The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin for war crimes involving the abductions of Ukrainian children.
The court announced the decision on Friday, provoking mixed reactions from Ukraine – which went jubilant and Russia – which dismissed the move.
According to the court’s statement, Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
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A warrant was also issued for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, who the ICC also accused of playing part in the abductions of tens of children.
The court alleges that several children have been abducted from Ukraine and deported to the Russian Federation as part of Russia’s systemic crimes in Ukraine that includes torture, inhumane detention and separating families.
ICC prosecutor … Khan said after his visit to Ukraine in early March, when he visited a care home for children two kilometers from front lines in southern Ukraine, that there were trails of the abduction crimes requiring investigation.
“The drawings pinned on the wall … spoke to a context of love and support that was once there. But this home was empty, a result of alleged deportation of children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation or their unlawful transfer to other parts of the temporarily occupied territories,” he said in a statement. “As I noted to the United Nations Security Council last September, these alleged acts are being investigated by my Office as a priority. Children cannot be treated as the spoils of war.”
The court said its pre-trial chamber found “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.”
Based on that, the ICC said in a statement that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the child abductions for 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.”
However, while the arrest warrants have gained wide applause, the possibility of executing them have come under question.
The AP noted the ICC president, Piotr Hofmanski, saying in a video statement that while the ICC’s judges have issued the warrants, it will be up to the international community to enforce them. The court has no police force of its own to enforce warrants.
“The ICC is doing its part of work as a court of law,” he said. “The judges issued arrest warrants. The execution depends on international cooperation.”
Based on this, it is extremely unlikely that any Russians can be tried at the ICC because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.
The AP quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that the warrants are “legally void” because Russia does not recognize the ICC. He added that Russia considers the court’s move “outrageous and unacceptable.”
However, to many who believe that the impunity enabling war crimes needs to be curtailed, the arrest warrant is a huge win.
“The ICC has made Putin a wanted man and taken its first step to end the impunity that has emboldened perpetrators in Russia’s war against Ukraine for far too long,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “The warrants send a clear message that giving orders to commit, or tolerating, serious crimes against civilians may lead to a prison cell in The Hague.”