LONDON — The International Criminal Court accused the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, of battle crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest on Friday, a extremely symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a 12 months in the past.
The court docket cited Mr. Putin’s duty for the kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian kids, hundreds of whom have been despatched to Russia because the invasion. It additionally issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for youngsters’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the general public face of the Kremlin-sponsored program that transfers the kids out of Ukraine.
There is little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime quickly. The International Criminal Court can not strive defendants in absentia and Russia, which isn’t a celebration to the court docket, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”
Yet the court docket’s transfer carried indeniable ethical weight, placing Mr. Putin in the identical ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian chief imprisoned for abuses through the Balkans battle; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World War II.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility,” mentioned the court docket, which was created 20 years in the past to analyze battle crimes, genocide and crimes towards humanity.
Both Russians, the court docket mentioned, bore “responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
As a sensible matter, the warrant may limit Mr. Putin’s travels, since he may face arrest in any of the 123 international locations which have signed on to the International Criminal Court — an inventory that features nearly all European international locations and a number of other in Africa and Latin America, however not China or the United States.
Human proper activists and Ukrainian officers hailed the warrants as proof that Mr. Putin and his lieutenants may now not act with impunity in Ukraine. For Mr. Putin, who already operates with a good circle of advisers within the Kremlin, it makes the world a smaller place, whilst he plans to welcome President Xi Jinping of China, maybe his strongest ally, to Moscow subsequent week.
The warrants additionally shine a light-weight on one of probably the most harrowing, poignant subplots of Russia’s brutal battle: the forcible switch of Ukrainian kids and youngsters to Russia or Russian-controlled components of Ukraine. Many are orphans, however Ukrainian officers say that others have been separated from their dad and mom or authorized guardians. Russia has acknowledged transferring 2,000 kids; Ukrainian officers say they have confirmed 16,000 instances.
“It would be impossible to carry out such a criminal operation without the order of the top leader of the terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mentioned in a video assertion, by which he welcomed Mr. Putin’s arrest warrant as the start of “historical responsibility.”
Stephen Rapp, a former ambassador at massive who headed the Office of Global Criminal Justice within the State Department, mentioned in an e mail that “this makes Putin a pariah.”
“If he travels he risks arrest,” he continued. “This never goes away.”
Moreover, he mentioned, Russia can not have worldwide sanctions lifted with out complying with the court docket’s warrants. Mr. Rapp mentioned he believed Mr. Putin would finally find yourself in The Hague, the place different accused battle criminals have been tried — some, like Mr. Milosevic, underneath advert hoc tribunals of the I.C.C. “Otherwise,” Mr. Rapp mentioned, Mr. Putin “dies with this hanging over his head.”
Still, the general public nature of the warrants, and the slim scope of the crimes, raised questions amongst authorized specialists, who famous that the court docket had been underneath intense pressure to behave towards Mr. Putin.
Russian troops have killed tens of hundreds of harmless civilians, and ravaged civilian infrastructure, in artillery strikes on Ukrainian cites. This week, The New York Times reported that the court docket meant to open two instances tied to the Russian invasion, in keeping with officers with information of the plans; the second was anticipated to give attention to Russia’s assaults on infrastructure.
“We don’t know what the full application was,” mentioned Philippe Sands, an professional on worldwide legislation who’s the director of the Center on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. “We don’t know whether the prosecutor wanted an arrest warrant for other crimes.”
Targeting Mr. Putin is an audacious transfer by the court docket, which may have begun with midlevel officers and labored its method as much as the president, Mr. Sands mentioned. “No doubt there will be many questions about why this particular crime and why the decision to make this public now,” he added.
Unlike in American courts, the place suspects are generally indicted earlier than being arrested, the prosecutor on the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, offered proof earlier than a panel of judges displaying affordable grounds to imagine that the suspects bore duty for battle crimes. The arrest warrants put them on discover of what they might most probably be charged with if tried.
