ABSTRACT
The British Government has been at the forefront of the call for war crimes investigations into the conduct of Russian forces in Ukraine, marshalling 38 other countries to refer the situation to the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC in The Hague for investigation. Collecting evidence on crimes and how they form a pattern that links them to Russian military and political leaders will be vital in achieving meaningful accountability. But this chapter questions whether the UK’s position (and that of the investigation) is undermined by its own record of investigative failures in relation to allegations raised against UK forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. By the UK adopting a legally focused scheme of denial, delay, and ineffective and opaque inquiries over nearly two decades (with the ICC Chief Prosecutor’s 2020 Final Report on Iraq tacitly accepting the success of such tactics), it has demonstrated how accountability for systemic war crimes can be avoided. Considering the obvious and ongoing disregard for International Humanitarian Law by Russian forces, the chapter asks: how may the experience of this accountability failure in relation to the UK be used to improve the prospects for meaningful justice in the case of Ukraine?
