The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes, a move termed as ‘meaningless’ by Moscow.
The Hague-based court, in a statement said that the warrant was issued over Vladimir’s suspected involvement in the abductions of Ukrainian children.
The ICC stated that Russia’s President “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.
The statement further added, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts”.
Moscow, in the meantime, has denied all allegations or committing atrocities since it invaded Ukraine in February last year, labelling the warrants as “outrageous”.
Rubbishing the charges, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia does not recognise the ICC.
“The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel.
“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it”.
It is worth mentioning that this is the first time that a global court issued an arrest warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The warrants, which provoked a furious response from Russia, came a day after a United Nations-backed inquiry accused the country of committing wide-ranging war crimes, including unlawful deportations of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
