Arrest warrant issued for Putin
Russian president accused of abducting Ukrainian children
The International Criminal Court on Friday issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin of Russia for war crimes, saying he bore individual criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children since Russia’s invasion last year.
Human rights groups hailed the warrant as an important step toward ending impunity for Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The likelihood of a trial while Putin remains in power appears slim, because the court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia has said it will not surrender its own officials. Still, the warrant deepens Putin’s isolation in the West and could limit his movements overseas.
The court also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights. She has been the public face of a Kremlin-sponsored program in which Ukrainian children and teenagers have been taken to Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry quickly dismissed the warrants, noting that it is not a party to the court.
The court said in a statement “that there are 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.”
The ICC does not recognize immunity for heads of state in cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
The Kremlin has denied accusations of war crimes but has not been secretive about the transfers of Ukrainian children to Russia, depicting them as adoptions of abandoned children and promoting the program as a patriotic and humanitarian effort.
“This is a big day for the many victims of crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine since 2014,” said Balkees Jarrah, the associate director for international justice at Human Rights Watch. “With these arrest warrants, the ICC has made Putin a wanted man and taken its first step to end the impunity that has emboldened perpetrators in Russia’s war against Ukraine for far too long.”
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said the announcement had “no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of
view.”
“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it,” she said. “Russia is not cooperating with this body,” calling any efforts by the ICC to make arrests “legally null and void for us.”
Ukrainian officials said the decision in effect branded Russia a criminal government and made the world a much smaller place for Putin. If the Russian leader travels to a state that is party to the ICC, that country must arrest him, according to its obligations under international law.
“This is just the beginning,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said in a statement.
But the court’s limitations are well known: Although it can indict sitting heads of state, it has no power to arrest them or bring them to trial, instead relying on other leaders and governments to act as its sheriffs around the world. This has been most prominently illustrated by the case of Sudan’s president, Omar al-bashir, who was indicted by the court but has been not been arrested in other countries where he has traveled.
A New York Times investigation published in October identified several Ukrainian children who had been taken away under Russia’s systematic resettlement efforts. They described a wrenching process of coercion, deception and force, and upon arrival in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, they are often placed in homes to become Russian citizens and subjected to reeducation efforts. Russia has defended the transfers on humanitarian grounds.
On Thursday, a United Nations commission of inquiry said Russia’s transfer of children and other civilians from Ukraine to Russia may amount to a war crime, observing that none of the cases they investigated were justified under international law. Ukraine has reported the transfer of 16,221 children to Russia, but the commission said it had not been able to verify the number.
The ICC’S chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has said the illegal transfers of children were a priority for his investigators. “Children cannot be treated as the spoils of war,” he said after visiting a children’s home in southern Ukraine this month that he said had been emptied as a result of alleged deportations.