The former Soviet republic today ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, joining the ranks of countries that can detain the Kremlin leader.
“The world is getting smaller for the Kremlin autocrat,” emphasized von der Leyen, alluding to Putin, in a message on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
The Hague, Netherlandsbased court issued an international arrest warrant against the Russian leader last March, finding him responsible for committing war crimes by illegally deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.
The Kremlin today viewed the decision by Armenia, Moscow’s historic ally, to ratify ICC membership as a mistake.
“We doubt that Armenia’s accession to the Rome Statute is correct from the perspective of bilateral relations. We continue to believe that this is a wrong decision,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Relations between Armenia and Russia are in a period of tension. Yerevan accuses Moscow of abandoning the Armenians of NagornoKarabakh during Azerbaijan’s military operation nearly two weeks ago, which the Kremlin denies.
In recent months, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has turned to the West for help, even organizing military exercises with the United States.
NagornoKarabakh’s separatist government announced Thursday that it would dissolve and the unrecognized republic would cease to exist by January 1, 2024.
The announcement came after Azerbaijan launched a military offensive to regain full control of the separatist region and demanded that Armenian troops in NagornoKarabakh lay down their arms and dismantle the separatist government.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought two wars in the early 1990s and in 2020 over control of the NagornoKarabakh enclave, a mountainous region with a predominantly Armenian population that separated from Azerbaijan more than 30 years ago.
At the end of the short war in which Azerbaijan recaptured territory from this breakaway region in the fall of 2020, Baku and Yerevan concluded a Russiansponsored ceasefire.
Tensions heightened this year when Baku announced on April 23 that it had set up a first road checkpoint at the entrance to the Latchin Corridor, the only axis linking Armenia to the separatist enclave, which is already under an embargo led to shortages of essential goods and power outages.
Also read: Kremlin criticizes Armenia for ratifying ICC membership
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