Key Points
- The move has caused outrage in the Kremlin.
- Mr Putin is only the third serving president to have been issued an ICC arrest warrant.
- It is unlikely that Mr Putin will end up in court anytime soon.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on Friday against Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegal deportation of children from Ukraine, in a move that caused outrage in the Kremlin.
Mr Putin is only the third serving president to have been issued an ICC arrest warrant, after Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
His forces have been accused of multiple abuses during Russia's year-old invasion of its neighbour Ukraine, including by an UN-mandated investigative body that this week described soldiers making children watch loved ones being raped.
Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations its forces have committed atrocities during the invasion, which it calls a special military operation.
The ICC issued the warrant on suspicion of the unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Russia has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
What happens now?
While it is unlikely that Mr Putin will end up in court anytime soon, the warrant means that he could be arrested and sent to The Hague if travelling to any ICC member states.
"This makes Putin a pariah. If he travels he risks arrest. This never goes away. Russia cannot gain relief from sanctions without compliance with the warrants," said Stephen Rapp, US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under former president Barack Obama.
The legal move provoked a furious response in Moscow.
"Yankees, hands off Putin!" wrote parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of the president, on Telegram, saying the move was evidence of Western "hysteria".
"We regard any attacks on the President of the Russian Federation as aggression against our country," he said.
Zelenskyy hails ICC move, blames Putin for child deportations
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ICC's decision was historic and blamed Mr Putin for the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children.
"This is an historic decision which will lead to historic accountability," he said in his nightly video address.
The real number of deported children could be "far more" than 16,000, he said, and said their deportations constituted a policy of "state evil which starts precisely with the top official of this state."
He added, "It would have been impossible to enact such a criminal operation without the say-so of the man at the helm of the terrorist state."
Residents of the Russian capital expressed disbelief at the news.
"Putin! Nobody will arrest him. Rather, he will arrest everyone," a man who gave his name only as Daniil, 20, told Reuters. "We will protect him - the people of Russia," said Maxim.
A woman who gave her name as Ksenya said it would be a "pity" if Mr Putin was arrested but she did not think it would be possible.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia was not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia found the very questions raised by the ICC "outrageous and unacceptable", and that any decisions of the court were "null and void" with respect to Russia.
The court also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's Commissioner for Children's Rights, on the same charges.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan began investigating possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine a year ago.
He highlighted during trips to Ukraine that he was looking at alleged crimes against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure.
