Putin’s arrest warrant: Russia refuses to acknowledge ICC’s jurisdiction
Moscow: The Kremlin has said that Arrest warrant The extradition order issued by the International Criminal Court for President Vladimir Putin was considered legally “null and void”.
Top Russian officials and propagandists were furious, while members of the opposition applauded the move.
“Russia, like many other countries, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court and therefore, from a legal point of view, Judgments of this Court are invalid,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Russia is not a member of the ICC.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said ICC decisions “have no meaning” for Russia.
“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it,” he said on Telegram.
“Russia does not cooperate with this institution and, as far as we are concerned, possible ‘tricks’ of arrest from the International Court of Justice would be legally void,” Zakharova said, without naming Putin.
RussiaFormer President Dmitry Medvedev also compared the warrant to toilet paper on Twitter.
The ICC announced earlier Friday that it had issued an arrest warrant against Putin for the “illegal deportation” of Ukrainian children.
The court also issued a warrant against Maria Leva Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, on similar charges.
“All countries, even Japan, have sanctions against me, and now there are arrest warrants…”, state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Levova-Belova as saying.
“But we will continue our work.”
‘turn it off’
The head of the Investigative Committee, which investigates major crimes, ordered an investigation into the ICC’s warrant against “Russian nationals”.
“The Russia Investigative Committee will identify specific individuals among ICC judges who made clearly illegal decisions,” the investigators said in a statement.
Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia’s state broadcaster RT, said Moscow could respond militarily to any attempt to arrest the Russian president.
“I would like to see a country that arrests Putin by the Hague decision. Some eight minutes later. Or however long the flight time to his capital,” Simonyan said on social media. Said on the media.
Members of the Russian opposition praised the move.
Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade behind bars, said on social media, “Congratulations to Vladimir Vladimirovich on his arrest in absentia! This is just the first step.”
“Shut it off!” tweeted activist Vladimir Melov, an ally of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.