The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday afternoon. He accused him of being responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.
An arrest warrant had been issued against Putin and the president’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alexeyevna Lvowa-Belowa, for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia, the court said. An arrest warrant has also been issued for Maria Alexeyevna Lvowa-Belowa. She is commissioner for children’s rights in the cabinet of the Russian president.
“kidnapping of children”
There are “reasonable reasons” to believe that Putin is “personally responsible” for abducting children into Russian territory, which is a war crime, the ICC said. The crimes began in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine “at least from February 24, 2022”, the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
The suspicion is justified that Putin did not sufficiently monitor his civilian or military subordinates. The exact text of the arrest warrants will not be released to protect victims and witnesses, the court said.
More than 16,000 children have been abducted from Ukraine to Russia or Russian-controlled areas since February this year, according to the Ukrainian government. The ICC had already launched an investigation immediately after the outbreak of the Russian offensive war against Ukraine.
Russia remains impressed
Russia immediately repeated that the criminal court in The Hague was pointless. “The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, not even in legal terms,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel.
Although Ukraine has not ratified the Rome Statute of the International Court of Justice, Kiev recognizes the jurisdiction of judges for crimes against humanity and war crimes against Ukraine committed on Ukrainian territory since 2014. In 2015, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin issued a statement on this in The Hague.
A year ago, the prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into war crimes in Ukraine
The prosecutor at the ICC, Karim Khan, launched an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity a year ago. Khan was personally in Ukraine three times, including in the Kiev region, where a massacre is reported to have taken place in Bucha.
The arrest warrants are a first step towards a trial. However, previous studies show that it is difficult to hold senior officials accountable. In more than 20 years there have been only five convictions for so-called core crimes. None of the convicts are top representatives of any power structure.
Source: Krone
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