China today asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to avoid “double standards” after it issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes.
“The ICC must take an objective and impartial position, respect the legal immunity of heads of state (…) and avoid politicization and double standards,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, just hours before the start of the session of Chinese President Xi Jinping. state visit to Russia.
The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, has accused Putin of being personally responsible for the abduction of thousands of children from Ukraine. Governments that recognize the court’s jurisdiction will thus be obliged to detain Putin if he visits their country.
Putin has yet to respond to the announcement, but the Kremlin has dismissed the move as “outrageous and unacceptable”.
When asked whether Putin’s arrest warrant or his lightning trip to the city of Mariupol will affect Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, which begins today, the spokesperson limited himself to saying that Beijing would “open dialogue and negotiation to the Ukrainian has always defended to resolve the crisis”. “.
“The international community must play a constructive role in reaching a peaceful agreement and do more to promote peace and negotiations,” he added.
According to Wang, relations between Beijing and Moscow “promote the democratization of international relations and are aimed at building a multipolar world”.
The Vice President of the Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, on Monday referred in a threatening tone to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against the Russian head of state.
In a confusing statement released today via Telegram’s digital messaging system, Medvedev, Russia’s president between 2008 and 2012, says “we are all at the mercy of God and missiles”.
“The court [TPI] it’s just a miserable organization, it’s not the people of NATO countries. So it won’t start a war. Be afraid (…). So judges, look closely at the sky…” Medvedev threatened in the translation of the Spanish agency EFE.
In a contradictory way, the former Russian head of state adds in the same message that “it will be completely unthinkable to use an Onyx hypersonic missile (a naval missile developed by Russia since 2002) launched from a Russian ship in the North Sea against the headquarters of the ICC in The Hague”, in the Netherlands.
In the same text, Medvedev also says that the consequences of an arrest warrant against a nuclear-powered head of state “will be monstrous” for international law.
Xi will arrive in Russia today to meet with Putin to discuss tensions with the West, particularly the United States, and the war in Ukraine, among other things.
In a peace plan proposed at the end of February, Beijing stressed the importance of “respecting the sovereignty of all countries”, referring to Ukraine, but also called for an end to the “Cold War mentality”, implicitly criticizing the NATO expansion. China has also called for an end to Western sanctions against Russia.
The proposal satisfied neither side nor the West, but it put Xi in the role of mediator, a role he had recently successfully played between two seemingly irreconcilable countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
China was among the countries that abstained from voting on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion at the UN assembly.
The Chinese leader arrives in Moscow a day after Putin first visited Ukraine – specifically the port of Mariupol (Sea of Azov), in the Donetsk region – since the beginning of the invasion, in February 2022.
Source: DN
