Putin arrest warrant issued additional than war crime allegations

• By Antoinette Radford &amp Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent
• BBC News

17 March 2023, 15:25 GMT

Updated 36 minutes ago

Image provide, Getty Pictures

Image caption,

Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, in the course of a meeting final month

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The court alleges he is accountable for war crimes, and has focused its claims on the unlawful deportation of youngsters from Ukraine to Russia.

It says the crimes had been committed in Ukraine from 24 February 2022 – when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Moscow has denied the allegations and labelled the warrants as “outrageous”.

It is hugely unlikely that substantially will come of the move – the ICC has no powers to arrest suspects, and can only physical physical exercise jurisdiction inside its member nations – and Russia is not a single of them.

Even so it could have an impact on the president in other strategies, such as acquiring unable to travel internationally.

In a statement, the ICC talked about it had economical grounds to feel Mr Putin committed the criminal acts straight, as efficiently as functioning with other people. It also accused him of failing to use his presidential powers to quit youngsters acquiring deported.

Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, is also wanted by the ICC for the comparable crimes.

In the preceding, she has spoken openly of efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian youngsters taken to Russia.

Final September, Ms Lvova-Belova complained that some youngsters removed from the city of Mariupol “spoke badly about the [Russian President], talked about awful elements and sang the Ukrainian anthem.”

She has also claimed to have adopted a 15-year-old boy from Mariupol.

The ICC talked about it initially viewed as keeping the arrest warrants a secret, but decided to make them public in the occasion that it stopped more crimes from acquiring committed.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan told the BBC: “youngsters can not be treated as the spoils of war, they can not be deported”.

“This type of crime does not need a single to be a lawyer, a single desires to be human acquiring to know how egregious it is,” he talked about.

Reactions to the warrants came inside minutes of the announcement, with Kremlin officials instantaneously dismissing them.

Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov talked about any of the court’s selections had been “null and void” and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev compared the warrant to toilet paper.

“No need to clarify Specifically exactly where this paper ought to be employed,” he wrote on Twitter, with a toilet paper emoji.

Even so Russian opposition leaders welcomed the announcement. Ivan Zhdanov, a close ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, tweeted that it was “a symbolic step” but an crucial a single.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talked about he was grateful to Mr Khan and the criminal court for their decision to press charges against “state evil”.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor Fundamental Andriy Kostin talked about the decision was “historic for Ukraine”, while the country’s presidential chief of workers, Andriy Yermak, lauded the decision as “only the beginning”.

But due to the fact Russia is not a signed member of the ICC, there is very modest possibility that Vladimir Putin or Maria Lvova-Belova will look in the dock at The Hague.

The ICC relies on the cooperation of governments to arrest people, and Russia is “certainly not going to cooperate in this respect”, Jonathan Leader Maynard, a lecturer in international politics at King’s College London, told the BBC.

Even so Mr Khan pointed out that no-a single believed Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who went on trial for war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, would finish up in The Hague.

“These that definitely really feel that you can commit a crime in the daytime, and sleep efficiently at evening, ought to possibly seem at history,” he talked about.

Legally, possessing stated that, this does present Mr Putin with a challenge.

There is also a level of embarrassment for the Kremlin, which has usually denied allegations of Russian war crimes, that such an influential, pan-national physique as the ICC just does not feel its denials.