Int’l Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Putin
AMSTERDAM — Ukrainian leadership has hailed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Russia said the action is “outrageous” and meaningless.
On Friday, the court issued the warrant not only for Putin but also for his commissioner of children’s rights, Maria LvovaBelova for alleged war crimes in Ukraine involving the forced deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia.
“This means that they can now be arrested on the territory of countries that have signed the Rome Statute,” the head of the presidential office in Kyiv, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram, in reference to the law establishing the court.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the court’s decision, called Putin actions “evil,” and said thousands of children had been harmed by Kremlin orders.
“Separating children from their families, depriving them of any possibility of contact with their relatives, hiding them on Russian territory, distributing them in distant regions — all this is obviously Russian state policy, it is state decisions, it is state evil,” he said in a Friday night video address.
The actual prosecution and trial of Putin for war crimes is unlikely, since Russia will not send him to The Hague, Netherlands, where the U.N.backed court is located.
But the warrant could complicate Putin’s life and limit his travel opportunities, as he could be arrested if he goes to a country that supports the court.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin praised the decision as a signal to the world that the “Russian regime” was criminal.
“World leaders will now think three times before shaking hands with him [Putin] or sitting down at the negotiating table with him,” he said.
Ukrainian investigators estimate Russia has abducted more than 16,000 children from the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Kherson. Kyiv has so far managed to bring back 308 children.
Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the warrant “outrageous and unacceptable,” according to the state-run TASS news agency.
“Russia — like a number of other states — does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court. Accordingly, decisions of this kind are insignificant for
Russia from the legal point of view,” he said.
Also in Russia, prominent foreign policy expert Leonid Slutsky reacted with fury to the news, saying “such accusations are simply outrageous, they don’t even fall under the definition of absurd.”
In Germany, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann supported the decision.
“Anyone who has instigated a bloody war like Putin should have to answer for it in court,” Buschmann told the news agency RND. He said the arrest warrant now issued for war crimes was an “important signal of determination.”