- By Kathryn Armstrong, Antoinette Radford and Frank Gardner, BBC Security Correspondent
- BBC News
3 hours ago
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Vladimir Putin could now be arrested if he sets foot in any of the more than 120 member states of the ICC
US President Joe Biden has welcomed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The ICC accused President Putin of committing war crimes in Ukraine — something President Biden said the Russian leader “clearly” did.
The lawsuits center on the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia since Moscow invaded in 2022.
Moscow has denied the allegations and described the arrest warrants as “outrageous”.
It is highly unlikely that this move will achieve much, as the ICC does not have the power to arrest suspects without cooperating with a country’s government.
Russia is not an ICC member country, which means that the court in The Hague has no authority there.
However, it could affect Mr Putin in other ways, such as an inability to travel internationally. He could now be arrested if he sets foot in any of the court’s 123 member states.
Mr Putin is only the third president to have an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
President Biden said that while the court also has no leverage in the US, the warrant’s issuance was “a very strong argument.”
“He clearly committed war crimes,” he told reporters.
In a statement on Friday, the ICC said it had reasonable grounds to believe Mr Putin committed the criminal acts directly and colluded with others. It also accused him of failing to use his powers as president to prevent the deportation of children.
Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, is also wanted by the ICC for the same crimes.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said the warrants were “based on forensic evidence, investigation and the testimonies of these two individuals”.
The court initially considered keeping the arrest warrants secret, but decided to make them public to try to prevent further crimes.
“Children cannot be treated as spoils of war, they cannot be deported,” Mr Khan told the BBC.
“You don’t have to be a lawyer for this type of crime, you have to be a human being to know how egregious it is.”
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WATCH: Can Vladimir Putin actually be arrested?
Mr Khan also pointed out that nobody thought that Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who stood trial for war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, would be tried in The Hague.
“Those who feel like you can commit a crime during the day and sleep well at night might want to check out the story,” Mr Khan said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said all of the court’s decisions were “null and void,” and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev likened the arrest warrant to toilet paper.
Russian opposition activists welcomed the announcement. Ivan Zhdanov, a close ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, tweeted that it was “a symbolic move” but an important one.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed his gratitude to Mr Khan and the ICC for their decision to bring charges against the “state evil”.