It would be easy to dismiss the international criminal court (ICC) issuing a warrant for President Putin as a potential war criminal. After all, the ICC has no jurisdiction in Russia so the warrant may be seen as no more than a token of disapproval.<\/p>\n
However, we believe it may signal more than that.<\/p>\n
After all, the ICC also wanted Gaddafi for “crimes against humanity”<\/a>. Nor should we forget that Saddam Hussein was also brought to trial on similar trumped up charges<\/a>. In both cases the charges served to give legal justification to the West’s military campaigns in Libya and Iraq.<\/p>\n In other words, the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin may be in anticipation of similar actions in Ukraine. Ed.<\/p>\n The international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children, sending Russia another significant step on the path to becoming a pariah state.<\/p>\n In granting the request for warrants by the ICC prosecutor, a panel of judges agreed that there were \u201creasonable grounds\u201d to believe Putin and his children\u2019s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, bore responsibility for the \u201cunlawful deportation\u201d of Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n The warrants are the first to be issued by the ICC for crimes committed in the Ukraine war, and it is one of the rare occasions when the court has issued a warrant for a sitting head of state, putting Putin in the company of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.<\/p>\n Gaddafi was toppled and killed months after his warrant was announced. Bashir was also ousted and is currently in jail in Sudan, though he has yet to be transferred to The Hague. Putin is likely to evade justice in the near future: Russia does not recognise the court\u2019s jurisdiction, and insisted on Friday it was not affected by the warrants. But the Russian leader will face limits on his freedom of travel to the ICC\u2019s 123 member states, further deepening his isolation.<\/p>\nICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Julian Borger and Pjotr Sauer — The Guardian March 17, 2023<\/strong><\/h2>\n