British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says a team of war crimes experts were deployed to investigate possible war crimes committed by invading Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
They will support the Ukrainian government and the announcement came on April 29 after Ms. Truss met with the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) president, Judge Piotr Hofmanski, at The Hague in the Netherlands.
“Russia has brought barbarity to Ukraine and committed vile atrocities, including against women. British expertise will help uncover the truth and hold [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s regime to account for its actions. Justice will be done,” Truss said.
The British government’s news release says that the experts will will arrive in Poland “in early May and meet international partners, NGOs [nongovernment organizations], refugees and the Ukrainian government to scope out the assistance they can provide.”
Nearly 1,200 Ukrainian victims have been found in the Kyiv region alone after Russian forces retreated from the area, mostly from the northwestern suburbs of the capital city in late March and early April. Most exhumed bodies had fatal gunshot wounds and signs of torture and sexual violence.
Britain’s deployment of experts joins a growing cadre of others who have been investigating alleged war crimes and other atrocities committed by Russia, including alleged acts of genocide.
The legislatures of Canada, Lithuania and Estonia have all passed resolutions declaring Russian actions, since re-invading the neighboring country on Feb. 24, as genocide. U.S. President Joe Biden has also specifically blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin of committing genocide against the Ukrainian nation.
ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said on April 25 that he was also joining efforts by Ukrainian authorities to investigate possible crimes. Poland and Lithuania are also part of the Joint Investigation Team.
Matilda Bogner, who heads the United Nations’ group investigating war crimes in Ukraine, said on April 28 that her team has probed “Russia’s indiscriminate use of weapons with wide explosive impact in civilian-populated areas, cases where civilians have been unlawfully killed in summary executions and the use of sexual violence, as well as other possible violations of human rights,” National Public Radio (NPR) reported.
Additionally, the European Union’s Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), has called for the establishment of an international criminal tribunal to “investigate and prosecute the crime of aggression allegedly committed by the political and military leadership of the Russian Federation.”
Based in the French city of Strasbourg, PACE said the tribunal should “have the power to issue international arrest warrants and not be limited by state immunity or the immunity of heads of state and government and other State officials.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on April 28 that more than 1 million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia since Feb. 24 when Putin ordered a renewed invasion of the country.
More than 180,000 of those allegedly deported are children.
Ukraine’s ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova has said the deportations are being done by force and President Volodymyr Zelensky has called such actions as a component of “genocide” against the nation.
The renewed invasion is part of a war that Putin has waged against Ukraine since 2014 when he ordered troops to seize Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and occupy parts of the easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
It is the biggest war on the European continent since World War II and has caused the displacement of a quarter of Ukraine’s population, with more than 5.6 million people fleeing the country, data from the United Nations says.
