A warrant for Putin’s arrest was issued in The Hague. What will happen next?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. The Kremlin called it “outrageous” and “negligible” from the point of view of law. “Agency” analyzes the consequences of the decision.

Why Putin and Belova. There is a lot of public evidence of the illegal deportation of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia. And that is why lawyers familiar with the case of the Ministry of Internal Affairs recently told the publication that they expect an arrest warrant to be issued. The testimonies that the publication writes about are statements that Putin and the children’s ombudsman made publicly. The Commissioner for Children’s Rights spoke many times about the sending of Ukrainian children to Russia. A month ago, guest television showed a conversation between Putin and Belova about the fact that “the number of appeals from our citizens regarding the adoption of children” from the occupied territories of Ukraine is growing. From the point of view of international law, the transfer of children from occupied territories is a war crime.

What’s next?

Putin becomes immovable. 123 countries have signed the Rome Statute of the ICC. It is now dangerous for the Russian leader to visit these countries. But they are not the only ones who can send the accused whose extradition is demanded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to The Hague, Denys Kryvosheev, deputy director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of Amnesty International, told “Agency”. In his opinion, it is risky for Putin to visit countries that are not parties to the charter, but can undertake obligations to fulfill its conditions. “It is difficult to know in advance which state will decide to do this. I think Putin will not risk it,” the expert says.

The ICC warrant makes Putin an outcast and he risks being arrested abroad, agrees Steven Rapp, former ambassador-at-large who headed the Office of Global Criminal Justice at the US State Department.

However, the decisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were not always implemented. The court indicted the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, but he traveled abroad and was not arrested in other countries.

A signal to Beijing and Washington

Harold Koch, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, told the New York Times that the order not only isolates Putin, but deters China from supplying arms to Russia. And in addition, it will reduce the resistance that the American military has against the transfer of evidence of Russian war criminals collected in the United States to the International Criminal Court.

A signal to the Russian elites

As The Guardian writes, the ICC is sending a signal to high-ranking Russian military and civilian officials that they may also face trial. This will limit their ability to travel around the world and participate in international forums.

The ICC warrant shows that “heads of state and military leaders cannot commit war crimes with an absolute guarantee of impunity,” Michael Newton, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, told The Wall Street Journal.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs may not limit itself to two warrants. Kryvosheev says that so far the warrant has been accepted in relation to only one crime, but today’s court decision will not be the last. “There is a whole list of well-documented criminals, so the list of suspects will increase,” said the representative of Amnesty.

The day before, the UN commission of inquiry into violations in Ukraine published a report on war crimes during the war, including reports of intentional killings, illegal deprivation of liberty and torture.

A blow to Russian diplomacy

Those countries that support the ICC and are included in the Rome Statute will have to rethink their relations with Russian diplomacy, former Russian diplomat Borys Bondarev told the Agency. “It is hard to imagine that, on the one hand, Putin is being accused of serious crimes, and on the other hand, Scholz or Macron are negotiating with him personally or with a delegation he authorized.

Perhaps the next step from the point of view of common sense is to declare him an illegitimate president, but then the question arises, who is the legitimate leader of the country? At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be stopped by the decision of the International Criminal Court, and he will come to Russia in March with a state visit, Bondarev believes.

Will Putin get to The Hague?

According to The New York Times, the ICC works like this: first, the prosecutor (in this case, Karim Khan) presents evidence of the suspect’s guilt to a panel of three judges at the preliminary investigation stage, after which an arrest warrant is issued. After this, the wanted person must be brought to court and only then the pre-trial hearings are held first, and then the main hearings.

Thus, if the suspect manages to avoid arrest, the confirmation hearing will not take place. This means that a judgment in absentia is impossible. However, when an international warrant was issued for Milosevic’s arrest, few believed in the reality of his detention, but two years later the head of the former Yugoslavia was arrested and sent to The Hague.