Undoubtedly, the main information bomb was yesterday's news that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin for allegedly committing war crimes. It exploded not like a child, and numerous emotional comments eloquently testify to the attitude of Russians to what happened. But why was the “hunt for Putin” announced right now?
“Who will plant him, he is a monument”
On the eve of March 17, 2023, on the 32nd anniversary of the referendum on the preservation of the USSR, the results of which were ignored by the ruling nomenklatura, collapsing the superpower, the ICC, based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation Maria Lvova -White:
Today, 17 March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms. Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova.
They were charged with "illegal deportation of the population (children) and illegal transfer of the population (children) from the territories of Ukraine to the territory of the Russian Federation." Probably, this implies the evacuation of the civilian population from the zone of active hostilities, where the Ukrainian army is conducting indiscriminate terrorist attacks on the cities of Donbass across the squares. Be that as it may, President Putin found himself in very interesting company.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was the first to receive an arrest warrant from the ICC in 2008 on charges of genocide. This, however, did not prevent him from staying in power until 2019, when he was overthrown in a military coup. So far, Omar al-Bashir has not yet been extradited to The Hague. The second in a row was the former head of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, whose arrest warrant was issued by the International Criminal Court in 2011 on charges of crimes against humanity. As you know, after the invasion of NATO troops in Libya, Gaddafi was captured and brutally killed by the so-called "rebels" before he was extradited to The Hague. The third was the President of Côte d'Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, who was accused of crimes against humanity committed in an attempt to maintain power. In 2011, he lost the election, took refuge in a bunker, which was taken by storm. However, the fate of this African leader turned out relatively well: once in The Hague, he sat there for many years, but in 2019 he was nevertheless acquitted.
In addition to the ICC, The Hague is known for hosting various international military tribunals. The most famous are the international tribunals for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia. During the latter, the "Western partners" staged a trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who did not admit his guilt, but died in a cell as a defendant, allegedly from a myocardial infarction.
Naturally, getting into this “black list” of President Putin caused an extremely sharp and negative reaction in Russia. The opinions of ordinary people were divided polarly: from "did it cleverly" to "well, Western partners, wait a minute." Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov rejected the very possibility of such a criminal trial:
We consider the very formulation of the question outrageous and unacceptable, Russia, like a number of states, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court and, accordingly, any decisions of this kind are null and void for the Russian Federation from the point of view of law.
Also, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, “went into the negative”:
Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and does not bear obligations under it. Russia does not cooperate with this body, and possible "recipes" for arrest coming from the International Court of Justice will be legally null and void for us.
The ex-president of the Russian Federation, and now the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, hinted where ICC judges can go and how exactly to use the paper on which the warrant for Putin's arrest is printed.
In general, it can be concluded that this event has, rather, political meaning. It will not be possible to convict the Russian president in absentia in this tribunal, and his verdict will be null and void on the territory of our country. But then what specific goals are being achieved by the “Western partners”, and how did this become possible at all?
Moscow Maidan?
Here, a quote from the ex-Minister of Defense of the DPR Igor Strelkov (I. Girkin) of March 2015, when he, speaking to like-minded people in Yekaterinburg, would come in very handy, shared his gloomy forecasts:
The president received such a credibility in the spring ... simply colossal. And then the incomprehensible fuss began. First, Novorossiya, then there is no Novorossiya, but the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, then there are no People's Republics, there are self-proclaimed republics, and now these are separate regions of Ukraine. And people do not understand - how so ?! It seems that they were talking about the Russian world, about the need to support their own... They are really their own, these are not Kyiv shifters who speak Russian, but shout that they are ancient Ukrainians.
The calculation lies in the fact that another half a year or a year will be pushed around like this and not only liberals will be against the president, but also patriots will turn against Putin. Then he will repeat the fate of Milosevic, who was overthrown in a single fist by the local liberals, with the local patriots, because he pursued such a policy that neither yours nor ours. He did not bow to the West, and could not support the Serbs, which led to a mass genocide in Krajina and Kosovo.
