Russian military commanders, as well as people at the very top of the Russian government, will be held to account for any war crimes in Ukraine, Britain’s armed forces minister said on Thursday.

“Russian commanders need to remember that war crimes are not just committed by those at the very top of the Russian government,” James Heappey told Sky News.

“They are committed all the way down the chain of command by all who are involved and these atrocities are being watched.

“They’re being catalogued and people will be held to account,” he added.

He said “the despicable bombing of a maternity hospital in Ukraine” is a war crime committed by Russian troops.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike in Mariupol was part of a “genocide” on his people.

Three people, including a child, were killed in the attack, according to the besieged city’s council.

A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by the combatants, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war.

Actions such as torture, hostage-taking, unnecessary destruction of civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and conscription of children in the military constitute war crime.

Other acts considered to be war crime are committing genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter even when there is surrender, and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.

The formal concept of war crimes emerged from the codification of the customary international law that applied to warfare between sovereign states, such as the Lieber Code (1863) of the Union Army in the American Civil War and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for international war.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the war-crime trials of the leaders of the Axis powers established the Nuremberg principles of law, such as the fact that international criminal law defines what is a war crime.

In 1949, the Geneva Conventions legally defined new war crimes and established that states could exercise universal jurisdiction over war criminals.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, international courts extrapolated and defined additional categories of war crimes applicable to a civil war. 

(Reuters/NAN)