The International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for the deportation of children in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, which he denounced as a “meaningless” decision.
The Hague-based ICC also called for the arrest for the same reason, considered a war crime, of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia.
The head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andrii Yermak, considered that the CPI’s decision is “only the beginning” of the accountability that Russia will be required to hold for its actions since the invasion of the former Soviet republic in February 2022.
The ICC did not specify how it intends to execute the arrest warrants, taking into account that Russia is not a member of that court, as Moscow immediately recalled.
“Russia, like a number of states, does not recognize the jurisdiction of that court, and therefore, from the point of view of the law, the decisions of that court are null and void,” Russian President Dmitry Peskov’s spokesman said.
Before issuing the arrest warrant for the Russian president, the ICC already had pending the arrest of some 15 people who total more than two hundred charges between them – 116 for war crimes, 87 for crimes against humanity and three for genocide. relating to crises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Libya, the Ivory Coast and the Sudanese region of Darfur.
More than 16,000 Ukrainian children have reportedly been deported to Russia since the start of the invasion and many have been transferred to institutions and foster homes, according to kyiv.
“International cooperation”. The president of the court, Piotr Hofmanski, declared that the arrest warrants were issued following a complaint by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, and that they represented an “important moment in the justice process” of the Court.
The orders were issued for “the alleged war crimes of deportation of children from occupied Ukrainian territories to the Russian Federation” since the start of the invasion on February 24, 2022, it said. The execution of these orders depends “on international cooperation,” he added.
In practical terms, the arrest warrant requires the collusion of those countries through which the Russian president can move, who has already reduced his trips abroad in the last year.
The Rome Statute, the cornerstone of the ICC, establishes that the Court cannot try any defendant ‘in absentia’, that is, it needs the individual in question to sit on the bench and answer in person for the crimes that are committed. they impute him However, it does not have an institution capable of executing the arrest, so it depends on the Member States.
The ICC therefore recognizes that, when it issues an arrest warrant and has “reasonable” indications to believe that a specific individual has committed crimes that fall within its jurisdiction, it requires the collaboration of countries. In this sense, it recalls in its documents that to arrest a fugitive it is not necessary to have signed the Rome Statute and that in the past it has already requested the collaboration of external countries.
In addition, and although the signatory countries of the Rome Statute have the obligation to execute the arrest warrants that are pending, although it would not be the first time that a country dodges this order. In 2015, South Africa avoided arresting then Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, claiming he had immunity for attending an African Union summit.
Once detained, the suspect follows a process that initially depends on the institutions of the country where the arrest was made. He must appear before the competent judicial authority, which will examine whether or not the laws have been complied with and whether it is possible to hand him over to the ICC, within a process that differs from that of extradition.
Currently, 123 countries have signed the Rome Statute, but among them are not Russia or other allies of Putin himself, such as China or Belarus. The CPI also has no power over India, host of the G20 leaders’ summit scheduled for September and for which the Kremlin has not yet confirmed or denied or confirmed that the Russian president can attend.
adoptions. During a meeting with Putin in mid-February, Lvova-Belova stated that she had adopted a 15-year-old boy from Mariupol, a southern Ukrainian city occupied by Moscow since May.
“Now I know what it means to be the mother of a child from Donbas, it’s a difficult job, but we love each other, that’s for sure,” she said. “We evacuate children’s homes to safe areas, organize re-education and prosthetics for them, and deliver humanitarian aid,” she added.
After the arrest warrant was issued, Lvova-Belova assured that she would continue to carry out her work at the Children’s Rights Commission. “There were sanctions against me from all countries, including Japan, and now an arrest warrant, but we will continue to work,” she said, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev compared the arrest warrant to toilet paper. “No need to explain where that paper should be used,” he wrote on Twitter in English, along with a toilet paper emoticon.
“Spoils of war.” The issuance of an arrest warrant against a sitting head of state and member of the UN Security Council is an unprecedented step for the court created in 2002.
Its prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been investigating possible war crimes or crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian offensive for more than a year. Khan declared this month after a visit to Ukraine that the alleged child abductions were the subject of “a priority investigation.”
“Children cannot be treated as spoils of war,” he said, recalling that the Geneva Convention prohibits occupying powers from transferring civilians.
The content of the arrest warrants has not been released “to protect the victims,” he said.
In a statement, the ICC declared “reasonable grounds to believe that Putin is personally responsible for the crimes mentioned.” The Russian leader is allegedly directly responsible for those acts and for his “inability to exercise appropriate control over civilian and military subordinates” who committed or allowed them to be committed, he stressed.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC, but the kyiv government accepted the court’s jurisdiction and is cooperating with Khan’s office. Russia denies having committed war crimes in its military operation.
The head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, considered the ICC decision as the beginning of a process to hold Russia “accountable.”
The British government welcomed the move, saying it would hold “those at the top of the Russian regime, including Vladimir Putin, to account.”
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