Russia quits ICC in rejection of current Western world order
Last week, the International Criminal Court ( ICC) published a report that recognized the integration of Crimea into Russia as a military conflict between Russia and Ukraine and classified it as an occupation.
This has triggered contempt from Russia’s political circle and the public. In retaliation, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally withdrew his country’s signature from the founding statute of the ICC.
No matter how the ICC defined Russia’s actions in Crimea or why the West accused Russia of supporting Ukraine’s separatist forces, judging from the confrontational words between Russia and the ICC, Russia and Western countries hold completely different understandings of Crimea’s inclusion into Russia.
Russia believed that after former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was impeached, Ukraine had no legitimate government. For a long time, Russia did not admit the legitimacy of the new government.
But Western countries hold a contrary view. They thought that Petro Poroshenko took power from the Yanukovych administration and there was no period of regime vacuum. Any Russian action must have the permission from the Ukrainian government as a sovereign state, or else it would be illegal.
After Russia announced that it would quit the ICC, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the citizens of Crimea chose to leave Ukraine through a referendum, which means the Crimea issue is not a conflict between two countries as the ICC classified, but is an internal struggle.
Russia has long been frustrated by the ICC, and the report on Crimea only ignited the hatred. The ICC used to investigate the Russian government and some senior officials due to their alleged intrusion into human rights, interference in press freedom and crackdown on opposition members.
Last year when Russia launched its first airstrikes against opposition targets in Syria, the ICC, at the request of the UK, launched an investigation into Russia, believing that Russia backed the Bashar al- Assad regime during the Syrian civil war.
Russia also used the ICC to deal with Ukraine. In 2014, the Russian Red Cross required the ICC to investigate war crimes committed by Kiev officials in the east of Ukraine involving murder, massacre, enslavement, bombing of settlements, and deliberate starvation. But the investigations by the ICC went nowhere in the end.
The reason why Russia chose this time to withdraw from the ICC is that it wants to break the deadlock between Russia and Western countries and bring the US and Europe to the negotiation table with an unconventional approach. On the one hand, Putin held talks over the phone with US President- elect Donald Trump; on the other hand, he pulled out from the ICC and sent aircraft carriers to Syria in order to warn Trump of Russia’s influence on global stability in the future.
Russia’s departure from the
ICC is no more than symbolic. Although Russia signed the Rome Statute, it had not ratified the treaty, thus remained outside the jurisdiction of the ICC. Russia believed the ICC would become a tool with which Western countries would interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. It doubted that the ICC would act independently and impartially.
The performance of the ICC in recent years has proved Russia’s belief. In many controversial issues, the ICC has behaved like a pawn of the West, which has aroused dissatisfaction from dozens of countries.
Right before Russia announced its withdrawal, three African countries, South Africa, Gambia and Burundi, had just decided to quit the ICC. Russia’s pullout will generate much more impact than the three African countries.
It offers another perspective to review the relations between Russia and the current world order. The Ukrainian crisis is considered as an important changing point of Russia’s foreign policies. After the crisis, Western countries’ sanctions on Russia made it give up integration into the Western- led international community. Russia resumed its position as a challenger of international order instead of a guardian.
As Russia could neither be accepted by the Western- led international community nor change the world order, it has resorted to acting on its own such as proposing the Eurasian Economic Union and the Greater Eurasian Partnership. Russia intends to represent the non- Western world in the postUkrainian crisis era.