Barely a week into the war in Ukraine, world leaders and criminal lawyers are accusing Russia's President Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes, and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has announced he has launched an investigation into possible war crimes or crimes against humanity.

British Prime Minster Boris Johnson yesterday told the UK Parliament that the bombing of innocent civilians "already fully qualifies as a war crime".

The Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC this week argued that the case against Putin was clear.

"He's guilty of the crime of aggression," Robertsontold the ABC.

"Invading a country, causing innocent civilians to die in their hundreds and thousands, and by breaching the UN charter that protects the sovereignty of independent countries, there's no doubt that he's guilty of a crime against humanity."

Under the statute that established the ICC, an act of aggression means "the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state". That includes invasion, military occupation and annexation by the use of force or the blockade of ports.

Intentionally targeting civilians or civilian buildings is also considered a war crime under international humanitarian law. Russia denies it engages in illegal attacks but proof of any use of illegal weaponry such as cluster bombs and any targeting of civilians or civilian buildings like schools and hospitals is already being collated.

Conflicts in the 21st century and the crimes that are committed are documented closely and shared widely. This has been dubbed the world's first "TikTok War".Everything will be used to build a case and researchers will be collecting video from social media sites and phones, as well as footage from dash cams.

The ICC doesn't prosecute states, it goes after individuals. Putin would be held responsible for any crimes committed by Russia's military, security services and any other Russian state agencies. The court is also sure to turn its attention to the actions of other individuals - including Putin's generals and the Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

The case will be built methodically, but it will be a long time before Putin or his military leaders will be brought to justice, if they ever are.

As we saw with the Yugoslav trials, it took many years to bring to justice those responsible for the war crimes committed in those conflicts.

The trial of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was the most important war crimes case since the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Milosevic was charged with crimes relating to the bloody Balkan wars of the 1990s. He was arrested in 2001, the trial began in 2002 and he died in custody in 2006.

It took even longer to convict other political and military leaders for crimes committed in those wars. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, was arrested in 2008 and found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2016. His General, Ratko Mladic, evaded justice and remained on the run for many years until he was captured and extradited to the Hague in 2011. He was convicted in 2017.

In 2022, the problem the court would have in bringing any case against Putin is that Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016. If the Russian President was charged, he would have to be arrested in a country that accepts the court's jurisdiction.

No one believes Putin will be put on trial in the near future, but international criminal lawyers like Geoffrey Robertson say it is important to start the process now. Justice, he says, did eventually come for Milosevic.

"It may be 20 or 30 years hence in which an old, crippled-in-a-wheelchair Putin will be wheeled in and prosecuted and given up by a new Russia that wants to unblock its copybook," Roberston says. But,"it's always possible and it's important that [any] evidence of his guilt should be amassed and be available if and when that happens."

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Putin has been accused of committing war crimes. But could the International Criminal Court bring him to justice? - ABC News