TEHRAN- The European Union’s plans to set up a special tribunal to hear alleged Russian crimes in the Ukraine war has raised more questions than answers about the bloc’s initiative.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared in a statement “we are proposing to set up a specialized court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression.”

It has been described as the latest desperate European attempt to apply more pressure on Russia. Some EU officials are questioning how to apply more punitive measures on Moscow with reports of the ninth round of sanctions.

Apparently, the eighth package of sanctions has proven futile in containing the Russian Federation in its war with Ukraine, which Moscow claims the U.S. and NATO are directly involved in.

Research from within the EU itself suggests that Russia is winning the economic war, with an energy and refugee crisis in Europe. The EU is struggling to handle both. As a result of the war and sanctions on Russian energy, exports have seen a surge in gas and electricity bills for European households.

This is while Europe is struggling with the exodus of Ukrainian refugees. In Northern Ireland, 11,500 people are residing in emergency accommodation, a quarter of them children. This is while Ukrainian refugees are being housed in hotels.

There has been no focus on trying to sort out the disaster that is hurting the EU more than Russia as the cost-of-living crisis is going up and inflation is reaching record highs across the West.

As European citizens are urging their governments to advocate for peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow, the West is choosing to prolong the war by delivering more weapons to the conflict.

EU governments have pledged to continue support for Ukraine throughout 2023 with military aid. This is because an increasing number of Europeans are advocating for peace negotiations to end the crisis.

There will be no end in sight to the crisis in Eastern Europe until there is some form of peace negotiations to end it.

The move by NATO to provoke this conflict has backfired on Europe the most.

The Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin offered a "brutally honest" assessment of Europe's capabilities in the wake of the war, stating bluntly that "we're not strong enough" to stand up to Moscow alone.

During a visit to Australia, the leader of the pending NATO member said the Ukraine war had exposed both European weaknesses and strategic blunders in dealing with Russia.

"I must be very honest, brutally honest with you, Europe isn't strong enough right now. We would be in trouble without the United States," she told Sydney's Lowy Institute think tank.

"We have to make sure that we are also building those capabilities when it comes to European defense, the European defense industry, and making sure that we could cope in different kinds of situations," she said.

Meanwhile, despite parting ways with the EU, state media reports emerging from the United Kingdom; a country that has also strongly backed dragging the war on, say people are having to eat pet food while others try to heat their food on a radiator or candle in the Welsh capital Cardiff.

In any case, it is not unusual for crimes including war crimes to occur in war zones.

But any special tribunal set up by the EU will lack credibility and will be extremely controversial as the bloc has taken sides in this conflict.

The question of impartiality has been raised by many experts. The EU, like the U.S., is supporting one side in the war with a vast amount of taxpayer money.

The EU special tribunal would also rely on accounts of western mainstream journalists who have been dispatched to the battlefield and western mainstream journalists are not experts on atrocities in war zones. There is also a well-established information war being waged by the media, with an ever-increasing number of fake news reports emerging over the past months.

Any special tribunal that might be set up should be established in a neutral country or territory in the world and document any possible crimes that may have been committed by both sides.

Ukraine has been strongly campaigning for the creation of a special international tribunal and has received the official backing of France.

The chairman of the Russian State Duma’s international affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, argues the creation of a special tribunal has no legal basis saying the plan has a political dimension instead.

"A tribunal for Ukraine has no legal basis and is rather political. There is no legitimate basis for the creation of an ad hoc tribunal. Implementing such an initiative will be impossible without trampling international law underfoot," Slutsky told the media.

"Preventing the truth about the true background of the Ukrainian crisis from reaching the European and American audiences is a matter of survival for today's Western politicians in power. Otherwise, their own voters will oust them," he pointed out.

He pointed out that if a tribunal is to be created in earnest, "there should be Ukrainian war criminals and their patrons from Washington in the dock."

"The United States and its NATO allies since the Second World War have bombed the territories of more than 20 sovereign states, interfering in their state system and their sovereignty. This is what should be condemned at last. Then there will be far fewer causes for the conflicts like the one in Ukraine," he added.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists "It is very important to add to all of this information and data about those crimes committed by the [Kyiv] regime since 2014 and to which we also, unfortunately, have not seen any decisive reaction by the so-called collective West.

"As for attempts to hold some sort of tribunals, they will have no legitimacy, won’t be accepted by us, and will be condemned by us," the Kremlin official said.

He noted that Russian investigators "are conducting very intense and thorough work on documenting all crimes by the Kyiv regime. This work is being conducted on a daily, practically, hourly basis."

NATO members have waged countless wars around the globe and invaded many countries around the world committing widely documented war crimes, like the dropping of depleted uranium and cluster bombs on Serbians yet the U.S.-led military alliance has yet to face any type of tribunal.

Why is the focus of a special tribunal only on this war?

NATO war crimes have never been questioned. The UN Security Council should establish a court system to investigate all allegations of war crimes in all wars waged by the U.S. and its allies including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Northern Ireland.

A special war crimes tribunal must be set up to establish the carpet bombing of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and the Northern Central city of Raqqa by the U.S. military over the past decade.

The 20-year, U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan led to the massacres of countless civilians by American warplanes and paved the way for the expansion of terrorism in the country that killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Should there not be a special tribunal to document all this bloodshed?

The U.S., along with the UK and their allies have supported, financed, and even trained terrorists, including Takfiri terrorists, and helped spread the extremist ideology. Again, critics are asking why these criminal practices have not been probed by a special tribunal.

NATO destroyed, crushed, and allowed Daesh to flourish in countries like Libya.

The Israeli regime’s slaughter of Palestinians and genocidal campaign have yet to be heard at a special tribunal despite international outcry.

The list of war crimes and other crimes against humanity by the U.S.-led NATO military alliance is too long to list but it does display the double standards of the West.