discord in American politics.

“Mike Waltz and I have been appalled since the very early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine about the war crimes and the atrocities that have been committed, everything from the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and placing them in indoctrination camps to the specific targeting of civilian infrastructure as an act of war,” Mr Crow said.

He said the intelligence community has gathered reams of information about Russian atrocities and alleged war crimes but lacked a central repository “to package it up, both for our own use and for the international criminal courts” to be used in prosecutions.

That law was passed in December 2022. Around the same time, Congress passed another law that authorised the US government to share war crimes information with the International Criminal Court. But the Pentagon resisted that effort, fearing a precedent that could expose American personnel to prosecution.

With the Biden Administration “dragging their feet,” Mr Crow said, in mid-2023, he led a bipartisan letter to push the Administration to use the authority. The letter’s bipartisan signatories included Waltz, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), a House GOP leader and recent Trump nominee to serve as UN ambassador.

That summer, the information began to flow, though it stopped temporarily, two former officials said, after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant last November in the wake of Hamas’s attack against Israel and the Israeli military’s invasion of Gaza. The sharing resumed in late December, the former officials said.

The information coordinated by the ODNI flowed to the ICC and other international bodies through the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice, which was created in the 1990s to advise the secretary of state on war crimes and genocide issues.

That office is among those proposed to be cut as part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement Tuesday of a wide-scale department reorganisation.

The office provided $1.8 million last year to support the work of a team of prosecutors at the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine in The Hague, including a US special prosecutor who helped build a database of evidence. The Trump Administration has withdrawn the United States from this body, which was set up in 2023 to empower and coordinate prosecutions in different countries.

“We had a whole machinery that was supporting Ukraine on multiple fronts - on the battlefield, in the international courts and on the humanitarian side,” said Beth Van Schaack, who led the Office of Global Criminal Justice until she retired on January 20. “It feels like a real reversal now - an upside-down world.’’

The ODNI coordinator was “the backbone” of the accountability effort, synchronising intelligence agencies to collect information focused on different aspects of Russian atrocities, said Van Schaack, now a distinguished fellow at Stanford University. “Without the coordinator, no one is navigating the ship,” she said.

Mr Jonathan White served as that coordinator until March, according to his LinkedIn page. He had worked at the State Department and National Security Council before taking up the position, according to the page. He did not respond to attempts to reach him.

John Hudson contributed to this report.

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