International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin

WASHINGTON — The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes committed during his invasion of Ukraine.

The court also put out a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.

Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation” of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, the court wrote in a statement.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children, the ICC said. The court alleged that he committed the offenses either directly or in cooperation with others, or failed to stop subordinates under his authority.

The warrants are the first the ICC has issued in response to the war in Ukraine, as officials within the country and around the world ramp up probes into the horrors of Russia’s nearly 13-month assault. Investigators have uncovered allegations of forced deportations, torture, sexual violence, and deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, outlined in reports backed by the United Nations and other organizations.

The arrest warrant for Putin did not mention alleged crimes beyond the deportations.

The ICC’s prosecutor Karim Khan opened an investigation into possible Russian war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February of last year. Khan, who has met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy several times, has made at least three separate trips to visit sites across Ukraine to investigate alleged war crimes.

Earlier in the week, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Russia in 2000 signed the Rome Statute, which established the ICC and its jurisdiction, but did not ratify the agreement to become a member.

The Kremlin has previously denied that its forces commit war crimes or deliberately target civilians. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

“Wheels of justice are turning,” wrote Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Twitter. “International criminals will be held accountable for stealing children and other international crimes.”

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin separately said “this is a historic decision for Ukraine and the entire system of international law.”

“But this is only the beginning of a long road to the restoration of justice,” Kostin wrote on his official Telegram channel.

Kostin, who is leading Ukraine’s prosecution of Russian war crimes, told journalists in Washington, D.C., last month that regional Ukrainian authorities have registered more than 65,000 offenses since Moscow’s conflict began.

“We have all witnessed with horror the evidence of atrocities committed in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Izium, Kherson, Kharkiv regions and other liberated cities and towns,” Kostin said at the time. He said that Ukrainian authorities have discovered mass burial sites in areas occupied by Russian troops.

Read more: UN report details horrifying Ukrainian accounts of rape, torture and executions by Russian troops

Kostin added that the crimes “are not incidental or accidental.” At the time, he said that more than 75,000 buildings, including homes, schools and hospitals, have been reduced to rubble.