The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The court alleges he is responsible for war crimes, including the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
It says the crimes were committed in Ukraine at least from 24 February 2022 – when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Moscow has denied allegations of war crimes during the invasion.
The ICC has charged Mr Putin with being involved in the deportation of children, and says it has reasonable grounds to believe he committed the acts directly, as well as working with others.
The court also said the Russian leader failed to exercise his rights to stop others who deported children.
Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, is also wanted by the ICC.
Despite the warrant on Mr Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova, the ICC has no powers to arrest suspects, and can only exercise jurisdiction within countries who are signed up to the agreement that set up the court.
Russia is not a signatory to that agreement – so it is unlikely either will be extradited.
The ICC had said that its pre-trial chamber found there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.’
Putin was allegedly responsible both directly by committing the acts and for ‘failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission’, the court said.
On Thursday, a U.N.-backed inquiry cited Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including systematic torture and killing in occupied regions, among potential issues that amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
The sweeping investigation also found crimes committed against Ukrainians on Russian territory, including deported Ukrainian children who were prevented from reuniting with their families, a ‘filtration’ system aimed at singling out Ukrainians for detention, and torture and inhumane detention conditions.
But on Friday, the ICC put the face of Putin on the child abduction allegations. The international court is the last resort for crimes that countries cannot or will not prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan launched an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine just days after Russia’s invasion.
In the year since the war began, the world has watched in horror as Putin’s soldiers have dropped missiles on apartment buildings, tortured civilians before shooting them dead, and systematically raped women and girls.
Men, women and children – the youngest known victim being a 14-year-old boy – have been executed by Russian soldiers, their bodies thrown into deep troughs dug into the ground.
The scale of the suffering and the indiscriminate targeting of men, women and children has seen at least 7,000 civilians killed and nearly eight million Ukrainians flee to countries across Europe.
In March last year, a month into the war, Russian soldiers unleashed a series of indiscriminate bombs on civilian areas, leaving death and destruction in their wake.
During a three-month siege in the southern city of Mariupol, Russian forces levelled the city and killed hundreds of civilians in missile attacks. The world watched in horror as Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital on March 9, killing a pregnant woman and her baby, and wounding at least 17 people.
A week later, Russian aircraft again dropped missiles on civilian areas – this time on the Donetsk Regional Theatre in Mariupol, which was housing hundreds of civilians and had ‘children’ written in large white letters outside. At least a dozen people were killed and scores more were injured in the attack.
The attacks on civilians continue. On January 14, a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the city of Dnipro killed at least 44 people, including five children, and injured 79 people.
Since October, Russian forces have also repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, plunging cities into darkness and leaving millions without heat during the bitterly cold winter months.
In the early months of the war, Russian forces were forced to retreat from towns and cities across Ukraine – but as they retreated, the war crimes they allegedly committed against civilians has become clear.