If Mr. Putin and Ms. Lvova-Belova have been taken into custody and introduced earlier than the court docket in The Hague, they might have a pretrial listening to at which prosecutors would present proof that they might contend was ample for the case to go to trial.
The catch is that if a suspect managed to evade seize, she or he would by no means get a listening to to “confirm” the fees, mentioned Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of worldwide legislation at Yale Law School and a former prime lawyer on the State Department. As a consequence, Mr. Koh mentioned, “this may be as much as we get” for Mr. Putin.
Still, Mr. Koh mentioned he believed the court docket’s motion was a “net plus,” as a result of it may discourage China from giving Russia weapons and ship a deterrent message to others within the Russian paperwork about collaborating in battle crimes like abducting the kids. It may additionally ease resistance contained in the Pentagon to sharing proof with the court docket.
Russian officers have been withering of their response to the arrest warrants. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, mentioned the announcement had “no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view.”
“Russia is not cooperating with this body,” she added, calling any efforts by the I.C.C. to make arrests “legally null and void for us.”
The limitations of the court docket are well-known. Although it could indict sitting heads of state, it has no energy to arrest them or carry them to trial, as an alternative counting on different leaders and governments to behave as its sheriffs. This has been most vividly illustrated by the case of Mr. al-Bashir, the deposed Sudanese chief, who has not been arrested in different international locations the place he has traveled.
Although the court docket is backed by many democratic international locations, together with shut American allies like Britain, the United States has lengthy stored its distance, involved that the tribunal may sometime attempt to prosecute Americans.
A low level got here in 2017, when the chief prosecutor for the court docket tried to analyze the torture of detainees accused of terrorism through the George W. Bush administration. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the court docket’s personnel, and the secretary of state on the time, Mike Pompeo, denounced it as corrupt.
Relations thawed in 2021, when the Biden administration revoked Mr. Trump’s sanctions, and a newly appointed prosecutor, Mr. Khan, dropped the investigation.
President Biden mentioned on Friday that he thought the arrest warrant was “justified.” While he famous that the I.C.C. will not be acknowledged by the United States, he mentioned the warrant “makes a very strong point.”
The story of Ukraine’s kidnapped kids has been much less shrouded in secrecy than different abuses through the battle, partially as a result of Russian officers have sought to painting it as a humanitarian effort to take care of the battle’s youngest victims.
Yet a New York Times investigation revealed in October, which recognized a number of Ukrainian kids who had been taken, described a wrenching course of of coercion, deception and pressure. Upon arrival in Russia, the kids have been usually positioned in houses to grow to be Russian residents and subjected to re-education efforts.
On Thursday, a United Nations commission of inquiry mentioned Russia’s switch of kids and different civilians from Ukraine to Russia would possibly quantity to a battle crime, observing that none of the instances it investigated have been justified underneath worldwide legislation. Ukraine has reported the switch of 16,226 kids to Russia, however the fee mentioned it had not been capable of confirm the quantity.
Mr. Khan, the chief prosecutor, has mentioned the unlawful transfers of kids have been a precedence for his investigators. “Children cannot be treated as the spoils of war,” he mentioned after visiting a kids’s house in southern Ukraine this month that he mentioned had been emptied because of this of deportations.
In Ukraine, officers expressed satisfaction that Mr. Putin had been branded as a battle prison. Some voiced confidence that the authorized vise on the Russian chief would solely develop tighter. There are calls to arrange a particular tribunal that will strive Mr. Putin and his lieutenants on the crime of aggression.
“This is just the beginning,” mentioned Mr. Zelensky’s chief of workers, Andriy Yermak.
Reporting was contributed by Charlie Savage and Michael D. Shear from Washington, Marlise Simons from Morocco, Emma Bubola from Rome, Carlotta Gall from Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Marc Santora from Kyiv, Valerie Hopkins from Berlin and Anushka Patil from New York.
