International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Russian President’s office Ms. Maria Alekseyevna on March 17, 2023, in the context of the situation in Ukraine.
According to the ICC, Russian President Putin is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of population, including children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute these crimes were allegedly committed in the occupied territories of Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 2022.
The ICC statement highlighted that the Russian president bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes, “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, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility”.
The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II also held Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova responsible for the crimes and stated that “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms. Lvova-Belova bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute)”.
ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan said in a statement, “My Office alleges that these acts, amongst others, demonstrate an intention to permanently remove these children from their own country. At the time of these deportations, the Ukrainian children were protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
ICC President Piotr Hofmanski said that “According to the ICC statute, which has 123 state parties, two-thirds of the whole international community, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in the territory of a state party or a state which has accepted its jurisdiction.”
In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view”. She added that “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it”.
Russian President’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Russia found the very questions raised by the ICC “outrageous and unacceptable”, and that any decisions of the court were “null and void” with respect to Russia.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant against the Russian president and blamed Putin for the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin also hailed the ICC decision as “historic for Ukraine and the entire international law system”.
Although the United States is not a state party to the Rome Statute, it has intensified efforts to provide political and military support to Ukraine.
