US President Joe Biden has welcomed the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ICC has accused Putin of committing war crimes in Ukraine, specifically related to the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia since Moscow’s invasion in 2022.
In a statement released on Friday, the ICC said that it had reasonable grounds to believe that Putin committed the criminal acts directly, as well as working with others. Russia has denied the allegations and denounced the warrants as “outrageous.”
While it is highly unlikely that much will come of the move, as the ICC has no powers to arrest suspects without the cooperation of a country’s government, it could still affect Putin in other ways, such as being unable to travel internationally. He could now be arrested if he sets foot in any of the court’s 123 member states.
Putin is only the third president to be issued with an ICC arrest warrant. However, Russia is not an ICC member country, meaning the court, located in The Hague, has no authority there.
President Biden said that while the court also held no sway in the US, the issuing of the warrant “makes a very strong point.” His administration had earlier “formally determined” that Russia had committed war crimes during the conflict in Ukraine, with Vice-President Kamala Harris saying in February that those involved would “be held to account.”
The United Nations also released a report earlier this week that found Moscow’s forced removal of Ukrainian children to areas under its control amounted to a war crime.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has said the warrants were “based upon forensic evidence, scrutiny and what’s been said by those two individuals.” The court had initially considered keeping the arrest warrants a secret but decided to make them public to try and stop further crimes from being committed.
“Children can’t be treated as the spoils of war, they can’t be deported,” Mr Khan told the BBC. “This type of crime doesn’t need one to be a lawyer, one needs to be a human being to know how egregious it is.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said any of the court’s decisions were “null and void” and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev compared the warrant to toilet paper.
Russian opposition activists have welcomed the announcement. Ivan Zhdanov, a close ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, tweeted that it was “a symbolic step” but an important one. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed his thanks to Mr Khan and the ICC for their decision to press charges against “state evil.” – BBC News
