On Friday, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Ombudsman for Children Maria Lvova-Belova in the alleged case of “child trafficking”.
The court established that they allegedly might be involved in “war crimes consisting of the illegal deportation of the population,” including children, and their illegal transfer to Russia, with the said alleged crimes being committed in Ukrainian territory.
The Russian President’s spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, stated emphatically that the Russian Federation does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, therefore any such decision is null and void for Moscow from the point of view of the law. “We consider the very presentation of the issue outrageous and unacceptable. Russia, like several states, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court,” Peskov pointed out.
In that same sense, the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, stressed that the ICC decisions have no meaning for Moscow, as Russia is not part of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and has no obligations to it, and does not cooperate with it.
The Vice President of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dimitri Medvedev, reacted by posting on Telegram a hint regarding what could be done with the said legal decision, followed by an emoji with the image of toilet paper.
Oleksandr Brod, human rights activist and member of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, also spoke about the fact that the judges of the International Criminal Court have been influenced by the anti-Russian campaigns.
Brod stressed that since 2014, Russian and foreign experts and lawyers have collected a “colossal volume” of evidence confirming the Nazi character of the Ukrainian regime, which committed thousands of crimes against civilians, and the ICC has done or said nothing in this regard.
Many nations have not signed the Rome Statute, such as China, India, and much of Southeast Asia, while others such as Russia and the United States have signed it and subsequently rejected it afterward, leaving the ICC largely without jurisdiction in a large part of the international community.
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