U.S. President Joe Biden has ordered his administration to begin sharing evidence of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), a U.S official said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon had been resistant to the move and privately argued that any cooperation with the court could open the way for politicized prosecution of American troops deployed overseas.
The ICC, a permanent war crimes tribunal, in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for suspected deportation of children from Ukraine, which would be a war crime.
Ukrainian and Western authorities say there is evidence of murders and executions, shelling of civilian infrastructure, forced deportations, child abductions, torture, sexual violence, and illegal detention.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have accused the Pentagon of effectively undermining war crimes prosecution of Russia by blocking the sharing of U.S. military intelligence with the ICC.
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