Vladimir Putin arrest warrant seen in press release from the International Criminal Court in The Hague. On 17 March 2023 in Brussels, Belgium.
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes committed during his invasion of Ukraine.
The court also put out a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for kids’s rights.
Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly accountable for the war crime of illegal deportation” of youngsters from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, the court wrote in a press release.
“There are reasonable grounds to consider that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children, the ICC said. The court alleged that he committed the offenses either directly or in cooperation with others, or did not stop subordinates under his authority.
The warrants are the primary the ICC has issued in response to the war in Ukraine, as officials inside the country and world wide ramp up probes into the horrors of Russia’s nearly 13-month assault. Investigators have uncovered allegations of forced deportations, torture, sexual violence and deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, outlined in reports backed by the United Nations and other organizations.
The arrest warrant for Putin didn’t mention alleged crimes beyond the deportations.
Russian Presidential Commissioner for Kid’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia February 16, 2023.
Mikhail Metzel | Sputnik | Reuters
The ICC’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, opened an investigation into possible Russian war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February of last yr. Khan, who has met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy several times, has made no less than three separate trips to go to sites across Ukraine to analyze alleged war crimes.
“Incidents identified by my office include the deportation of no less than tons of of youngsters taken from orphanages and kids’s care homes,” Khan wrote in a press release.
“Lots of these children, we allege, have since been given for adoption within the Russian Federation. The law was modified within the Russian Federation, through Presidential decrees issued by President Putin, to expedite the conferral of Russian citizenship, making it easier for them to be adopted by Russian families,” he added.
The Kremlin reiterated on Friday that it doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
“We consider the very posing of the query outrageous and unacceptable. Russia, like plenty of states, doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of this court and accordingly, any decisions of this sort are null and void for the Russian Federation from the viewpoint of law,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said, based on an NBC News translation.
Russia in 2000 signed the Rome Statute, which established the ICC and its jurisdiction but didn’t ratify the agreement to grow to be a member.
Piotr Hofmanski, president of the ICC, said international authorities may have to implement the warrants because the court doesn’t have a police force.
The move is the primary time the court has issued a warrant against a pacesetter whose country is a everlasting member of the U.N. Security Council. Russia will take the rotating presidency of the Security Council in April.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told NBC News that there’s “little question” that Russia is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
“President Biden has been very clear, for the reason that starting of this war, that we will look for tactics to be certain that that Russia is held accountable for the war crimes for the atrocities that they’re perpetrating against the Ukrainian people,” Kirby said.
The Kremlin has previously denied that its forces commit war crimes or deliberately goal civilians. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.
“Wheels of justice are turning,” wrote Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Twitter. “International criminals can be held accountable for stealing children and other international crimes.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, individually said “it is a historic decision for Ukraine and your complete system of international law.”
“But this is simply the start of a protracted road to the restoration of justice,” Kostin wrote on his official Telegram channel.
War crime prosecutor of Kharkiv Oblast stands with forensic technician and policeman at the location of a mass burial in a forest during exhumation on September 16, 2022 in Izium, Ukraine.
Yevhenii Zavhorodnii | Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Kostin, who’s leading Ukraine’s prosecution of Russian war crimes, told journalists in Washington, D.C., last month that regional Ukrainian authorities have registered greater than 65,000 offenses since Moscow’s conflict began.
“We’ve got all witnessed with horror the evidence of atrocities committed in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Izium, Kherson, Kharkiv regions and other liberated cities and towns,” Kostin said on the time. He said that Ukrainian authorities have discovered mass burial sites in areas occupied by Russian troops.
Read more: UN report details horrifying Ukrainian accounts of rape, torture and executions by Russian troops
Kostin added that the crimes “will not be incidental or accidental.” On the time, he said that greater than 75,000 buildings, including homes, schools and hospitals, have been reduced to rubble.
‘Consider this a large Amber alert’
A teddy bear is seen on the playground next to a destroyed apartment constructing on April 21, 2022 in Borodianka, Ukraine.
Alexey Furman | Getty Images
Last month, the Conflict Observatory, a program supported by the U.S. State Department, said that Russian forces have moved no less than 6,000 Ukrainian children to camps and facilities across Russia for forced adoptions and military training.
The allegations detailed within the 35-page report, entitled “Russia’s systematic program for the re-education and adoption of Ukraine’s children,” took greater than a yr to provide. It outlines what it calls the Kremlin’s systematic efforts to abduct children, prevent their return to Ukraine and “re-educate” them to grow to be pro-Russia.
“Consider this report a big Amber Alert,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, said on a call with reporters on the time of its release. He added that that is probably the most “consequential and comprehensive report” yet published on the matter.
Raymond said that Conflict Observatory researchers, in partnership with Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, discovered a network of no less than 43 camps and facilities where Russian authorities hold Ukrainian children.
The sites span Russia’s extensive territory, as some are positioned in Siberia, near Ukraine’s border or roughly 13,000 miles from Alaska, based on the report.
On the time, the Russian Embassy in Washington called the allegations detailed within the report “absurd.”
“We do our greatest to maintain minors in families, and in case of absence or death of fogeys and relatives – to transfer orphans under guardianship. We make sure the protection of their lives and well-being,” Russian spokesman Igor Girenko wrote in a press release to CNBC last month.
