Russian troops have ‘tacit permission’ to use rape as a weapon, says lawyer

A top human rights lawyer in charge of gathering evidence to prosecute Russia for war crimes has said troops have “tacit permission” to rape civilians.

Russian troops have 'tacit permission' to rape Ukrainian civilians says Baroness Kennedy

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, who is part of a legal taskforce helping to build war crimes cases in Ukraine, said evidence so far shows “serious offences of a grievous kind” have been committed by Russian troops against citizens.

Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, she said: “One of the things is that a change has taken place internationally in the recognition of rape as a weapon of war and what that means is not that an instruction is given from the top to go out there and rape citizens, women and girls and anybody else, but it’s about the sort of tacit permission that’s given.

“(It’s) the way in which no-one is brought to book or called into line or disciplined and so that gives an immunity to soldiers on the ground they know that this is permissible.”

Reports of rape adds to a growing body of evidence of war crimes in the war-torn country.

The Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Team, a unit within its counter-terrorism command (CTC), said it had already received around 50 referrals from people with a link to the UK, including those who have directly fled the conflict in the last two months since Russia began invading.

Baroness Kennedy said: “There are many crimes, we’ve witnessed them on our news: bombing residential areas, bombing hospitals and orphanages, the business of bombing the theatre where it was quite clear that citizens, civilians, were in hiding and the word children was plastered on the ground so any aerial bombardment could see what they were dealing with and yet they bombed that place to smithereens, those are crimes.”

The International Criminal Court has “already embarked upon an investigation”, she said.