WANTED for war crimes... and stealing Ukraines's children

Vladimir Putin issued extraordinary arrest warrant by International Criminal Court

An arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin was issued yesterday by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing him of war crimes by taking hundreds of Ukrainian children from orphanages. The court says that Mr Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, his children’s rights commissioner, are involved in the “unlawful deportation” of children “from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”. Mr Putin becomes only the third serving president in history to be issued a warrant, after Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Prosecutor Karim Khan said many of the children have been given up for adoption in Russia. “We cannot allow children to be treated as if they are the spoils of war,” he said. The Kremlin said it does not recognise the warrants, and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called them “toilet paper”.