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Rabat – The Hague’s International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over war crimes in Ukraine.
According to a report from The Guardian, Putin is accused of “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to the federation of Russia. The arrest warrants also include one for the Russian children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.
Converging reports further indicate that ICC judges ruled that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population.” The judges have reasons to believe that there have been “unlawful transfers of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” note the reports.
ICC judges deliberated on the issuing of warrants secretly, but they eventually decided against the measure, explaining that it would “contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes,” The Guardian report adds.
The news comes in the wake of several reports suggesting that the Russian military “abducts” Ukrainian children and sends them to Russia for adoption.
Russia was making “open efforts” to adopt Ukrainian children and give them a Russian upbringing, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.
The investigation alleges that “thousands of children” were found in basements of cities ravaged by the war and in orphanages in the Donbas region. The children are labeled as “children of the state” and are assigned to Russian foster families.
Responding to these allegations, Russia has maintained that the children either don’t have legal guardians or were unreachable after the death of their parents. According to AP’s investigation, however, the children were deported to Russia or Russia-backed regions without consent, and were lied to and told that their parents no longer wanted them.
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