According to RIA Novosti, Lavrov noted that UN experts are not empowered to investigate war crimes, no matter who committed them.
“As for some UN experts who do some research about alleged crimes ... I don’t know of any UN experts who would be empowered to consider any aspect of war crimes, whoever committed them,” he said.
According to him, once such powers were written into the statute of the International Criminal Court and "for those countries that have acceded to this statute, the decisions of the International Criminal Court must be executed."
At the same time, Lavrov noted that there are exceptions here, “and, by the way, in the context of the logic of neo-colonialism.”
“The International Criminal Court has already greatly discredited itself in many ways, but not a single expert in the UN can take it and say: “I’m studying war crimes or conducting some kind of investigation,” he concluded.
In March 2020, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court unanimously approved the Prosecutor's Office's motion to investigate possible crimes committed in Afghanistan.
The US condemned these plans.
After that, Donald Trump, who was at that time the American president, signed a decree allowing sanctions to be imposed on members of the ICC.