Evidence gathered in Ukraine points towards war crimes being committed and the blame lies with Vladimir Putin, a British defence minister has said, echoing Joe Biden who called the Russian leader “a war criminal”.
Asked if the Russian president was indeed a war criminal, the defence minister, James Heappey, told Sky News: “I’ve not pulled my punches when I’ve been on your show. I think the evidence that is being gathered points very much towards war crimes being committed and the culpability for war crimes sits absolutely with the leader of the Russian government, the man who decided to do all this in the first place.
“It’s not just Putin who ends up being responsible for war crimes as and when the evidence is gathered and people are held to account. Every single person in the military chain of command can not just hide behind the line of “they’re only following orders”, they too are involved in the prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine. This is a stain on the Russian nation.”
Biden told reporters on Wednesday Putin was “a war criminal” over his country’s invasion of Ukraine, triggering outrage in Moscow, and has since followed up the comments by branding the Russian president a “murderous dictator”.
The remarks came in a week when the Russians bombed a theatre in the battered port city of Mariupol that was sheltering hundreds of civilians.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in its latest update on Ukraine that Russian forces “have made minimal progress this week”.
“Ukrainian forces around Kyiv and Mykolaiv continue to frustrate Russian attempts to encircle the cities. The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled and subject to heavy Russian shelling.
“The UN now states that the number of refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine has already surpassed 3.2 million. This number will continue to rise as a result of ongoing Russian aggression.”
Heappey was asked about reports that a foreign agent had been able to call the secretary of state for defence, Ben Wallace, on a Microsoft Teams video call.
Wallace is said to have become suspicious about the caller’s intentions and terminated the conversation after 10 minutes.
He ordered an investigation into the security breach but there are serious questions about Whitehall security after the home secretary, Priti Patel, said she was similarly targeted last week.
Heappey told Sky News: “The SoS has asked some pretty tough questions of the department as to how that was able to happen and he acknowledges it shouldn’t have done.
“Ben is a guy who understands threat very well; he spent a long time as our nation’s security minister before he was promoted to secretary of state. He was acutely aware he was on Microsoft Teams call and therefore he would not ever disclose any sensitive details on a platform that could be very easily intercepted and listened in to.
“The call therefore was pretty bland and when the caller started to ask more pointed questions about our intentions militarily in the region, Ben knew full well that that’s not the sort of question that anyone would normally ask on Teams, so he became pretty suspicious and terminated the call.”
