March 18 () –
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has affirmed this Friday that the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant against the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is “justified”.
This was stated in statements in the media after being asked about his opinion on the issuance of the court against his Russian counterpart under the presumption of a war crime for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children from areas captured during the Ukrainian war to Russian territory.
“Well, I think it’s justified. But the question is that we don’t recognize it internationally either. But I think it’s a very strong point,” the US president asserted.
Hours before, the CFI has issued an arrest warrant against Putin after considering that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Putin “has individual criminal responsibility” for these crimes, either for their “direct” commission or for having been incapable of “exercising adequate control over the civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts”.
The Kremlin has consistently denied that it is forcibly deporting Ukrainian children in the face of accusations made by kyiv and its allies. According to the Ukrainian government, at least 16,000 children have ended up displaced against their will to Russian territory since the beginning of the conflict, while a recent study presented in February by Yale University denounced at least 6,000 Ukrainian children distributed among 40 Russian boarding schools.
Friday’s arrest warrants represent the first international charges filed since the start of the conflict and come after months of work by a special investigative team under ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan. For its issuance it has been necessary for a preliminary panel of judges to accept the validity of the evidence presented.
The possibility that the ICC ends up prosecuting Putin is practically nil for several reasons: the court cannot hear cases ‘in absentia’ of the defendant, Russia withdrew in 2016 from the Rome Statute that serves as the legal foundation for the court, and the The Kremlin has not the slightest intention of handing over any Russian official to the court, as it has reiterated on numerous occasions.
However, the CFI is qualified, at least, to charge Putin, since it does not recognize immunity for heads of state in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.