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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the collegium of the Prosecutor General's office in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023. Russia signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but never ratified it to become a member of the ICC, and finally withdrew its signature in 2016. Image Credit: REUTERS

Moscow: Russia said on Friday that an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against Russian President Vladimir Putin was meaningless.

“The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel.

“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.” The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russia signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but never ratified it to become a member of the ICC, and finally withdrew its signature in 2016.

At the time, Russia was under international pressure over its  unilateral annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, as well as a campaign of air strikes in Syria in support of President Bashar Al Assad’s war against rebels.

Ukraine also is not a member of the court, but it has granted the ICC jurisdiction over its territory and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has visited four times since opening an investigation a year ago.

The ICC said that its pre-trial chamber found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.”