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Wanted: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. On Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president and for Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova. The two are accused of abducting Ukrainian children and transporting them to Russia. Ukrainian officials and human-rights groups swiftly praised the ICC, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling the court’s move an “historic decision, from which historical responsibility will begin.” Russian officials, meanwhile, deemed the decision “outrageous and unacceptable”—and reminded the court that Russia is not party to the Rome Statute that governs the ICC. That begs the question: Since this is just the beginning, what comes next? And will Putin ever really see the inside of a jail cell? We appealed to our experts for their takes on the warrants.
Click to jump to an expert reaction:
Thomas S. Warrick: A moment of moral clarity
Elise Baker: Next, prosecute Russia’s attacks on hospitals
Nushin Sarkarati: The US Department of Defense must send evidence to the ICC
Celeste Kmiotek: Time for the United States to reconsider its stance on the ICC
Gissou Nia: Behind the warrants is evidence, a global campaign, and perhaps a strategy
Shelby Magid: A step forward in dismantling Lvova-Belova’s network
A moment of moral clarity
No one should expect Putin to be behind bars anytime soon, but that’s not the point of today’s ICC arrest warrant. No indictments have been issued yet, and the warrant is one of several provisional measures that the ICC is taking to develop its case for the prosecution of Russian officials for war crimes in Ukraine. The case against Putin is still in its preliminary stages, and today’s war-crimes charges are likely the first steps towards further charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
However, the law is unambiguous, and the facts are increasingly undeniable. For example, Article II, paragraph (e) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which both Russia and Ukraine are parties, says that genocide includes “[f]orcibly transferring children of the group to another group” when done “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Russia has openly transferred Ukrainian children to Russian custody. Putin’s own statements going back to 2014, and the statements of other Russian officials and voices under Putin’s control, are available as evidence of the intent to erase Ukrainian identity.
Ukraine has invited the ICC to investigate crimes committed on Ukrainian territory. But Russia is not a party to the ICC treaty, so no one expects Putin to be turned over for trial right away. Still, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic thought that he wouldn’t be turned over for trial when he was indicted by a different international tribunal, yet he died behind bars in The Hague.
Today’s arrest warrant will limit Putin’s diplomatic options, and it will make it harder for anyone to dismiss Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” The real point of today’s ICC arrest warrant is to bring the world to a moment of moral clarity that what Putin is ordering in Ukraine violates the law and moral values of civilized nations around the world.
—Thomas S. Warrick is a senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice at the Atlantic Council. From 1997-2001, he was the deputy in the US State Department Office of War Crimes Issues.
Next, prosecute Russia’s attacks on hospitals
The ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin is a notable step in meting out justice for the atrocities he has led in Ukraine. However, this arrest warrant covers only a sliver of Russian crimes in Ukraine. The ICC and national justice actors in Ukraine and around the world must build cases reflecting the full range of any and all war crimes and crimes against humanity Russia can be charged with committing in Ukraine.
Chief among the crimes that should be prioritized are targeted attacks on medical facilities and personnel. In the first ten months of the war, Russian forces launched 707 attacks on Ukraine’s health care system, bombing and shelling hospitals and ambulances, killing and injuring medical workers, and threatening and imprisoning other health workers. Targeted attacks on medical facilities and personnel are war crimes. When carried out in a widespread or systematic manner, they amount to crimes against humanity.
Ukraine is not the first place Russia has perpetrated these crimes. After carrying out similar attacks in Chechnya in 2000 and in Georgia in 2008, Russian forces attacked ten medical facilities in Syria in the first month of its military intervention there, joining the Syrian government’s systematic assault on the country’s health care system that has killed 945 medical personnel and destroyed hundreds of medical facilities.
The continuation of attacks on medical facilities and personnel erodes international law and poses a global threat. Syrian and now Ukrainian health workers are suffering the deadly consequences of global inaction in the face of these crimes. International justice actors must prosecute attacks on health care as war crimes and crimes against humanity to reinforce these lifesaving laws and help prevent the spread of these attacks to yet another conflict.
—Elise Baker is a staff lawyer with the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project and previously documented attacks on Syria’s health care system with Physicians for Human Rights.
The US Department of Defense must send evidence to the ICC
The ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants today for Putin and Lvova-Belova puts greater urgency on the impasse between the Pentagon and the US State Department over the United States’ support of the ICC’s investigation on Ukraine. On March 8, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the ICC about Russian atrocities in Ukraine. The information is reportedly related to Russian officials’ deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, as well as the abduction of Ukrainian children from occupied territory—the very crime that Putin is accused of by the ICC.
While, generally, the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA) limits the United States’ ability to cooperate with the ICC, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 included amendments to ASPA that allowed for the United States to assist with “investigations and prosecutions of foreign nationals related to the Situation in Ukraine.”
If the reports are accurate, the Department of Defense’s refusal to provide evidence to the ICC that is directly related to the crimes under investigation undermines the United States’ continued support of Ukraine and the United States’ commitment to holding perpetrators of Russia’s crimes in Ukraine accountable. Today’s arrest warrants show the importance of supporting the ICC’s investigation into the situation in Ukraine, as the ICC is presently the only court willing and able to indict a sitting head of state—something US courts would not be able to do on their own.
