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The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on Friday against Russian President Vladimir Putin, holding him accountable for war crimes committed in Ukraine.
Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations of atrocities during the year-long invasion of its neighbour. A spokesman for Russia’s foreign ministry said the arrest warrant against Putin “doesn’t mean anything.”
“The decision of the International Criminal Court has no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” said the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova on her Telegram channel. “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it.”
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin on suspicion of illegal deportation of children and illegal transfer of persons from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
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Putin is only the third president to be issued an ICC arrest warrant, after Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.
Separately, the court issued a warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for children’s rights, on the same charges.
The president of the court, Piotr Hofmanski, said in a video statement that when the ICC judges have issued a warrant, it will be up to the international community to implement them. Courts do not have their own police force to enforce warrants.
“The ICC does its job as a court of law. The judges issue arrest warrants. The execution depends on international cooperation.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia found the questions raised by the ICC “outrageous and unacceptable,” and that the court’s decision was “null and void” against Russia.
ICC: Putin likely to hold ‘criminal responsibility’
A possible trial for Russians at the ICC remains a long way off, as Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction and does not extradite its citizens.
However, the warrant means Putin could be arrested and sent to The Hague if he travels to an ICC member state.
Ukraine is also not a member of the court, but has granted the ICC jurisdiction over the region and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has visited four times since opening the investigation a year ago.
Senior Ukrainian officials applauded the ICC decision, with the country’s Attorney General Andriy Kostin hailing it as “historic for Ukraine and the entire international legal system.”
Andriy Yermak, the president’s chief of staff, said issuing the warrant was “just the beginning.”
The ICC said that the pre-trial chamber found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each of the suspects is responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation of the population and illegal transfer of the population from the territory occupied by Ukraine to the Russian Federation, with prejudice. of children – Ukrainian boy.”
The court statement said that “there are sufficient reasons to believe that Mr. . properly to the civil and military subordinates who committed the act.”
On Thursday, a UN-backed inquiry cited Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine, including torture and systematic killings in occupied territories, among potential issues of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
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The sweeping investigation also uncovered crimes committed against Ukrainians on Russian territory, including deported Ukrainian children who could not be reunited with their families, a “filtration” system targeting Ukrainians for detention, and torture and inhumane detention conditions. humane.
News of the arrest warrant comes ahead of a planned state visit to Moscow next week by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which is likely to forge closer ties between Russia and China like those between Moscow and the West.
Russia has been placed under unprecedented Western sanctions since sending tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
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