An advance team has left the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for "the Ukraine region" to start investigating possible war crimes, its top prosecutor has said.
Their departure came hours after Prosecutor Karim Khan said he would start collecting evidence as part of a formal investigation launched after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February.
"Yesterday I formulated a team and today they are moving to the region," Mr Khan said.
"It's an advanced team, comprised of investigators, lawyers, but also those with particular experience in operational planning."
Mr Khan said his office would be examining possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - the offences under the court's jurisdiction - by all parties in the conflict.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC, and Moscow does not recognise the court, which was established in 1997 by the Rome Statute and opened in The Hague in 2002.
Though not a member of the ICC, Ukraine signed a declaration in 2014 giving the court jurisdiction over alleged grave crimes committed on its territory from 2014 onwards regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators.
Laws of War
The ICC, which has 123 member states, prosecutes individuals responsible for the worst atrocities when a country is unable or unwilling to do so.
"The law of war continues to apply and we have clear jurisdiction," Mr Khan said.
"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."
Asked about attacks with cluster bombs and artillery strikes in Ukraine's towns and cities, Mr 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. That much is clear."
The investigation will also look back to 2014, when Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea region and began providing support to armed separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
The prosecutor's 2020 annual report based on preliminary investigations cited suspected war crimes, including killings and torture in Crimea and attacks on civilians, torture, murder and rape in eastern Ukraine.
If war crimes are found to have been committed in Ukraine, Mr 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.
'All of humanity' at risk from nuclear threat over Ukraine: UN
The UN human rights chief slammed Russia's attack on Ukraine, warning of a "massive impact" on the rights of millions and cautioning that heightened nuclear threat levels showed all of humanity was at risk.
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet warned that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched a week ago, "is generating massive impact on the human rights of millions of people across Ukraine".
"Elevated threat levels for nuclear weapons underline the gravity of the risks to all of humanity," she added.
Her comments, during an urgent council debate on the Ukraine conflict, came after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday ordered Russia's nuclear forces be put on high alert.
Earlier today, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Western politicians of fixating on nuclear war.
"It is clear that World War III can only be nuclear," Mr Lavrov said in an online interview with Russian and foreign media.
"I would like to point out that it's in the heads of Western politicians that the idea of a nuclear war is spinning constantly, and not in the heads of Russians," he said.
Russia has the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic missiles which form the backbone of the country's deterrence forces.
Ms Bachelet's speech came as UN figures showed the devastating week-old war had already forced more than one million people to flee Ukraine into neighbouring nations, with countless others displaced inside the war-ravaged country.
Ms Bachelet said her office had recorded 227 civilian deaths, including at least 15 children, but stressed that the real numbers were likely far higher.