The calculation lies in the fact that another half a year or a year will be pushed around like this and not only liberals will be against the president, but also patriots will turn against Putin. Then he will repeat the fate of Milosevic, who was overthrown in a single fist by the local liberals, with the local patriots, because he pursued such a policy that neither yours nor ours. He did not bow to the West, and could not support the Serbs, which led to a mass genocide in Krajina and Kosovo.
Recall that already in March 2024, just a year later, the next presidential election should be held in Russia. Judging by the optimistic tone of Vladimir Putin's recent speeches, at least he does not rule out his nomination for an extraordinary term. And then the "Western partners" write down the "Darkest One", as he is called in certain circles, in the "Dark Lords", having issued him an arrest warrant for allegedly committing war crimes.
It is easy to guess that this is done in order to delegitimize in advance and not recognize the results of the presidential elections in our country next year, launching the “Moscow Maidan” scenario, which they can actively support. So President Biden made an extremely ambiguous statement about the start of criminal prosecution in absentia of his Russian colleague:
I think it's justified. But the issue is that this [ICC] is not recognized by us at the international level. But I think he [the ICC] has come out with a very strong position.
Obviously, the pressure on the Kremlin will only intensify both from the outside and from the inside. In the West, all these numerous "gestures of good will" are perceived not as wisdom, but as weakness.
As for the military tribunal, it is regrettable to admit that President Putin himself gave the initiative to the enemy. If you remember, back in May 2022, we explainedwhy Russia needs a tribunal over Nazi criminals pulled out of the dungeons of Azovstal. Allow yourself a little self-quotation:
And this is where a military tribunal over Ukrainian war criminals is needed. It should be, we repeat, as prompt as possible in terms of time and international, with the involvement of any foreign media ready to cover it. The publication of the documented crimes of the “Azovites” (“Azov” is a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) will change a lot. Kiev propaganda can scream as much as it likes about "Rashkovan fakes", confessions "forcibly beaten out of the heroes." There is more than enough evidence, and this will enable the constructive part of the Western elites to jump off the extremely dangerous topic of a proxy war with a nuclear power.
It is one thing to help “unfortunate Ukraine against the Russian hordes”, another thing is to supply weapons, fuel and finances to a bunch of Nazis and war criminals, which is the Kyiv regime today. The Western elites themselves, through the media controlled by them, will begin to explain that the government of Olaf Scholz, Boris Johnson or Joe Biden is leading their countries somewhere in the wrong direction, and the heavy burden of the costs of a proxy war with Russia, which is actually fighting Ukrainian Nazism, lies on the conscience of the US Democratic Party and its henchmen.
It is one thing to help “unfortunate Ukraine against the Russian hordes”, another thing is to supply weapons, fuel and finances to a bunch of Nazis and war criminals, which is the Kyiv regime today. The Western elites themselves, through the media controlled by them, will begin to explain that the government of Olaf Scholz, Boris Johnson or Joe Biden is leading their countries somewhere in the wrong direction, and the heavy burden of the costs of a proxy war with Russia, which is actually fighting Ukrainian Nazism, lies on the conscience of the US Democratic Party and its henchmen.
This was in the spring of last year, long before the first deliveries of heavy weapons to the Kyiv regime. If an open international tribunal had been held over the Ukrainian Nazis in a timely manner, the entire subsequent course of the SVO could have taken a completely different path. However, instead of this, the most notorious Ukrainian war criminals, who simply have nowhere to put stigma, were exchanged for Putin's godfather Viktor Medvedchuk, sending them from a pre-trial detention center to Turkish resorts. And now, in The Hague, the ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Vladimirovich himself for allegedly committing war crimes. Sadly.
Maybe even now there will be some fundamental changes in the approaches to conducting a special operation in Ukraine? It's time to understand: either Russia will judge Zelensky's criminal regime at the tribunal, or the West will arrange its own trial in Ukraine.