Moscow/Beijing, Mar. 21, (dpa/GNA) – Moscow reacted to the recent arrest warrant put out for Russian President Vladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court (ICC) with seeming indifference on Monday.
“We are making a record of this,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “But if we took every hostile statement to heart, it would lead to nothing good.”
The Russian leadership is “calmly” considering the matter, he said.
The ICC in the Hague issued an arrest warrant on Friday for Putin and for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, for allegedly being responsible for the abduction of children from occupied Ukrainian territories to Russian territory.
Russia says it took the children to safety from the fighting.
Russia, alongside China and the United States, does not recognize the court. More than 120 other countries have ratified the Rome Statute under which the court was set up.
Peskov’s comments came after the ICC’s chief prosecutor told reporters the warrant against Putin would remain valid even after Russia’s war with Ukraine ends, and China urged the court to act “prudently.”
“There is no statute of limitations on war crimes,” ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan told BBC radio on Monday, according to the PA Media news agency. Khan said that was one of the principles of the post-World War II Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.
“Individuals – wherever they are in the world – need to recognize that the law exists and that with authority comes responsibility,” Karim said.
Many Western powers and others praised the court’s decision on Friday to issue the arrest warrant.
“The label will stick with him for his life unless either he’s tried and acquitted or, almost inconceivable, the International Criminal Court withdraws the arrest warrant,” British lawyer Geoffey Nice, chief prosecutor for former Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević in The Hague, told Sky News.
The arrest warrant was a “very, very important and very welcome move.”
China, meanwhile, said the court should “take an objective and fair position” and “respect the immunities of heads of state under international law,” in the words of a Beijing Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The tribunal must exercise its powers “prudently and in accordance with the law.” Politicization and double standards must be avoided, he said.
China is considered a close ally of Russia. Putin received Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Kremlin on Monday for a three-day state visit. Against the backdrop of the Russian war in Ukraine, Moscow says the talks will focus on developing the strategic cooperation between Russia and China.
ICC chief prosecutor Khan told Russia it needs to send children it allegedly abducted from Ukraine back to their home country.
“If there are any semblance of truth to the utterances that this is for the sake of the children, instead of giving them a foreign passport, return them to the country of their nationality,” he said at a conference of justice ministers in London, PA Media reported.
In Russia, the judiciary initiated criminal proceedings against the judges of the ICC, naming Khan directly, saying the arrest warrant is illegal because it is against a representative of a foreign state who is protected from such prosecutions, according to a statement from the National Investigation Committee.
Khan said to anyone talking about humanitarian evacuations, “the evidence tells a difference story,” PA reported.
At the conference, chaired by Britain and the Netherlands, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin accused Russian soldiers of “atrocities” and “ruthless” attacks on civilians.
He also said Russian authorities simplified adoptions and fast-tracked children to become Russian citizens. There is clear evidence of a plan to “to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainian identity.” Kostin said, according to PA.
His agency has so far begun investigations into 72,000 alleged war crimes cases, he said.
GNA