After arrest warrant for Putin, Russia opens case against ICC

Russia’s top investigative body has opened a criminal case against the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor and judges who issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges.

The move was announced on Monday by the state Investigative Committee in another gesture of Russian defiance, three days after the ICC accused Putin and his children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.A day after being accused, Putin made a surprise visit to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the scene of some of the worst devastation of his year-old invasion of Ukraine.

The committee said there were no grounds for criminal liability on Putin’s part, and heads of state enjoyed absolute immunity under a 1973 United Nations convention.

“The criminal prosecution is obviously illegal, since there are no grounds for criminal liability,” the Russian statement said.