Originally published 2022-04-07.
In early April 2022, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson released a video message addressed directly to the people of Russia. He urged them to look for independent information about the war in Ukraine, told them that the killings of civilians were being hidden from them, and said the war was a stain on the honour of Russia. The Associated Press reported the message on 5 April 2022, days after the discovery of civilian bodies in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
Here is what Johnson said, why he chose to speak over the Kremlin's head, how former prime minister Gordon Brown's call for a war crimes trial fits in, and what happened to those accusations later.
What Johnson told Russians
The message was short and personal in tone. Johnson argued that Vladimir Putin was keeping the truth from his own people because he knew they would not accept it. In the AP's account, he said Putin "knows that if you could see what was happening, you would not support his war."
He described the crimes in Ukraine as a betrayal of every Russian mother who proudly sends a son into the army, and warned that the stain on Russia's honour would grow with every day the war continued. He also made a clear distinction between the leader and the people, saying he could not believe Putin was acting in their name.
Johnson switched briefly into Russian for one line, and he pointed out that ordinary Russians could still reach independent news with a simple VPN connection, despite the blocking of foreign media and social networks inside Russia.
Why it came after Bucha
The timing was not accidental. Russian forces had withdrawn from the area north of Kyiv at the end of March, and on 1 April Ukrainian troops entered Bucha. Images of dead civilians lying in the streets were seen around the world.
Local authorities later recovered 458 bodies in the town, most with signs of violent death. A UN human rights report in December 2022 documented unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 73 civilians in Bucha, with dozens more cases under investigation. Moscow called the scenes staged, but satellite images taken in mid-March, while Russian troops still held the town, showed bodies in the same places where they were later filmed.
Johnson responded to Bucha by promising more sanctions and more military aid. The video to the Russian public was another part of that response: an attempt to break through state television's version of the war.
Gordon Brown's call for a war crimes trial
At around the same time, Gordon Brown, who led the UK government from 2007 to 2010, argued that Putin should face criminal prosecution. According to the Hull Daily Mail's report, Brown said the evidence of planning and launching an invasion was clear enough for a quick indictment, and compared the situation to international justice efforts for Rwanda, Liberia and the former Yugoslavia. He suggested that arrest warrants could cover members of Putin's inner circle as well as the president himself.
Brown's argument focused on the crime of aggression, the act of launching an illegal war. That point matters, because the International Criminal Court's power to try aggression is very limited when the accused country, like Russia, has not accepted the court's jurisdiction. This is why Brown and others pressed for a separate special tribunal.
The ICC arrest warrant of 2023
Almost a year later, part of that call was answered from a different direction. On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova. The charges concern the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, which the court classifies as war crimes.
The Russian government does not recognise the court's jurisdiction and dismissed the warrant. It nonetheless has practical effects: the 120-plus member states of the ICC are expected to arrest Putin if he enters their territory, which has shaped his foreign travel ever since.
Britain's role and Europe's divisions
By spring 2022 the UK had become one of Ukraine's most visible backers, supplying anti-tank weapons before and after the invasion and pushing for tougher sanctions. President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly praised Britain as a leading ally, while criticising some European governments, including those of France and Germany, for moving too slowly in the first weeks of the war.
Germany and other European countries were heavily dependent on Russian natural gas. Their caution reflected fears that Moscow would cut supplies and push Europe into an energy crisis and recession, fears that were partly realised later in 2022 when Russian gas deliveries through the Nord Stream pipeline were reduced and then halted.
Johnson himself visited Kyiv on 9 April 2022, walking through the city centre with Zelensky days after the Bucha revelations.
Did appeals like this reach Russians?
Johnson's video was one of several direct appeals from Western figures, including Arnold Schwarzenegger's widely shared message in March 2022. Their reach inside Russia is hard to measure. Independent Russian media had been shut down or forced abroad, Facebook and Instagram were blocked, and new laws punished "false information" about the army with long prison sentences.
VPN use in Russia did surge after the invasion, so some messages got through. But opinion polls conducted inside Russia, which must be read with caution under wartime censorship, continued to show majority support for the war. Speeches alone could not change that.
What the message did document clearly is how Western leaders framed the conflict at that moment: as Putin's war rather than the Russian people's, with accountability for war crimes at the centre.
Sources: AP via 3 News Now, 5 April 2022; Wikipedia: Bucha massacre; OPB/NPR, 17 March 2023: ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin; Wikipedia: Peace negotiations in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
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