Warrant from criminal court pierces Putin's aura of impunity
The International Criminal Court accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest Friday, a highly symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a year ago.
The court cited Putin's responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children, thousands of whom have been sent to Russia since the invasion. It also issued a warrant for Russia's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the public face of the Kremlinsponsored program that transfers the children out of Ukraine.
There is little prospect of Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime soon.
The International Criminal Court cannot try defendants in absentia, and Russia, which is not a party to the court, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”
Yet the court's move carried indisputable moral weight, putting Putin in the same ranks as Omar alBashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader imprisoned for abuses during the Balkan Wars; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World War II.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility,” said the court, which was created two decades ago to investigate war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Both Russians, the court said, bore “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.”
As a practical matter, the warrant could restrict Putin's travels, since he could face arrest in any of the 123 countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court — a list that includes virtually all European countries and
several in Africa and Latin America, but not China or the United States.
Human right activists and Ukrainian officials hailed the warrants as proof that Putin and his lieutenants could no longer act with impunity in Ukraine. For Putin, who already operates with a tight circle of advisers in the Kremlin, it makes the world a smaller place — even as he plans to welcome President Xi Jinping of China, perhaps his most powerful ally, to Moscow next week.
The warrants also shine a light on one of the most harrowing, poignant subplots of Russia's brutal war: the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children and teenagers to Russia or Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine. Many are orphans, but Ukrainian officials say that others were separated from their parents or legal guardians. Russia has acknowledged transferring 2,000 children; Ukrainian officials say they have confirmed 16,000 cases.
“It would be impossible to carry out such a criminal operation without the order of the top leader of the terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in a video statement.