The Trump administration has taken sweeping steps to dismantle US initiatives aimed at holding Russia accountable for war crimes committed in Ukraine, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
According to the Washington Post (WP), among the most significant changes is the administration’s decision to leave an international accountability group led by the EU, disband an interagency working group, and quietly vacate a congressionally mandated position meant to coordinate US intelligence on Russian atrocities.
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The coordinator role, created by bipartisan legislation in 2022, has remained unfilled since March.
“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,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), who co-authored the law with now-National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.
Crow added: “If Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard want to achieve lasting peace, they must be willing to hold Putin accountable for the crimes he’s committed in Ukraine. So far, this administration has shown they’re willing to let Putin off the hook.”
According to multiple officials, the dismantled working group once served as a hub for collecting and coordinating intelligence on Russian war crimes, including the deportation of Ukrainian children, the bombing of civilian infrastructure, etc.
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Eli Rosenbaum, the former head of the Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability Team, described the move as “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.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where the position was housed, has not publicly commented, according to the WP report.
Meanwhile, other accountability efforts have been quietly curtailed. A Justice Department task force responsible for seizing the assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs has been disbanded.
A separate initiative, the Conflict Observatory – which tracked the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children into Russia – was also scrapped, though temporarily reinstated following backlash from evangelical groups and some Republicans, according to the WP.
According to Reuters, the administration recently instructed the State and Treasury departments to draft a list of sanctions on Russia that could potentially be lifted as part of ongoing negotiations.
The State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice has reportedly been marked for downsizing under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s restructuring plan. That office provided nearly $2 million in 2023 to support prosecutors working on war crimes cases against Russia in The Hague.
Beth Van Schaack, who led that office until January, described the current shift as a “real reversal” and said the former ODNI coordinator had served as “the backbone” of US war crimes accountability efforts.
“Without the coordinator, no one is navigating the ship,” she said.
Congress had also authorized the US government to share war crimes evidence with the International Criminal Court (ICC), but that flow of intelligence stopped temporarily after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The information-sharing resumed in December, former officials confirmed.
Crow emphasized that despite the wealth of intelligence gathered on Russian atrocities, there is now no centralized structure within the US government to compile that data for future prosecutions.
“We had a whole machinery that was supporting Ukraine on multiple fronts – on the battlefield, in the international courts and on the humanitarian side,” Schaack said. “It feels like a real reversal now – an upside-down world.”
In mid-March, the US Justice Department under Trump quietly told European officials it would withdraw from an international group investigating Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including actions by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, The New York Times reported.
The move marks a major shift from Biden-era efforts to hold the Kremlin accountable. The US had joined the EU-led group – the only non-European nation to do so – in 2023, deploying a senior prosecutor to The Hague to work with Ukrainian and regional investigators.
Officials say the formal withdrawal will be announced by Eurojust, with the Trump administration citing a vague need to “redeploy resources.”
At the same time, the Trump administration is also scaling back WarCAT, a DOJ unit launched in 2022 to help Ukraine prosecute Russian war crimes. That team had provided training, legal aid, and made headlines last year by charging four Russian soldiers in absentia for torturing an American in Kherson.
Kyiv says it is currently investigating more than 140,000 potential Russian war crimes
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