In the office of Andriy Smyrnov, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, the wanted posters spread across the desk serve as a kind of mission statement. They show the faces of five Russian officials, led by President Vladimir Putin, next to a list of the charges Ukraine has leveled against them: aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity. “We had these printed as a reminder,” Smyrnov says while pacing around his desk on the third floor of the presidential compound, one floor down from the chambers of his boss, President Volodymyr Zelensky. “There’s no alternative to putting Putin on trial,” he says.
The question is where, and under whose authority. As the top aide to Zelensky on judicial matters, Smyrnov, 42, has spent the past year charting a path to an improbable destination: a courtroom, somewhere, with Putin in the dock. Every step has been painstaking, with Ukraine’s closest allies often blocking the way. But Smyrnov, who has no experience in international law, has made surprising progress. Last fall, he says, “nobody even wanted
