Zelensky Renews Call for Special Tribunal to Prosecute Putin

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Ukrainian calls to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin, a new U.S. investment in AI development, and the Adani Group’s flight from Myanmar.

In a rare foreign trip on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to face “true justice.” In a 15-minute speech delivered in The Hague, the Netherlands city that hosts the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Ukrainian president renewed his demand to establish a special tribunal like the Nuremberg trials to try Putin for the crime of aggression, which is when a state’s leader uses armed force “against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State,” as defined by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant in March for Putin and another top Russian official for their role in Russia’s abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. Part of the official definition of genocide includes “forcibly transferring children of [one] group to another group.” However, the ICC cannot prosecute the crime of aggression itself. “If we want true justice, we should not look for excuses and should not refer to the shortcomings of the current international law but make bold decisions that will correct the shortcomings of those norms,” Zelensky said. He alleged that Russia committed 6,139 war crimes in April alone—killing 207 Ukrainian civilians, including 11 children. Just the day before Zelensky’s speech, Russian shelling killed 23 Ukrainians in Kherson.

Zelensky’s call for Putin to face justice in a court of law for his crimes was particularly notable at this time, as it comes amid accusations from Moscow that Ukraine tried to assassinate the Russian president in a foiled drone attack on the Kremlin on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian president also discussed his country’s prospects for joining NATO, admitting that Kyiv will likely not join the 31-member bloc while the war with Russia continues. In an address to the Dutch parliament, he asked the international community to continue isolating Russia with aggressive Western sanctions, advocated for NATO to begin planning for a Ukrainian membership bid, and urged NATO allies to send more powerful and longer-range weapons to Kyiv. “I’m grateful to you for the fact that we’ve achieved the greatest unity in Europe, which people only dreamed of for decades,” Zelensky said.

Meanwhile, Moscow continues to hammer Ukrainian cities. Russia fired two dozen combat drones on Thursday, hitting a university campus in Odesa and targeting Kyiv for the third time in four days. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also accused Ukraine of acting on U.S. orders to launch Wednesday’s attempted drone strike on the Kremlin. Peskov did not provide evidence of U.S. involvement, and U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby denied the allegations, saying Peskov was “just lying.”

• Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust by Cullen Hendrix
• Brazil Is Ukraine’s Best Bet for Peace by Jorge Heine and Thiago Rodrigues
• At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment by Robbie Gramer

New AI investments. Washington isn’t backing down in the global race to lead artificial intelligence (AI) research. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday met with the CEOs of tech companies Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Microsoft as well as the AI start-ups they back, Anthropic and OpenAI (respectively) to discuss AI development and risk. The meeting coincided with a new Biden administration initiative to invest $140 million in the establishment of seven AI research institutes.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has recently pledged billions of state dollars to AI development, aiming to become a global leader of the field by 2030. “[T]he United States and China’s application of a Cold War arms race dynamic to artificial intelligence reflects their desire to write the rules of the new game,” FP’s Rishi Iyengar explained.

Adios, Adani. India’s Adani Group is back in the limelight. The major conglomerate officially signed off on the sale of its Myanmar port business, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, on Thursday. The much-anticipated exit comes amid intense public scrutiny over the company’s choice to invest in a nation plagued by state human rights violations.

This is not Adani Group’s first red card. The corporation’s financial standing crumbled following a January report by economic watchdog Hindenburg Research that detailed accounting fraud and stock manipulation. Since then, owner Gautam Adani lost the ranking of Asia’s richest person, losing $28 billion due to the allegations.

Influence ops. Analysts at Facebook-owner Meta revealed this week that a digital marketing company in Miami called Predictvia was responsible for a number of covert online political influence operations in Latin America over the last year. The company, which claims to be fighting misinformation, allegedly ran dozens of social media accounts that falsely posed as media outlets, journalists, and other brands. Their purpose: to critique domestic politics in Guatemala and Honduras, specifically targeting Guatemala City Mayor Juan Carlos Pellecer and Honduras National Congress President Luis Redondo.

It’s still unclear who hired Predictvia or how successful its misinformation campaigns were. But U.S.-based actors have a long, sordid history of meddling in Latin American politics since the establishment of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, with the Trump administration even saying that policy was still “alive and well” just four years ago.

Customs agents at India’s Chennai International Airport were in for a slippery surprise when they discovered 22 snakes and a chameleon in the luggage of a woman who had arrived from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This wasn’t the first time that airport staff got to practice their animal herding skills; 45 pythons, eight corn snakes, three monkeys, and three tortoises were discovered in another traveler’s baggage in January. Who needs a zoo when you can just visit the customs area of Chennai International Airport?