Yury Kobzar17:53, 20.03.23

Now Putin has two serious problems that he managed to avoid before.

An international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) could turn out to be a far more dangerous event for Vladimir Putin than all Western sanctions combined. This opinion was expressed by Oleksandr Baunov, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a large analytical article on the Carnegie Politika portal .

He noted that the arrest warrant will not yet have direct legal consequences for Putin. However, it can significantly affect the Kremlin’s attempts to restore relations with the countries of the global East and South after the break with the global West.

“The biggest non-Western interlocutors of the Kremlin – China, India, Turkey – also do not recognize the ISS. But it is recognized by almost all of Africa and Latin America – the continents to which Russia is trying to offer itself as the flagship of the fight against Western neo-colonialism. Some African countries do not simply recognize the ISS , and cooperated with him in the administration of justice,” Baunov notes

He admits that it is unlikely that Putin will be arrested by the local authorities if he comes to conditional Tajikistan. However, lower-ranking officials are not protected from such an arrest, for whom the ICC, most likely, will also begin issuing arrest warrants en masse.

“Talks about the possibility of Putin’s personal presence at the G20 summit in South Africa, which recognizes the jurisdiction of the ISS, already sound different than before the warrant,” the expert states.

However, the arrest warrant for Putin will have a much more serious effect on the attitude of the Russian elites themselves towards their leader.

“The situation with the warrant looks different than with the sanctions. Then Putin, who stood above the sanctions, watched what would happen to the people who fell under them from his entourage. Now the entourage is watching what will happen to him,” writes Baunov.

The expert reminds that there have already been precedents in history when the entourage loyal to the leader did hand him over to the international court after the loss of power. Yes, in particular, it happened with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

And here again it should be mentioned that earlier a large part of the Russian elites already lost the opportunity to travel to the countries of the West. They certainly do not want to lose access to the rest of the world if the ICC continues to issue arrest warrants for Russian officials, thereby closing the door to Africa and Asia.

Putin’s arrest warrant

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s ombudsman on charges of deportation of Ukrainian children. The order is valid in more than 120 countries of the world.

Many Western leaders had time to speak favorably of this decision, but Germany was the next to go. The country, which has long been the main trading partner of the Russian Federation, directly promised to arrest Putin at the first opportunity.

Russia itself has declared that it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and is not afraid of a warrant. However, today the Russian Investigative Committee decided to open a criminal case against the management of the International Space Station.

(C)UNIAN 2023