The Hague - After The Court of the Citizens of the World, supported by Cinema for Peace, confirmed an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin on the crime of aggression three weeks ago in The Hague, and called the UN, EU and the International Criminal Court to issue an official arrest warrant, the ICC has issued on Friday an arrest warrant against Putin and Russia's children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for ‘unlawful deportation’ of Ukrainian children.

Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to the warrant saying “The decisions of the international criminal court have no meaning for our country... Russia is not a party to the Rome statute of the international criminal court and bears no obligations under it,” while Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, welcomed the news saying: “It's just the beginning.”

"The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian-occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes," the arrest warrant states.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC, but Kyiv granted has granted ICC jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed on its territory. While it is unlikely that Putin will end up in court now, the warrant means that he should be arrested and sent to The Hague if traveling to any of the 123 ICC member states. When asked if Putin now fears traveling to countries that recognize the ICC, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "I have nothing to add on this subject. That's all we want to say."

After Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin is now the third serving president to be the target of an ICC arrest warrant. Gaddafi and Bashir lost their presidency, and Gaddafi was killed by the people he had oppressed.

Links:
ICC Issues Arrest Warrant Against Putin
The Court of the Citizens of the World Issues Arrest Warrant Against Putin

The arrest warrant issued by The Court of the Citizens of the World

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