The arrest warrant issued by the International Court in The Hague against Vladimir Putin is a somewhat symbolic measure, even though it limits the freedom of movement of the Russian president (who, by the way, rarely leaves Russia). But the effects will be those of an inevitable slowdown of the already minimal attempts at negotiations to silence the guns in Ukraine. The tsar is accused of war crimes and the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, but the crime “will almost certainly be impossible to prosecute, at least at this stage”, explains Lorenzo Cremonesi in Corriere della Sera. There are two direct consequences for Putin: “a very serious blow to his international status”, and the sword of Damocles represented by the fact that “all the police forces of the 123 States signatories to the Treaty of Rome, which established the Court in 1998, could arrest him if he entered his territory”.
In short, for The Hague, the head of the Kremlin is like former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic or the various Aphican dictators. “Now the Court’s mandate makes it much more difficult for Putin to directly manage any negotiations to reach a peaceful solution (at the moment non-existent) with Zelensky”, comments Cremonesi, who reports the positions, taken for granted, of the Russians and Ukrainians. The former are furious, as demonstrated by the words of former Russian President Medvedev, Putin’s hawk: the arrest warrant is “toilet paper”, while they rejoice in Kiev.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
