The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, described this Friday as a “historic decision” the arrest warrant once morest Russian President Vladimir Putinissued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged responsibility in the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children and their transfer to Russia.
“This is a historic decision, from which historic responsibility will begin,” Zelensky said in his usual late-night speech.
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The ICC issued this Friday an arrest warrant once morest Putin as “suspected responsible” for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children and their transfer from occupied areas in Ukraine to Russia, which constitutes a war crime according to the treaty of this court, the Statute from Rome.
The ICC pre-trial chamber also issued a second arrest warrant once morest Russian politician Maria Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, on the same charge.
“Today we have a fundamental decision of international justice. In a case that has a real perspective,” added the Ukrainian president.
(Keep reading: ICC issues arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.)
“The head of the terrorist state and another Russian official have officially become suspects in a war crime. The deportation of Ukrainian children: the illegal transfer of thousands of our children to the territory of the terrorist state,” Zelensky said.
According to the president, there have been more than 16,000 cases of forced deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia in criminal proceedings investigated by law enforcement officials, but added that “the actual and complete number of deportees may be much higher.”
“It would be impossible to commit such a criminal operation without the order of the top leader of the terrorist state,” he stressed.
“Separating children from their families, depriving them of any opportunity to contact relatives, hiding children on the territory of Russia and dumping them in remote regions – all this is obvious Russian state policy, state decisions and state wrongdoing. That begins precisely with the highest official of this state,” Zelensky insisted.
(Also: Could Vladimir Putin end up in prison following the ICC arrest warrant?).
The Ukrainian president thanked the team of the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, and that International Criminal Court “for integrity and the willingness to really bring the guilty to justice.”
So far, the ruler said, it has been possible to return just over 300 children of all those who were taken by force.
“It is obvious that we will continue to do everything possible for this. To return all Ukrainians, all Ukrainian women, all our children. And for the real responsibility of all those responsible for this deportation, from the head of the terrorist state to all the executors,” he said.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan identified, in his petition for the arrest warrant of President Vladimir Putin, the deportation to Russia of “at least hundreds of children taken from Ukrainian orphanages and child care homes”, in the context of the Russian Army’s “acts of aggression” once morest Ukraine.
(Also: Who is behind the investigation that led to Putin’s arrest warrant?).
Khan alleged that these acts of deporting Ukrainian minors to Russia and their adoption by Russian families “demonstrate an intent to permanently remove these children from their own country,” an illegal act because these Ukrainian minors “were protected persons” under the Geneva Conventions, which regulate international humanitarian law.
Today Russia described as “legally void” the arrest warrant for the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, ordered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the illegal deportation of children and their transfer from occupied areas in Ukraine to Russia, which is a war crime.
“Possible ‘prescriptions’ for arrest that come out of the International Court will be legally null for us,” wrote Maria Zajárova, Russian Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, on her Telegram channel.
EFE
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