Nobel-winning Ukraine NGO chief says Putin should face 'tribunal'

Russian president Vladimir Putin should face an "international tribunal", the head of Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties said Friday after the group was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

To "give the hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes a chance to see justice... it is necessary to create an international tribunal and bring Putin, (Belarus president Alexander) Lukashenko and other war criminals to justice," Oleksandra Matviychuk said on Facebook.

She also called for Russia to be excluded from the UN Security Council "for systematic violations of the UN charter".

Matviychuk said she was "delighted" the NGO was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with "our friends and partners at Memorial and Viasna".

This year's prize was shared by Russia's Memorial group and Belarusian dissident Ales Bialiatski, who founded the rights group Viasna.

Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Friday, the Ukrainian group's communications manager Anna Trushova said they were "stunned" to hear the news and consider the prize a "respectable recognition of our activity".

Trushova said the Center for Civil Liberties was founded in 2007 and "our main mission is defending human rights".

Since Moscow's troops invaded Ukraine in February "we have been documenting the war crimes of Russia's military".

"Another important activity is returning kidnapped Ukrainians home," Trushova said.

The NGO's executive director Oleksandra Romantsova said the group was "happy" to receive the prize and announced her organisation would hold a press conference Saturday.