CNN —
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova over alleged plans to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.
The court said there was “reasonable reason to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the alleged crimes because he committed them alongside others and for “his failure to exercise control over civilian and military subordinates, who committed the acts to exercise properly. ”
The ICC’s indictments, which relate to an alleged practice reported by CNN and others, are the first officially leveled at officials in Moscow since it began its unprovoked attack on Ukraine last year.
The Kremlin called the ICC’s decision “outrageous and unacceptable”.
“We consider the mere questioning to be outrageous and unacceptable. Russia, like a number of states, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court, and accordingly, from a legal point of view, all decisions of this kind are void for the Russian Federation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tweeted on Friday.
According to official Ukrainian statistics, hundreds of Ukrainian children have disappeared since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
It is unlikely that there will be a trial before the ICC in the end. Like the US, Ukraine and China, Russia is not a member of the ICC. Since the court does not conduct trials in absentia, any accused Russian officials would either have to be surrendered from Moscow or arrested outside of Russia.
A senior Ukrainian official told CNN on Monday that Kyiv has been urging the ICC to obtain arrest warrants against Russian individuals in connection with the war in Ukraine.
Kiev says many of Ukraine’s missing children were forcibly taken to Russia. The Russian government does not deny taking in Ukrainian children and has made their adoption by Russian families a centerpiece of propaganda.
In April, the office of Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights, said some 600 children from Ukraine had been placed in orphanages in Kursk and Nizhny Novgorod before being sent to families in the Moscow region.
According to the Moscow regional governor, as of mid-October, 800 children from eastern Ukraine’s Donbass were living in the Moscow region, many with families.
Some of the children landed thousands of kilometers and several time zones away from Ukraine. According to the Lvova-Belova office, Ukrainian children were sent to institutions and foster families in 19 different Russian regions, including the regions of Novosibirsk, Omsk and Tyumen in Siberia and Murmansk in the Arctic.
In response to the ICC’s arrest warrant for her, Lvova-Belova said it was “great” that the international community values her work for children, according to Russia’s state news agency TASS on Friday.
“It is great that the international community has recognized the work for the children of our country, that we do not leave them in the war zones, that we bring them out, that we create good conditions for them, that we surround them with loving, caring people” , she told reporters, according to TASS. “There have been sanctions against all countries, even Japan, in relation to me, now there is an arrest warrant, I’m excited to see what happens next. And we keep working.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andry Yermak, told Telegram on Friday that the arrest warrant issued against Putin was “just the beginning”.
“The world has received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and that its leadership and accomplices will be brought to justice,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin added in a post on Facebook on Friday.
“This means that Putin must be arrested and brought to justice outside of Russia. And world leaders will think twice before shaking hands with him or sitting down with him at the negotiating table.”
Human Rights Watch called the ICC’s decision a “wake-up call for others who commit or cover up human rights abuses.”
“This is a big day for the many victims of crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine since 2014. With these arrest warrants, the ICC has made Putin a wanted man and taken its first step to end the impunity that has encouraged perpetrators in Russia’s war against Ukraine for far too long,” said Balkees Jarrah, the NGO’s Associate International Justice Director , in a statement on Friday.
“The arrest warrants send a clear message that issuing the order to commit or condone serious crimes against civilians can result in a jail cell in The Hague. The court’s arrest warrants are a wake-up call to others who commit abuses or cover up that their day could come before the court, regardless of their rank or position,” Jarrah said.
Moscow rejected the arrest warrant on Friday. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said the court had “no importance” for the country, “including from a ‘legal point of view’.” Russia has withdrawn from the ICC treaty under a directive signed by Putin in 2016.
“Russia is not a member of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it. Russia does not cooperate with this body, and possible [pretences] for an arrest coming from the International Court of Justice will be legally null and void for us,” she said.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, wrote on Twitter: “The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. No need to explain WHERE this paper is going to be used,” along with a toilet paper emoji.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised the ICC, saying in a tweet that “the wheels of justice are turning”.
“I welcome the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for forced relocation of Ukrainian children. International criminals are held accountable for child theft and other international crimes” Kuleba added.
News of the arrest warrants was greeted on the streets of Ukraine’s capital Kiev on Friday, but some questioned whether they would lead to action.
Victoria Tkachenko, a 64-year-old museum worker, told CNN the warrants were “great news” but was realistic about how long trials could take.
“I support and welcome the news because Ukraine is fighting an attacker. The war year has shown that despite all the help, this fight is difficult,” Tkachenko said. “All court proceedings are lengthy and detailed work. Even if it takes a long time, I’m still optimistic about the result.”
Praising the ICC for raising awareness of the issue, 20-year-old student and teacher Olexandra Zahubynoga told CNN: “The fact that this is being brought out into the open is good and I support it. I would like to believe (that the arrest warrant will bring practical results) but to be honest I have my doubts because most international organizations are very concerned, they say a lot, but personally I don’t see any obvious action.”
Meanwhile, Serhiy Voloshenyuk, a 44-year-old businessman, said that while he thought the arrest warrants were “useful and important,” he didn’t think they would be viewed that way in Moscow.
“Russia itself is a criminal country and behaves according to its own rules,” he said.
He added: “I want Putin to be imprisoned and serve a time in prison, just like the Yugoslav war criminals are imprisoned in The Hague.”
Located in The Hague, Netherlands, the International Criminal Court was created by a treaty called the Rome Statute, first submitted to the United Nations, and operates independently. Most of the world’s countries – 123 of them – are parties to the treaty, but there are very large and notable exceptions, including Russia.
The ICC is intended to be a court of “last resort” and not to replace a country’s judicial system. The court, composed of 18 judges serving nine years, deals with four types of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and war crimes.
The United Nations found in a report on Thursday that Russia has committed “a wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” in Ukraine.
The report claims that war crimes committed by the Russians included “attacks on civilians and energy-related infrastructure, intentional killings, unlawful detention, torture, rape and other sexual violence, and unlawful rendition and deportation of children.”
The findings also documented a small number of violations committed by Ukraine’s armed forces, “including likely indiscriminate attacks and two incidents qualifying as war crimes in which Russian prisoners of war were shot, wounded and tortured,” according to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights .