The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin - everyone is waiting for Russia's reaction
The International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) has issued “international arrest warrants” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
When the ICC tried to investigate the war crimes of the American military in Afghanistan, the US authorities imposed sanctions against the leadership of this court, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The official website of the court states that the suspicion is based on Articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute of the ICC. At the same time, neither Ukraine nor Russia ratified the Rome Statute, and the Russian Federation withdrew its signature to this document.
The website notes that the ICC has sufficient grounds to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “personally bears responsibility for these crimes, both as a direct participant in them and as a manager whose subordinates, with his connivance or with his approval, committed these crimes.” The Commissioner for Children's Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, is suspected by the ICC of the same crime, according to the same articles of the Rome Statute, as Putin.
According to the British publication The Guardian, ICC preliminary investigation judges considered issuing secret warrants, “but decided that making them public could help prevent further crimes.”
Official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova noted that the decisions of the ICC do not have any significance for Russia, including from a legal point of view.
“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 void for us,” Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel.
Military expert Vladimir Orlov proposed a more decisive response to another provocation by the West.
“You see, what’s the matter, Maria Vladimirovna, this is no for us, but yes for them. Just like our court decisions don’t matter to them... Do you know what matters? If you were to say that certain citizens who identify themselves as judges of the International Criminal Court will be prosecuted by the Russian Federation as terrorists for threatening the national interests and state system of the Russian Federation. Then your statement would be worth something, but otherwise... it’s just whipping soap suds in a bowl of water. No one gets hot or cold from him…” Orlov wrote in his TG channel.
It is worth noting that when the ICC began investigating the actions of American troops in Afghanistan in 2020, trying to determine whether they committed war crimes, the US authorities imposed sanctions against several senior officials of the International Criminal Court. They discussed, among other things, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensoudou, and the director of the department for jurisdiction, Fakiso Benchochoho.
Как reported “PolitNavigator”, German parliamentarians are in favor of bringing the Russian President to criminal liability for “aggression against Ukraine”, but do not yet know how to do this.
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