Arrest warrant for Putin issued by ICC over alleged war crimes

London: The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, alleging his involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.

News of the arrest warrant came ahead of a planned state visit to Moscow next week 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.

ICC judges have issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.Credit: AP

In another diplomatic development related to the Ukraine war, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey’s parliament would begin ratifying Finland’s NATO bid, removing the biggest remaining hurdle to enlarging the Western defence alliance.

The Hague-based court said Putin was accused of “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population” and of “unlawful transfer of population”, specifically of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia since the start of the war.

The court said the crimes were committed in Ukraine at least from February 25 last year when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes,” the court’s president, Piotr Hofmanski said in a statement on Friday (UK time).

He also said the Russian leader failed to exercise his rights to stop others who deported children. The judges also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, accusing her of the same crimes.

Putin is only the third serving president to have been issued an ICC arrest warrant, after Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

Al-Bashir was issued with arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity following the conflict in Darfur in 2003 and led to the deaths of 300,000 people.

The Gaddafi arrest warrant for crimes against humanity was issued by the ICC during anti-regime protests in 2011. He was killed just months later.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia last year of “stealing” his country’s children from the besieged city of Mariupol and other areas, some of them without their parents. Kyiv estimates that at least 16,000 children were deported to Russia between February 2022 and last month.

Zelensky on Saturday called the arrest warrant a “historic decision, from which historical responsibility will begin”, saying Putin and his offsider had “officially become suspects in a war crime”.

“The deportation of Ukrainian children is the illegal transfer of thousands of our children to Russian territory,” he said. “It would be impossible to carry out such a criminal operation without the order of the top leader of the terrorist state”.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden called the ICC’s decision “justified,” telling reporters as he left the White House for his Delaware home that Putin “clearly committed war crimes.” Biden said it “makes a very strong point” to call out the Russian leader’s actions in ordering the invasion.

Russia has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children across the border, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

The pre-trial chamber of the court found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children”.

Hofmanski said in a video statement that while the ICC’s judges have issued the warrants, it would be up to the international community to enforce them.

“The ICC is doing its part of work as a court of law. The judges issued arrest warrants. The execution depends on international cooperation,” he said.

eople hold flares in colors of the Russian national flag during an action to mark the ninth anniversary of the Crimea annexation from Ukraine with an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin.Credit: AP

The court has no powers to arrest suspects, and can only exercise jurisdiction within the 123 countries that are signed up to the agreement that set up the court.

Russia – along with the United States, India and China – is not a signatory to that agreement and has said it would never surrender its officials.

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.

From the early days of the invasion last February, Kyiv has accused Russia of forcibly transferring children and adults.

The Kremlin, which has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities during the invasion of its neighbour, said the court’s move was meaningless.

“The decisions of the ICC have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on her Telegram channel.

Russia’s embassy to the US said last month that the country had taken in children who were forced to flee the fighting.

Ukraine also is not a member of the court, but it has granted the ICC jurisdiction over its territory and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has visited four times since opening an investigation a year ago.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, hailed the court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant.

“The world received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and its leadership and henchmen will be held accountable,” he said in a statement on social media. “This is a historic decision for Ukraine and the entire system of international law.”

With Xi to visit Moscow from Monday, US and European leaders have said they are concerned Beijing may send arms to Russia after Beijing and Moscow struck a “no limits” partnership shortly before the invasion.

China has denied any such plan, criticising Western weapon supplies to Ukraine, which will soon extend to fighter jets after Poland and Slovakia this week approved deliveries. The Kremlin said the jets would be destroyed and not change the course of the conflict.

China is keen to deflect Western criticism over Ukraine, but its close ties to Russia and its refusal to label Moscow’s war an invasion have fuelled scepticism about the prospect that Beijing might act as a mediator in the conflict.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the United States had deep concerns China might try to promote a ceasefire because that would not currently lead to a just and lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia.

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