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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, a move dismissed by Moscow as meaningless.<\/p>\n
The Hague-based court said in a statement on Friday the warrant was issued over Putin\u2019s suspected involvement in the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility\u201d for the child abductions \u201cfor having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and\/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
The ICC, which has no powers to enforce its own warrants, also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children\u2019s rights in the office of the Russian president, on similar allegations.<\/p>\n
Russia, which denies committing atrocities since it invaded Ukraine in February last year, rejected the ICC\u2019s move as null and void.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,\u201d Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel after the announcement.
\n\u201cRussia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But ICC President Piotr Hofmanski told Al Jazeera it was \u201ccompletely irrelevant\u201d that Russia had not ratified the Rome Statute.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the ICC statute, which has 123 state parties, two-thirds of the whole international community, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in the territory of a state party or a state which has accepted its jurisdiction,\u201d he said. \u201cUkraine has accepted the ICC twice \u2013 in 2014 and then in 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hofmanski said 43 states had referred \u201cthe situation in Ukraine to the court, which means they have formally triggered our jurisdiction\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on anyone on the territory of Ukraine from November 2013 onwards regardless of nationality of the alleged perpetrators,\u201d Hofmanski said.<\/p>\n
The warrants came a day after a United Nations-backed inquiry accused Russia of committing wide-ranging war crimes in Ukraine, including the forced deportations of children in areas it controls.<\/p>\n
The legal move provoked a furious response in Moscow.<\/p>\n
\u201cYankees, hands off Putin!\u201d wrote parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of the president, on Telegram, saying the move was evidence of Western \u201chysteria\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe regard any attacks on the President of the Russian Federation as aggression against our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin and Zelenskyy hailed the announcement by the ICC.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and its leadership and henchmen will be held accountable,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a historic decision for Ukraine and the entire system of international law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy blamed Putin for the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an historic decision which will lead to historic accountability,\u201d he said in his nightly video address. The real number of deported children could be \u201cfar more\u201d than 16,000, he said, adding that their deportations constituted a policy of \u201cstate evil which starts precisely with the top official of this state\u201d.<\/p>\n
James Bays, Al Jazeera\u2019s diplomatic editor, described the issuing of the arrest warrants as a \u201cvery serious\u201d development.<\/p>\n
He said there were many who welcomed the announcement but there were others who raised questions whether this would be a problem for diplomacy going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you have the head of state of Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, who is now a wanted man by the ICC,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be a headache for some of those who are going to have to deal with President Putin \u2013 how are other countries going to deal with him?\u201d Bays added. \u201cWill President Putin be able to travel?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bays said the decision could also be an issue for the UN, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has engaged with Russia throughout the war in Ukraine and even travelled to Moscow to meet Putin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill the UN now meet a man who is now wanted with an arrest warrant for him to be sent to The Hague?\u201d said Bays.<\/p>\n
Russia has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.<\/p>\n
While it is unlikely that Putin will end up in court any time soon, the warrant means that he could be arrested and sent to The Hague if travelling to any ICC member states.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis makes Putin a pariah. If he travels he risks arrest. This never goes away. Russia cannot gain relief from sanctions without compliance with the warrants,\u201d said Stephen Rapp, US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under former president Barack Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, a move dismissed by Moscow as meaningless. The Hague-based court said in a statement on Friday the warrant was issued over Putin\u2019s suspected involvement in the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184520"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184522,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184520\/revisions\/184522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}