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Ukraine crisis

Sweden Sending Police Officers To Ukraine To Investigate Russian War Crimes

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The Swedish government has announced it will be sending a delegation of police to Ukraine to investigate possible war crimes committed by Russian forces during the invasion of Ukraine.

Swedish Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer, a member of the centre-right Moderates, announced that he believed Russia had committed war crimes in the country. The announcement follows the issuing of an arrest warrant for President Putin by an international court on war crimes allegations.

“We are at a point where it is no longer a question of if all the war crimes that Russia is guilty of in Ukraine should be prosecuted, but how it should be done,” Strömmer said, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

Along with contributing around £550,000/$675,000 and sending three prosecutors and six investigators to work on looking into Russian war crimes, the Swedish police authority will also be sending officers to a field office in Kyiv.

“The field office is being set up right now and will grow over time. At the initial stage, it is a matter of hiring three investigators from the Swedish side,” Strömmer said.

The allocation of the funding and the deployment of officers comes despite Sweden itself being desperately short of experienced police officers, with the country struggling to face down spiking levels of violent crime.

The Swedish move is in cooperation with the  International Criminal Court (ICC), which put out an arrest warrant last week for Russian President Vladimir Putin after accusing the Russian leader of carrying out war crimes.

ICC president President Judge Piotr Hofmański spoke out about the warrant for Putin and  Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna, which claims that Russia has kidnapped children from Ukraine and moved them to Russia.

“It is forbidden by international law for occupying powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to other territories,” ICC president President Judge Piotr Hofmański said Friday.

How the arrests will be executed is unclear as Russia pulled out of the Rome Statute agreement for the ICC in 2016 and Ukraine had never ratified the statute, although the country did sign it. The United States is also not a party to the court and has previously threatened it over potential war crimes investigations over its pursual of the Afghanistan war.

The arrest warrants came just days after Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced that regime change in Moscow was the end goal in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now — because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically — and what are the impacts also on society, and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia,” Joly said.

“The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account,” she noted.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

Escalation: NATO Spain Sending More Tanks, Military Vehicles to Ukraine

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Spanish Minister of Defence Margarita Robles has announced that her country will be providing an additional four Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks to Ukraine, along with more infantry vehicles.

Minister Robles announced that the four new Leopard tanks would be sent to Ukraine following the first batch of six tanks, which are being prepared to be shipped to aid the Ukrainian war effort against Russian forces.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had pledged to send the additional tanks during his second visit to Ukraine since the outbreak of the Russian invasion several weeks prior, with only Germany promising to deliver more Leopards to Ukraine, El Mundo reports.

Alongside the Leopards, Spain will be sending a new batch of TOA M-113 infantry vehicles — but so far no specific number has been released.

Spain has trained 55 Ukrainian personnel on operating the Leopard tanks already, equal to around ten crews.

Countries across Europe and North America have sent equipment and ammunition to Ukraine over the course of the war but the impact on the militaries of those countries is beginning to take its toll.

Britain’s Defence Select Committee warned earlier this month that the country was running “dangerously low” on ammunition after sending military aid to Ukraine.

“It is clear that the UK and its NATO Allies have allowed ammunition stockpiles to dwindle to dangerously low levels,” the committee report said, adding that it could take over a decade to replace ammunition stocks.

The new supply of Spanish tanks comes as Ukrainian forces are on the back foot in the eastern city of Bakhmut, with Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) stating that the PMC Wagner group has taken around half of the city.

Ukraine has also suffered large air strikes in recent weeks, with one attack earlier this month seeing Ukrainian infrastructure pounded by 90 missiles and drones in a single day, killing at least six people.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.