Putin Charged with War Crimes by International Criminal Court
Arrest Warrant Issued over Kidnappings and Forced Deportation of Ukrainian Children to Russia
On March 17th, the International Criminal Court, seated at The Hague, issued a criminal arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin—the first against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—citing his alleged personal responsibility for “the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
It also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.
It’s the tip of the iceberg. Four weeks ago Kamala Harris decried Russia’s use of debased violence in its unprovoked assault on the strategically important Black Sea nation that Putin hopes will bring Russia a lake route into the Mediterranean Sea.
Adding to Harris’s statements, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said that members of Russia’s forces had “committed execution-style killings of Ukrainian men, women, and children; torture of civilians in detention through beatings, electrocution, and mock executions; rape; and, alongside other Russian officials, have deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, including children who have been forcibly separated from their families”.
That’s … hundreds of thousands of people forcibly removed to Russia, where they have become pawns in the extortion rackets to which Putin has subjected Zelensky and the Ukrainian people.
The ICC warrant will be virtually impossible to enforce, but it is also only the first of many that will come.
Putin has now run off to Crimea to celebrate the 9th anniversary of his theft of Crimea from Ukraine, but, as one pundit said, even if Putin can pretend it doesn’t care about it, this is going to follow him for the rest of his life.
And in the end, the walls he has built to defend himself will crumble. He thinks he is invincible, but it’s good to remember …
That’s what Milosevic thought, too.
Thank you for putting the despotic pieces together.