According to report, since the first international tribunals were set up in Nuremberg and Tokyo after the Second World War, leaders have been prosecuted for actions in countries including Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda.
Slobodan Milosevic was put on trial for crimes against humanity by a UN tribunal in The Hague, dying in his cell before the verdict in 2000.
Radovan Karadzic, his Bosnian Serb ally, and the Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, were prosecuted successfully and sentenced to life.
US president Joe Biden has finally
called Vladimir Putin a "war criminal", raising the prospect of the
Russian leader one day being prosecuted in an international court and jailed
over his invasion of Ukraine.
A global effort is already underway to pursue Mr Putin legally but the process will be complex, and ultimately would depend on him losing power and having to leave Russia, allowing him to be arrested.
David Crane, former chief prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, which tried former Liberian President Charles Taylor, said: "Clearly, Putin is a war criminal. But the president is speaking politically on this. We're at the beginning of the beginning."
However, he said there could be charges within a year.
For Mr Putin the likeliest route for prosecution would appear to be the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which prosecutes crimes committed after 2002.
It is the world’s first permanent international criminal court and prosecutes individual officials.
An ICC investigation has already been opened into the war in Ukraine and individual nations are gathering evidence to contribute to it.
That includes the US where the
State Department is compiling details of incidents including the Russian strike
on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, the seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear
plant, and cluster-bombings of civilian targets.
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