THE HAGUE, Dec 14 - The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said a preliminary probe has found “a reasonable basis at this time to believe” that crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed in Ukraine which merit a full-scale investigation, AP reported.

The six-year preliminary probe by prosecutors at the global court looked at allegations of crimes starting with the brutal crackdown on pro-European Union protests in 2013-14, the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the drawn-out conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“This decision provides a glimmer of hope to victims of appalling crimes under international law in Ukraine  who have already waited years to see perpetrators held to account,” Oksana Pokalchuk, the head of Amnesty International Ukraine, said. This “must mark the beginning of the end of a long and dark chapter of impunity and injustice in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, as well as for crimes that took place during ‘EuroMaidan.”

Fighting there between Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels has killed more than 14,000 people in the last six years.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Friday the suspected crimes and the failure of courts in Ukraine and Russia to successfully prosecute them mean that the next step for ICC prosecutors will be to request authorization from judges to open a formal investigation. She did not give a timeframe for that to happen.

Ukraine is not a member of the court but has twice accepted its jurisdiction, asking it first to investigate the crackdown on protesters in 2013-2014 under former president Viktor Yanukovych and later extending the jurisdiction to cover conflicts in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Russia is not a member of the court and does not accept its jurisdiction.

Without going into details of the alleged crimes, Bensouda said in a statement that her preliminary investigation found three “clusters of victimization;” crimes committed during hostilities, during detentions and crimes committed in Crimea.

“My Office furthermore found that these crimes, committed by the different parties to the conflict, were also sufficiently grave to warrant investigation by my Office, both in quantitative and qualitative terms,” Bensouda said.

Pokalchuk said: “Given the challenges that an ICC investigation will likely face, due to the ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea and Russia’s continuing support to armed groups in eastern Ukraine, it is essential that the Ukrainian authorities and the international community offer their full cooperation to the ICC Prosecutor’s office and demand the same of Russia.”

“We also urge the Ukrainian authorities, human rights and humanitarian groups and any other relevant stakeholders to ensure the preservation of evidence that will be crucial for the ICC’s investigation,” Pokalchuk said.

The ICC is a court of last resort that only takes cases when member states do not or cannot prosecute them in domestic courts. (ap/tl/ez)