Boris Johnson does not back calls for the assassination of Vladimir Putin, but wants to see the Russian president held to account in front of an international court, Downing Street has said.
A No 10 spokesperson said the PM does not agree with US Senator Lindsey Graham, who has called for ‘somebody in Russia’ to assassinate the president in order to bring the invasion of Ukraine to an end.
Mr Johnson thinks Putin and his associates should instead be tried by an international court for the war crimes they have ordered in Ukraine, the spokesperson said.
The comments came as former prime minister Gordon Brown called for the creation of a special tribunal to try those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine, modelled on the Nuremburg trials of prominent Nazis after the Second World War.
And the Metropolitan Police announced that officers from its war crimes team are gathering evidence in support of the International Criminal Court’s investigation into alleged atrocities in Ukraine, announced on Wednesday.
Commander Richard Smith, head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, which includes the war crimes team, said that evidence “could be in the form of direct messages, images or videos that friends or relatives here in the UK have been sent by those in Ukraine. Or it could be somebody who was previously in Ukraine and who may have witnessed or even been a victim of a war crime and has since travelled to the UK”.
Sen Graham has sparked controversy in the US by calling for those in the higher echelons of the Russian regime to emulate the killers of Julius Caesar and the high-ranking Germans who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
“Is there a Brutus in Russia?” he asked. “Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?
“The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.”
Asked whether Mr Johnson would echo the senator’s call, the Downing Street spokesperson said: “No. We stand with the Ukrainian people in demanding the immediate end to the Russian invasion.
“We have said before that Putin must be held to account before an international court for the horrific acts he has committed.”
Mr Johnson said in the House of Commons on Wednesday that the indiscriminate use of military firepower against civilians in cities including Kharkiv meant that Putin’s acts already amount to war crimes.
Mr Brown joined Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba at an online event organised by the Chatham House think-tank today to call for a special tribunal to try Putin and his accomplices.
Mr Brown said: “Ukraine wants our full support to expose and punish the crime of aggression, and that can be done by setting up a special tribunal on the lines proposed in 1942.
“President Putin has posed a fateful challenge to the post-1945 international order. He has sought to replace the rule of law with a misuse of force... This act of aggression cannot go uninvestigated, unprosecuted or unpunished.”
But Downing Street indicated that the prime minister backs trial at the existing International Criminal Court in The Hague, which today dispatched investigators to Ukraine to start looking into possible war crimes by either side.
The No 10 spokesperson said: “We support them and their work. It is important that Putin and the Russian government are held to account for what they have done.”
The ICC’s top prosecutor Karim Khan said his office would see if there was evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity or acts of genocide.
Asked about reports of artillery strikes in Ukraine’s towns and cities, Khan said: “Any side that targets - directly targets - civilians or civilian objects is committing a crime under the Rome Statute and under international humanitarian law.
“The law of war continues to apply and we have clear jurisdiction. This is a reminder to all factions, to all parties to the conflict, that they must conduct themselves in compliance with the laws of war.”
If war crimes are found to have been committed in Ukraine, Khan said, his office would follow the evidence up the chain of command, to the highest levels of political and military office.
“Anybody involved in conflict needs to realise they don’t have a licence to commit crimes,” he said.
Russia denies targeting civilians and says its aim is to “disarm” Ukraine and arrest leaders it falsely calls neo-Nazis.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), which has 123 member states, prosecutes individuals responsible for the worst atrocities when a country is unable or unwilling to do so.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC. Moscow does not recognise the tribunal, but Ukraine signed a declaration in 2014 giving the court jurisdiction over alleged grave crimes committed on its territory after that date.
