US President Joe Biden on Friday said it was justified that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.
The court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said that it had also issued a warrant for Russian Presidential Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova on similar charges.
Moscow dismissed the orders as “void.”
Photo: REUTERS / Sputnik / Mikhail Metzel
Russia is not a party to the ICC so it was unclear if or how Putin could ever end up in the dock.
War-battered Ukraine welcomed the ICC announcement, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailing the “historic decision.”
The court’s shock notice came hours after other news with the potential to significantly impact Russia’s war on Ukraine, including a planned Moscow visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and more fighter jets for Kyiv’s forces.
More than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the invasion began on Feb. 24 last year, with many allegedly placed in institutions and foster homes, the Ukrainian government said.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said that Putin was now liable for arrest if he sets foot in any of the court’s more than 120 member states.
He said the arrest warrants were “based upon forensic evidence, scrutiny and what’s been said by those two individuals.”
“The evidence we presented focused on crimes against children. Children are the most vulnerable part of our society,” Khan said.
The ICC said that its judges found there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Putin’s criminal responsibility and grant Khan’s application for the warrants, which were filed on Feb. 22.
ICC President Piotr Hofmanski said the execution of the warrants “depends on international cooperation.”
Biden said the warrant against Putin was justified, because he “clearly committed war crimes.”
While the US does not recognize the court, Biden told reporters at his Delaware home that the ICC “makes a very strong point” to call out the Russian president for his actions in ordering the invasion of Ukraine.
During a meeting with Putin in the middle of last month, Lvova-Belova said she had adopted a 15-year-old child from the devastated Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
“Now I know what it means to be a mother of a child from Donbas — it is a difficult job, but we love each other, that is for sure,” she told Putin.
She added that “we evacuated children’s homes into safe areas, arranged rehabilitation and prosthetics for them and provided them with targeted humanitarian assistance.”
The arrest warrant for Putin, a sitting head of state of a UN Security Council member, is an unprecedented step for the ICC.
Set up in 2002, the ICC is a court of last resort for the world’s worst crimes, when countries cannot or will not prosecute suspects.
Additional reporting by AP
COMMITMENT: The world’s biggest contract chipmaker said that its new 2nm chips, as well as next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4nm chips, will be produced in Taiwan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that the majority of its most advanced chips would continue to be manufactured in Taiwan and that it is boosting advanced chip packaging capacity to catch up with fast-growing demand driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT. Deeply rooted in Taiwan, TSMC is expanding production capacity for its most advanced 3-nanometer (nm) chips at its Tainan fab and is building new plants to produce new 2-nanometer chips in Hsinchu and Taichung in 2025. The chipmaker also plans to produce next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4-nanometer chips, which are currently under development, at home, it
FIRST STEP: Business groups in Taiwan welcomed the deal, which does not include tariff reductions at this stage, as they called for the elimination of double taxation Taiwan and the US yesterday signed an initial agreement under the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade. The agreement was signed yesterday morning by Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Managing Director Ingrid Larson in Washington, the Office of Trade Negotiations in Taipei said. The ceremony was witnessed by Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中) and Deputy US Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi. Taiwan and the US started talks under the initiative in August last year, after Taipei was left out of the Washington-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. “The deal that will be signed tonight is not only very historic,
PASSAGE DISPUTE: A US and Canadian transit was a provocation and an attempt to ‘exercise hegemony of navigation,’ China’s defense ministry told a forum in Singapore The Ministry of National Defense yesterday urged the Chinese Communist Party to avoid provocative behavior after a Chinese navy ship crossed the paths of a US destroyer and Canadian frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait. A Chinese ship on Saturday “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner in the vicinity of [the USS] Chung-Hoon,” an American destroyer, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. The vessel “overtook Chung-Hoon on their port side and crossed their bow at 150 yards [137m]. Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 [knots, 18.5kph] to avoid a collision,” the statement said. It then “crossed Chung-Hoon’s bow a second time
HARD-WON FREEDOM: Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on protesters has not been and should not be forgotten, as China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, Lai said Taiwanese enjoy democracy and freedom and have multiple ways to express their creativity, and hopefully young people in China would also one day have the freedom to sing and express themselves, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing in 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident. Tsai posted a photograph taken in March in a subway station in Guizhou, China, where hundreds of young people gathered to sing People With No Ideals Don’t Get Hurt (沒有理想的人不傷心), saying that they