The UK will send war crimes experts to investigate allegations of rapes, torture and killings of civilians in Ukraine, Britain announced today.
The team will arrive in Poland next month and support the Ukrainian government as the West builds a case to prosecute Vladimir Putin and his generals in the International Criminal Court.
They will include experts in conflict-related sexual violence, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who travelled to the court in The Hague for talks today with its President, said the west must “call out rape as a weapon in war - it’s done to subjugate women, to destroy communities, and we want to see it stopped.”
She added: "We’ve seen appalling war crimes committed, the use of rape and sexual violence.
"We will be sending in a British evidence-collecting team working with Ukrainian authorities, working with the ICC.”
It’s understood only four to six experts will be sent at first but more could follow. Officials could not say when or whether they would move on from Poland to Ukraine, for security reasons.
Ms Truss rebuffed calls for an additional Nuremberg-style tribunal as called for by many campaigners, saying it might distract from core work.
It comes two weeks after Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine were declared war crimes in an interim report ordered by 45 countries.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation and Europe (OSCE) said Russia’s attack that killed 300 people sheltering in the Mariupol Theatre was “most likely… an egregious violation” of humanitarian law and “those who ordered or executed it committed a war crime”.
It also dismissed Russia 's claims that its attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol was “fake news”, saying the attack “must have been deliberate”.
The Foreign Office today said the report “found credible evidence of torture, rape, the killing of civilians and the forced deportation of more than half a million people in Ukraine.”
The report only covered up to April 1 so excluded the mass graves discovered in Bucha, an atrocity Boris Johnson said “doesn’t look far short of genocide”.
Yesterday Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence issued photos of the ‘despicable ten’ Russian soldiers it accused of taking part in the Bucha massacre.
Ukraine today accepted it was taking heavy losses in Russia’s attack on the east of the country - but insisted Russia’s losses were worse.
US President Joe Biden called on Congress to send as much as $33bn to help Kyiv withstand the attack.
Russia fired two missiles at the capital Kyiv during a visit on Thursday by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres - which Ukraine called an attack on the United Nations itself.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace yesterday warned Putin could declare a new "war" on the western world as part of a May 9 Victory Day next week.
Mr Wallace told LBC Radio: “I would not be surprised and I don't have any information about this, that he is probably going to declare on this May day that we're now at war with the world's Nazis and we need to mass mobilise the Russian people.
“Which is actually a pathetic attempt to cover the fact that actually his generals have sent thousands of men to their deaths because of their incompetence and arrogance and his ego.”
The Russian President has described his enemies as the West as Nazis.
Mr Wallace insisted he was not “rattled” and the “deluded” Russian leader was “outgunned and outnumbered” by Nato forces.
He added Britain was doing everything it could to avert a third world war, saying: “I mean, the sabre-rattling is actually quite consistent.
“He might use different words, but he's been banging on like that for a good few weeks now.
“I think that's what he's teeing up because actually, to mass mobilise the Russian reserves is an admission of failure, you know, from a man who thought he'd get Ukraine in a couple of days.
“So he's going to try and link it, I think, with the Second World War.”
