Dmitri Medvedev, Vice President of the Security Council and former Prime Minister of Russia, is a man of proven loyalty to Vladimir Putin: for four years, between 2008 and 2012, he held the position of deputy president, warming the chair to his superior, to allow him, at the beginning of the decade, to overcome the constitutional prohibition of chaining more than two consecutive presidential terms. This Friday, as soon as the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant against the leader of the Kremlin for the deportation of Ukrainian minors to Russia was known, he wanted to make a difference between the Russian elite and reacted in a particularly mocking the decision: “it is not necessary to explain where that paper should be used,” he wrote in a tweet in English, along with an emoticon of toilet paper, eschatological formula to remember that the Russian Federation is not part of the Rome Statute, the legal instrument constituting the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction. His opinion, however, clashes with the opinion of experts in Public International Lawwho emphasize that the court, with this measure, is establishing important legal precedentsin addition to imposing, in the long run, not insignificant uncertainties and restrictions on the leader of the Kremlin when undertaking a trip abroad.
Raquel Regueiro Dubra, teacher of Public International Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, explains, in a message addressed to EL PERIÓDICO, from the Prensa Ibérica group, that with the arrest warrant, the ICC applies, “for the first time in its history”, two doctrines. “In the first place, it denies immunity from jurisdiction to the heads of State or government of States that are not party to the Rome Statute”, and it does so, not prompted by the Security Council, but rather at the request of “43 states parties of the statute, which referred the case to the court”. In addition, for the first time, “an arrest warrant is issued against a head of State or Government of one of the five permanent members of the Security Council”, which gives rise to this academic curiosity to see “what will be the reaction of the other four countries, in particular the US and China, which are not part of the Statute either. France and the United Kingdom, on the contrary, “are founding members of the ICC” .
ICC limitations
Regueiro Dubra acknowledges that the ICC “lacks its own law enforcement agencies”, which means that it “depends on the actions of the States to execute the order”. On paper, “all CPI member states have an obligation to arrest Putin and extradite him,” he continues. However, what happened “with the arrest warrant against the former president of Sudan Omar el Beshir shows the difficulties of executing it”, particularly in the states of the so-called “global South, which tend to reject the idea that there is no immunity of jurisdiction for heads of state and government that are not party to the Rome Statute”. In summary, Professor Regueiro sums up: “Putin is safe in Russia, in any state that has not ratified the Rome Statute”, as well as in states that “strictly comply with the principle of State immunity”.
The crimes, yes, are not negligible according to international law, and without one day President Putin or in his absence Maria Lvova Belovathe Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, also listed in the arrest warrant, sit in the defendant’s dockThey could be sentenced to long jail terms. These are acts “constituting war crimesand liable to imprisonment for a specified number of years, with a maximum of 30 years“, informs the professor of the Madrid university. “In cases of extreme gravity“, the defendant can even be sentenced to “life imprisonment“, he continues. In the economic aspect of the crime, “the Court may impose a fine and order the confiscation of the product, assets and assets that come, directly or indirectly, from the crime”, concludes Regueiro Dubra.