According to Russian news agencies and the Kremlin’s press department, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the city of Mariupol after a stop in Crimea. It was his first visit to the port city in southern Ukraine, which Russia took after a protracted siege, according to AFP.
According to the news agency Reuters, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on Friday morning. The warrant says that Putin committed war crimes in Ukraine.Throughout the year-long invasion, Moscow has consistently denied that its soldiers committed crimes against its neighbor.
According to the source, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin on suspicion of illegal deportation of children and illegal transfer of individuals from Ukrainian territory to the Russian Federation. Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crimes of the illegal expulsion of people (children) and the unlawful transfer of population (children) from the occupied territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” according to a statement from the court.
According to The Guardian, US President Joe Biden said that the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin is legitimate. Putin, according to Biden, has obviously committed war crimes. “Well, I believe it’s justifiable,” US President Donald Trump stated on Friday, according to The Guardian.
The ICC’s pre-trial chamber found “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears 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, to the detriment of Ukrainian children.” Reuters said earlier this week that the court was about to issue the first warrants in its investigation into the Ukrainian conflict.
