ICC Orders Putin’s Arrest, Kremlin: Totally Outrageous!

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The Kremlin is outraged by the decision by the International Criminal Court in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of war crimes in Ukraine. Photo/REUTERS

MOSCOW – The Kremlin is outraged by the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The arrest warrant relates to alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was under no obligation to recognize the arrest warrant issued by the ICC on Friday.

“We consider that premise to be outrageous and unacceptable,” Peskov irked when asked by journalists about the arrest warrant for Putin.

“Russia, like many other countries, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court. Therefore, the Russian Federation considers any of its statements null and void from a legal point of view,” Peskov continued, as quoted by Russia Today, Saturday (18/3/2023).

The ICC on Friday issued arrest warrants for Putin and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights of the Office of the President of Russia Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of carrying out the illegal transfer of children from the occupied territories in Ukraine to the territory of the Russian Federation.

The ICC judge argued that Putin and Lvova-Belova bear individual and command responsibility for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Russian authorities have evacuated thousands of residents from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – four regions of Ukraine that voted to join Russia in a referendum last September – to Russian territory. The reason, because there is deliberate shooting of civilians by Ukrainian troops, who often use NATO-supplied weapons.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine have ratified the Rome Statute that established the ICC.

The US, which bore the trials for Yugoslavia and Rwanda on which the ICC was based, adopted a law permitting a military invasion of the Netherlands if any Americans were taken into custody by the ICC.

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