An advance team left the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for "the Ukraine region" on Thursday to start investigating possible war crimes, its top prosecutor told Reuters in an interview.
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 that began on Feb. 24.
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 recognize the court, which was established in 1997 by the Rome Statute and opened in The Hague in 2002.