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.
إرسال تعليق