Edit: There is no such thing as "willingness to prosecute" in EU, all crimes must and will be prosecuted here (the officials of many states even said so). This applies to French foreing legions too. People with dual citizenship are treated specially, each state has their own rules for that situation (sometimes approval of the other state is needed, sometimes not). Dual nationality without dual citizenship means nothing.
UK has stated you won’t be prosecuted https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60542877?ns_mchan...
Edit: as pointed out below, has stated they will “support” citizens taking up the fight, not explicitly that they will not be prosecuted.
Truss seems to be saying that the UK government wouldn't support prosecutions, but that's not the same as it being legal. And prosecution decisions are made independently by the CPS, not the government.
Depends on the position one takes in philosophy of law and jurisprudence. From a legal realist perspective, it is the same, because an unenforced law is not a law at all.
> And prosecution decisions are made independently by the CPS, not the government.
The UK government has the power to overrule the CPS and discontinue any prosecution, through the Attorney-General’s power of nolle prosequi. That legal procedure is rarely used, because generally if the Attorney-General merely privately threatens the CPS with use of this power, that is enough for them to back down and discontinue a prosecution.
A real world example is when the government pressured the SFO to discontinue prosecution of bribery charges relating to defence industry deals with Saudi Arabia, on the grounds that the prosecution would harm the UK’s relationship with that country.
If the UK government clearly communicates a policy that UK citizens are allowed to fight for the Ukrainian government, there is zero chance of the CPS prosecuting any of them for doing so. The CPS would likely not even have to be threatened, their “public interest” determination is supposed to show deference to the government’s foreign policy, they’d drop the idea all on their own.
"British subject" could be defined as "British subject", which is a special type of British nationality that's not even used anymore, and furthermore, strictly speaking Russia is not at war with Ukraine, because there never was a declaration of war.
Of course in 1870 when the law was written nation states still used to declare war on each other, but since the UN decided that war is wrong and laid very strict rules on when you can declare war, nobody has done that ever since. So no declaration of war.
Outside of British jurisdiction, and very difficult evidence wise.
Are you saying that Brits can kill anyone outside of their country and not be prosecuted in Britain if found? That would make one nice supplier of murderers for hire to other countries. Come for a day, kill someone, get back and get paid.
What? This is nonsense. At least in Ireland, prosecutors have plenty of discretion not to push a case "because it is not in the public interest". And I'm quite sure other European countries don't all prosecute every alleged crime equally.
This is flat out wrong.
> Beware, it's criminal to fight in a foreign army for most EU citizens.
We've got a law like that in my country too, and there's no exception for dual citizens. Except it's only ever been enforced in two cases where some individuals went to fight for ISIS. They don't care one bit if you're in the armed forces of a friendly nation.
Czech citizens have been in prison over French foreign legion membership.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/liz-truss-says...
Russia has no business whatsoever in the internal or foreign affairs of Ukraine that don't concern them.
The Soviet Union placing ICBMs 100 miles from Florida is very much a threat.
While the threat of violence always underlies the balance of power, countries have to form some basis of civil agreement in order for things to work.
In your example, imagine if you had to personal carry a gun to ensure your own safety and the fulfilment of contracts. That's not going to work.
Russia has every right to lament treatment of Russian minority, at the same time, it was created by them.
Russia has been very, very directly interfering in Ukranian politics and trying to turn it into a vassal state for the last 30 years.
The Russian occupation in 2014 definitely created the 'permanent line of violence' in Donbas, which they are now using as a pretext for invasion.
As the commenter noted: Russia can fuck themselves. In a world where nobody is perfect, they are 'bad actors' and particularly they have a lot of weapons which they throw around in that context. Screw them.
US/EU options are limited because of NATO, WW3 outcomes, but we should take every other opportunity to help Ukraine.
What the Ukranians have been doing in the last few days is nothing short of heroic.
In many ways, the US and China have each been trying to do very much the same thing as Russia, just taking different routes to doing so. China uses golden handcuffs in Africa and Southeast Asia (plus some strong arming of its direct neighbors), the USA uses direct handouts (cash and goods) and the promise of coming to the military aid of a country to keep others from building up their own economies or arsenals while allowing the US to host their airbases and missile silos around the world, and Russia just takes the direct approach of strong-arming its neighbors into becoming vassal states.
There is no single EU criminal law, each state has its own laws on both substantive criminal law and criminal procedure. What you’ve just said is a sweeping generalisation which might have some truth for some countries (it is true in principle for German law, although even German law has room for exceptions), but it is false for others (for example, Irish law is based on the English common law tradition, and so has prosecutorial discretion much as the England or the US do.)
Unlike French law, German law does have a principle of compulsory prosecution – a prosecutor has a legal duty to prosecute every serious crime of which they become aware – but the principle has collided with the reality that German prosecutors simply don't have the funding or resources to carry out that principle in practice. It really functions as an ideal rather than a reality. And increasingly, German law is being reformed to acknowledge that reality of prosecutorial discretion – a good example is StPO § 153 [1], under which prosecutors can formally decline to prosecute a crime if doing so would not be in the public interest – although unlike the English or French system, German prosecutors must seek the approval of a judge to do so.
I think you are from a European country which has a German-derived legal system, and are falsely generalising from that to the entire EU, ignoring that France (and I would assume other European countries with French-derived legal systems) approach this issue rather differently. You also seem to be focusing on the theoretical principles underlying German-based legal systems, unaware that those principles are often more theory than practice.
[0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2433732
There's only ever been willingness to enforce that law if you joined a terrorist group or the Russian army.