Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Although Russia has junked it as “meaningless”, some of its leaders do worry about the arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, issued last week by the International Criminal Court (ICC), following which he can be, technically, arrested in any of the 123 member countries of The Hague-based global court.
That is why, five days after the ICC pronounced Putin a war criminal and issued an arrest warrant for him, a senior Russian leader said any attempt to detain the President would amount to a declaration of war against Russia.
“Ukraine is part of Russia,” he said, adding that almost all of modern-day Ukraine had been part of the Russian empire. Russia recognized Ukraine’s post-1991 sovereignty and borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
On Friday last week, the ICC issued an arrest warrant, accusing Putin of the alleged war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, and that there are reasonable grounds to believe that he bears individual criminal responsibility.
On Thursday, Putin’s staunch ally Dmitry Medvedev told Russian media that the ICC, which countries like Russia, China, and the United States do not even recognize, was a “legal nonentity” that had never done anything significant, the media reported on Thursday.
Medvedev, 57, is a former Russian President (2008-12) and ex-Prime Minister (2012-20). Since 2020, he is the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council.
“Let’s imagine – obviously this situation which will never be realized – but nevertheless let’s imagine that it was realized: The current head of the nuclear state went to a territory, say Germany, and was arrested,” Medvedev said.
“What would that be? It would be a declaration of war on the Russian Federation,” he said in a video posted on messaging platform Telegram. “And in that case, all our assets – all our missiles et cetera – would fly to the Bundestag, to the Chancellor’s office.”
Last week, the Kremlin dubbed the ICC’s arrest warrant an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are “Ukrainian war crimes.”
Russia’s February 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine has triggered the deadliest European conflict since the Second World War and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Relations with the West, Medvedev said, were probably at the worst point ever.
As Russia’s President, Medvedev cast himself as a pro-Western reformer. Since the Ukrainian war, however, he turned into one of the most publicly hawkish Russian officials, insulting Western leaders and delivering a series of nuclear warnings.
“Every day’s delivery of foreign weapons to Ukraine brings closer the nuclear apocalypse,” he said.
After the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, he said, the West had considered itself the boss of Russia but Putin had put an end to that illusion.
“They were very offended,” Medvedev said, adding that the West disliked the independence of Russia and China.
He said the West now wanted to crack Russia apart into a host of weaker states and steal its vast natural resources.
Putin has attempted to cast the conflict in Ukraine as an ‘existential struggle’ to defend Russia against an ‘arrogant and aggressive’ West which he claimed wanted to cleave Russia apart.
The West denies it wants to destroy Russia and says it is helping Ukraine defend against an imperial-style land grab. Ukraine says it will not rest until all Russian soldiers are ejected from its territory.
Medvedev said ties with the West would one day improve, though he said it would take a long time.
“I believe that sooner or later the situation will stabilize and communications will resume, but I sincerely hope that by that time a significant part of those people (Western leaders) will have retired and some will be dead,” he said.