The Kremlin says the International Criminal Court charges against Vladimir Putin are meaningless with regard to jurisdiction in Russia.
US President Joe Biden said Vladimir Putin had clearly committed war crimes in Ukraine and the question of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest arrest warrant for russian president it was justified.
Although the United States, like Russia, is not part of the international court, Biden said the ICC had made a strong case against putin
“Clearly he has committed war crimes,” Biden told reporters on Friday. “I think he’s justified,” he said, referring to the arrest warrant.
“It is not internationally recognized by us either. But I think it’s a very strong point,” she added.
The ICC earlier on Friday called for Putin’s arrest on suspicion of their involvement in the illegal deportation and transfer of children from the occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The court also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, on the same charges.
The ICC order now obliges the court’s 123 member states to arrest Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he steps foot on their territory.
The Kremlin said the court’s charges against Putin were outrageous and meaningless with respect to jurisdiction in Russia.
TO US-backed report by Yale University researchers last month found that Russia has held at least 6,000 Ukrainian children in at least 43 camps and other facilities as part of a “large-scale systematic network.”
The Ukrainian government recently said that more than 14,700 children have been deported to Russia, more than 1,000 of them from the port city of Mariupol, which was under siege for weeks and nearly destroyed.
The United States has separately concluded that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine and supports accountability for perpetrators of war crimes, a State Department spokesman said in an emailed statement.
“There is no doubt that Russia is committing war crimes and atrocities (in) Ukraine, and we have made it clear that those responsible must be held accountable,” the spokesman added.
ICC President Piotr Hofmanski said in a video statement that while the court’s judges have issued the arrest warrants, it will be up to the international community to enforce them. The court does not have its own police force to do so.
The ICC can impose a maximum sentence of life imprisonment “when justified by the extreme seriousness of the crime”, according to its founding treaty, the Rome Statute. This established the ICC as a permanent court of last resort to prosecute political leaders and other key perpetrators of the world’s worst atrocities: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.