—Nushin Sarkarati is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Program.
Time for the United States to reconsider its stance on the ICC
While there are plenty of significant accountability efforts moving forward for Ukraine, the legal and symbolic importance of today’s warrants cannot be overlooked. Putin is the head of state of a permanent United Nations Security Council member (otherwise known as a P5 country) and is scheduled to host another P5 president, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, next week. While the proposed Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression would likely also be able to issue a warrant for Putin’s arrest, no current standing court holds that power. Targeted sanctions already prevent Putin from traveling to many countries, but he now cannot travel to any of the 123 States Parties to the Rome Statute without risking arrest. This includes two other P5 members: the United Kingdom and France.
Today’s warrants highlight the power the ICC holds: the ability to stand up to leaders who perpetrate atrocities. Even before Putin stands trial, it has a practical effect, demonstrating the importance of accountability efforts within this conflict.
The United States has echoed the need for such accountability by strengthening its war crimes law so that it can domestically prosecute perpetrators who are not entitled to immunity, establishing Task Force KleptoCapture to target regime assets, and signing a memorandum of understanding with the Ukrainian prosecutor general to pursue accountability. But the United States is still not a party to the only court able to take action on Putin and other senior officials. Today’s news presents an opportunity for the United States to reconsider its stance and put meaningful action behind its rhetoric.
—Celeste Kmiotek is a staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.
Behind the warrants is evidence, a global campaign, and perhaps a strategy
With the issuance of arrest warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor has shown it is going straight to the top. Putin and Lvova-Belova stand accused of the war crimes of unlawful deportation and the transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. Russia is alleged to have committed a wide range of crimes in Ukraine, including the bombing of civilian infrastructure; the systematic and widespread use of torture, including shocking detainees with electricity and hanging them from the ceiling; indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians, including massacres in which hundreds of civilians were killed at once; and brutal sexual assaults as a weapon of war. Thus, it is notable that the ICC prosecutor has chosen to focus on crimes against children as an opening salvo for what will likely be the first of many arrest warrants to follow.
This is in part likely a function of the evidence—the Russian state has been very overt in acknowledging its child transfers and Lvova-Belova herself has even admitted to “adopting” a Ukrainian child—and in part a result of the growing global priority placed on protecting children’s rights in conflict. However, it may also reflect savvy strategy on the prosecutor’s part. Many members of the court from Latin America, Africa, and Asia feel disconnected from the West’s denunciation of Putin and call for the preservation of the international rules-based order when that order has been violated on so many occasions in their own regions, often aided by the direct actions or complicity of the West. By focusing first arrest warrants on war crimes against children, the bare and brutal truth of Putin’s war cannot be denied, even among those who bristle at Western hypocrisy. The allegations may also reflect an intention to later add charges of genocide, under Article 6(e) of the Rome Statute, since it will be a long road from the issuance of these arrest warrants to any confirmation of charges hearing in The Hague.
—Gissou Nia is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.
A step forward in dismantling Lvova-Belova’s network
The announcement today from the ICC that arrest warrants have been issued for Putin and Lvova-Belova is significant legally and politically. Legally, the ICC is moving forward the pursuit of justice for one of the most heinous war crimes the Russian regime is committing. Politically and diplomatically, this can hopefully serve to increase pressure on Putin to cease the unlawful transfer and deportation of children, encourage others to cooperate with international organizations to share information about children who are now in Russia and Russian-occupied territories, and ultimately return Ukrainian children to Ukraine.
While this is only one of the many heinous crimes Putin and the Russian officials and forces are committing, it is a critical issue that needs more attention, which this ICC arrest warrant can help bring. Putin and Lvova-Belova are central to the systemic forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Lvova-Belova, in serving as the commissioner for children’s rights, is a vital part of the Russian criminal enterprise of forcibly transferring and deporting Ukrainian children to a network of dozens of camps that serve a range of purposes including “re-education.” In addition to being allegedly guilty of running this policy and network, she also personally “adopted” a boy evacuated from Mariupol.
Ukrainian children in a variety of categories—including orphans, children with severe mental and physical disabilities who were in state-run homes, children of prisoners of war, and others—have been forcibly relocated by Russian forces since the beginning of the full-scale invasion last February. The true figures are unknown and are likely much higher, but as of now at least sixteen thousand children are reported as forcibly transferred, and only 308 have been returned. This is a clear violation of human rights and international law, and the ICC has taken a huge step forward in addressing this.
—Shelby Magid is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
Image: A sign at a rally for Ukraine at the White House shows Russian President Vladimir Putin in prison and calls for him to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. Thousands of people from across the United States gathered to thank the US and other countries for their help, and to demand a no-fly zone and other assistance for Ukraine. The event was sponsored by United Help Ukraine and the Ukranian Congress Committee of America, both U.S.-based assistance and advocacy organizations.
