International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Putin Over War Crimes in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin, his Russian equivalent, has been placed under arrest by the International Criminal Court.
President Biden claimed that President Putin had “clearly” committed the war crimes that the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused him with in Ukraine.
The charges centre on the unlawful kidnapping of Ukrainian children and their forced transfer to Russia during Moscow’s invasion in 2022.
The warrants have been criticised as being “outrageous” by Moscow, which has refuted the accusations.
Given that the ICC lacks the authority to detain suspects without the cooperation of a nation’s government, it is extremely unlikely that the action will have much of an impact.
Since Russia is not a party to the ICC, the court’s jurisdiction over that nation does not extend to The Hague.
Nevertheless, it might have other effects on Mr. Putin, such making it impossible for him to travel abroad. He might now be detained if he enters any of the 123 states that make up the court.
The third president to receive an ICC arrest warrant is Mr. Putin.
The warrant’s issuance, according to President Biden, “makes a very compelling statement,” despite the fact that the court had no influence in the US as well.
According to him, he obviously committed war crimes, as he told reporters.
Vice President Kamala Harris stated in February that those responsible will “be called to account” after his government had previously “officially decided” that Russia had committed war crimes during the crisis in Ukraine.
A report from the UN earlier this week ruled that Moscow had committed a war crime by transferring Ukrainian youngsters against their will to regions under Russian control.
The ICC said in a statement on Friday that it had good reason to suspect that Mr. Putin had both carried out the crimes alone and collaborated with others. It also charged him with neglecting to exercise his presidential authority to halt the deportation of minors.
The warrants, according to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, are “based on forensic evidence, scrutiny, and what’s been spoken by those two persons”.
In an effort to prevent more crimes from being committed, the court decided to make the arrest warrants public after first considering keeping them hidden.
Children cannot be deported, Mr. Khan told the BBC, and they cannot be regarded as war’s loot.
“To understand how terrible this type of crime is, one need only be a human being; one need not be a lawyer.”
Also, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader tried for war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo in the 1990s, was not expected to end up in The Hague to face punishment, Mr. Khan noted.
Mr. Khan advised anybody who believed they could commit a crime during the day and yet get a good night’s sleep to consider history.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, referred to any decisions made by the court as “null and void,” while Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president, likened the warrant to toilet paper.
The announcement has been praised by Russian opposition activists. That was “a symbolic step,” but a vital one, according to Ivan Zhdanov, a close ally of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The decision by the ICC and Mr. Khan to file accusations against “state evil” has been acknowledged by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.