The international criminal court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.
The court’s pre-trial judges assessed there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children”.
The judges considered issuing secret warrants but decided that making them public, as it could “contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes”.
“A historic decision,” commented Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andrij Kostin. “I am personally grateful to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, we continue close cooperation with the ICC in cases of forced deportation of Ukrainian children. Over 40 volumes of files, more than 1,000 pages of evidence already shared with the court.”
The Kremlin commented on the news, calling it “outrageous and unacceptable” to raise the issue of Putin’s arrest. Spokesman Dmitri Peskov recalled how Russia “does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court, any of its decisions are null and void from the point of view of law.”
“The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. No need to explain where this paper should be used,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Twitter.
“The decisions of the international criminal court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” the foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on her Telegram channel. “Russia is not a party to the Rome statute of the international criminal court and bears no obligations under it.”
Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, welcomed the news on social media, adding: “Its just the beginning.”
Russia’s dismissal of the arrest warrant may be factually accurate but the ICC’s move carries a lot of weight when considered from the perspective of global relations.
