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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of war crimes in Ukraine. This latest warrant by the ICC was issued based on suspicions that Putin unlawfully deported children and transferred people from Ukraine to Russia.

 

The warrant also extends to Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, who is accused of the same charges. Putin becomes the third serving president to have received an ICC arrest warrant, following Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

 

While it is highly unlikely that Putin will be brought to court anytime soon, the warrant means that he could be arrested and sent to The Hague if travelling to any ICC member states, and this has provoked a furious response in Moscow.

 

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has already said that Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected the ICC’s decision, stating that any decisions of the court were "null and void" with respect to Russia.

 

Despite this, senior Ukrainian officials have praised the ICC decision, with the country’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin hailing it as "historic for Ukraine and the entire international law system". Andriy Yermak, chief of the presidential staff, also said that issuing the warrant was "only the beginning".

 

The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, began investigating possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine a year ago. During his visits to Ukraine, he highlighted alleged crimes against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure.

 

The news came ahead of a planned state visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which is likely to cement much closer ties between Russia and China, just as relations between Moscow and the West hit new lows.

 

Russia has not denied its programme, which brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, but has presented it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

 

Russian forces have been repeatedly accused of abuses during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including by a U.N.-mandated investigative body that this week described soldiers making children watch loved ones being raped. Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities during the invasion, which it calls a special military operation.