Arrest warrant issued for Vladimir Putin

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova.

Information posted on official website ICC, the basis for initiating the case was information about the “illegal transfer of children” from Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

According to an ICC press release, Putin and Lvova-Belova are suspected of committing a war crime of illegal deportation and transfer of children from the occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, which has been happening since at least February 24, 2022:

“The Pre-Trial Chamber II, on the basis of motions from the Prosecutor’s Office dated February 22, 2023, ruled that there are sufficient grounds to believe that each suspect is responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation of the population and illegal transfer of the population from the occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, which caused damage Ukrainian children.

The Chamber notes that it considers arrest warrants clandestine “for the protection of victims and witnesses and for the purpose of securing an investigation,” but Piotr Hofmansky, acting president of the ICC, explains:

“However, considering that the conduct in question in this situation is likely to continue and public awareness of the warrants may help prevent further crime, the Chamber considers that it is in the interests of justice to authorize the secretariat to make public the existence of the warrants, the names of the suspects, the crimes for which the warrants have been issued, and the sanctions imposed by the Chamber.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov previously commented on reports that two cases could be opened against the Russian Federation on charges of “kidnapping children and attacks on civilian objects.” He said that Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Peskov said that for many years, international judicial institutions did not pay attention to the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the killing of civilians that Ukrainian nationalists staged in the Donbass.

Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the decisions of the International Criminal Court “have no meaning for Russia, including from a legal point of view.” According to her, Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and does not bear any obligations under it: “Russia does not cooperate with this body, and possible “recipes” for arrest coming from the International Court will be legally null and void for us.”

The day before, it was reported that the International Criminal Court is preparing to open two cases of Russian war crimes in Ukraine: in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children and deliberate Russian attacks against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. They will present the first international accusations since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A year ago, 38 countries asked the ICC to launch an investigation into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, after which the court initiated an investigation for the period from November 21, 2013.

In October last year, Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, told Putin that she had “adopted” a child abducted from Mariupol. According to her, as of October alone, up to 2,000 orphans were taken to the Russian Federation from social institutions, and 350 children from Donbass have already been “attached” to foster families in 16 regions of the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian side recorded the deportation of 16,221 children.

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