The world has recently been surprised to hear that the ICC has issued a ‘warrant of arrest’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The central charge against him is that he is responsible for the abduction of around 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russian re-education camps.
So who are these children?
These are children from the Donbass republics, the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk which broke away from Ukraine in 2014. They are ethnic RUSSIANS and were sent away from the war zone by their parents working together with the Russian government. These areas are now part of RUSSIA and voted overwhelmingly to be part of RUSSIA.
When the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed in 1922, V.I. Lenin and his government decided to incorporate the Russian-speaking industrialised regions of the Donbass into Ukraine to give the new republic some income through industry. The Crimean peninsula, also a Russian-speaking region, was transferred to Ukraine in 1954 after Khrushchev became the leader of the USSR. As the USSR was one entity, there were no great objections at that time.
But after the US financed Nazi-led coup against democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych in 2014, the new regime insisted that the whole of Ukraine must speak Ukrainian; simultaneously, Soviet war memorials to those who died in the fight against Hitler were torn down and replaced by statues of Ukrainian Nazi war-criminal Stepan Bandera. It was this coup which drove the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine to fight back and eventually to join the Russian Federation.
So what made the ICC bring this ridiculous charge against President Putin?
A report from the Yale Humanitarian Research Laboratory (HRL) ⸺ Yale HRL’s work is funded and guided by the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.
On 17th March 2023, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, introduced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
The warrant accused Putin and Lvova-Belova of conducting the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” across the Russian Federation. Karim Khan is British with strong links to the ruling Conservative Party. US Senator Lindsey Graham proclaimed:
“The ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin because he has organized the kidnapping of at least 16,000 Ukrainian children from their families and sent them to Russia. It is exactly what Hitler did in World War II.”
An independent US investigative journalist, Jeremy Loffredo, visited one of Russian government-sponsored camps the Donbass Express, just outside Moscow, Loffredo met youth from war-zones who were flourishing there thanks to free music instruction, and grateful to be in a secure environment.
This is, of course, not the only ridiculous action by the ICC.
The case of South Africa being told to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he attended the African Union Summit is the first to come to mind. Never in the history of diplomacy and inter-state relations have we ever heard of a head of state being arrested while on a state visit to another country. The precedent that would be set if that ever happened defies imagination.
In fact the USA has UN headquarters on its territory but has never tried to arrest leaders of other countries. There again, the USA is not a signatory to the ICC, neither is Russia, China ⸺ or Sudan. Yet it is very clear that it is US intelligence which is responsible for using the ICC for its own political ends. And the human rights abuses by the USA since the Second World War are far worse than those of any other nation. Korea, Vietnam, Congo, Nicaragua, Libya, Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria immediately spring to mind.
When ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia attempted to investigate crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and by Israel against Palestinians, it created a backlash from the US government.
On 11th June 2020, Secretary of State and US President Donald Trump announced sanctions on officials and employees, as well as their families, involved in investigating alleged crimes against humanity committed by US armed forces in Afghanistan.
The US ordered sanctions against then ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and the ICC’s Head of Jurisdiction, Complementary, and Co-operation Division, Phakiso Mochochok, for an investigation into alleged war crimes by US forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan since 2003. Although the sanctions were subsequently lifted by Antony Blinken in April 2021, the current law in the United States on the ICC is the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA), 116 Stat. 820.
This authorises the President of the United States to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”.
The International Criminal Court was founded in 2002 by countries which had signed the Rome Statute. Prior to its establishment The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, created in 1993 in response to large-scale atrocities committed by armed forces during the Yugoslav Wars, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, created in 1994 following the Rwandan genocide.
However, these were already seriously flawed. In the case of Yugoslavia, atrocities were committed on all sides, but the only people prosecuted were Serbs! In particular there was a long drawn out case against former Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic. It is on record that Milosevic was horrified by a massacre carried out by troops loyal to him. Arrested in 2001, Milosevic died in custody in 2006. In 2016 the ICC declared ‘No Verdict’ on his case. They had no evidence against him.
Similarly in Rwanda: there is no doubt that genocide was carried out by Hutus against the dominant Tutsi minority. But there is substantial evidence that it was Paul Kagame, now President of Rwanda who gave the order to shoot down the plane carrying the first Hutu President of Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana and first Hutu President of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira. The genocide was a backlash to that. In addition it is known that genocidal attacks on Hutus who had taken refuge in the Democratic Republic of Congo were inflicted by Tutsi forces. It is only Hutus who have been prosecuted by the International Tribunal.
In neither of these International Criminal Tribunals was justice even –handed.
As then British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said of the ICTY in 2000:
“If I may say so, this is not a court set up to bring to book Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom or Presidents of the United States.”
After resigning from his post of Foreign Secretary in the Tony Blair government due to his opposition to the Iraq War, Cook became renowned for exposing the inner workings of US/UK foreign policy and this previously fit man died suddenly of a heart attack while out on a hiking holiday in Scotland ⸺ before he could complete his book exposing, for instance, British/American involvement in supporting jihadists in the Middle East.
Of 52 people indicted by the ICC since its formation, only 5 are not Africans ⸺ including Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova. Though many of the Africans are genuinely guilty, the ICC has been weaponised as a tool of the USA and its NATO allies.
The arrest and detention of Laurent Gbagbo, President of Côte d’Ivoire in 2011 by French troops supporting Alassane Ouattara at the Presidential Election of that year is a case in point. Gbagbo had challenged French control of the economy of Côte d’Ivoire, and the election results had gone to the French Embassy before being announced. Ouattara ‘won’. There was obvious fraud and Gbagbo refused to stand down having the obvious support of the majority of people, especially in the more numerous south of the country.
Gbagbo was flown to the Netherlands where the ICC looked for four years for evidence against him. It is against judicial norms to hold a person prisoner for such a long period without formal charges; however, in 2016 Gbagbo was brought to trial on a number of charges including rape and murder. More than 80 prosecution witnesses were lined up against him, but their testimony was so obviously falsified that he was acquitted in 2019. Haven after acquittal, he was kept for another two years before being allowed home to Côte d’Ivoire.
It is clear that the ICC is a ridiculous organisation of no value except to the liberal-fascist imperialists, who preach human rights but practice continuous war and destabilisation.
Editor's Note:
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