The chairman of the Russian Chamber of Deputies (Duma), Viacheslav Volodin, assured that “any attack” against Vladimir Putin is an “aggression” against the country, referring to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
“We interpret any attack against the President of the Russian Federation as an aggression against our country,” Viacheslav Volodin wrote on his Telegram account on Friday.
It was the first time in history that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against the president of a member state of the United Nations Security Council.
In response to the head of the Russian Commission of Inquiry, Alexandr Bastrikin, ordered an investigation into what he called “the illegal issuance by the ICC of an arrest warrant against a Russian citizen”. In the context of this process, the instruction aims to establish the identity of the members of the courts that issued the said decision.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov considered the court order “outrageous” and “unacceptable”.
“Russia, like other countries, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court, so such a decision is insignificant for Russia from a legal point of view,” he told the RIA Novosti news agency.
The ICC’s Investigation Chamber also issued a second arrest warrant against Russian politician Maria Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for the Rights of the Child in Russia, on the same charges.
The ICC holds Putin “allegedly responsible” for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children denounced by Kiev authorities.
Both arrest warrants are the first of their kind issued by the ICC in its investigation of war crimes in Ukraine.
The crimes he is accused of have taken place in the “occupied territory of Ukraine” at least since February 24, 2022, according to the ICC, which believes there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that the Russian president “individually criminal responsibility”. for war crime involving the deportation of minors.
Russia has not ratified the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC, and is not a member of this court, nor is Ukraine, but Kiev
Source: DN
