Regarding the legality, whether it fits within the jurisdiction of the court or not, in fact, there are quite obvious cases where it is seen that war crimes are being committed by Russian militants.
Here, everything is focused on the following issue, the reason for which the decision to arrest Putin was made, refers to Putin’s adoption of Ukrainian children. Gurgen Petrosyan, president of the Armenian-German Lawyers’ Association, a specialist in international law, and lecturer at Erlangen-Nuremberg University, said this in an interview with “Hraparak”.
“Children are protected from the beginning by the Geneva Conventions, and if the militants remove children from the occupied territories and carry out adoption programs for them, then this can be somewhat included in the framework of war crimes. However, here the connection and the action, in general, is not so obvious that this can be considered a war crime, that is, certain legal problems can arise here. It’s not that it’s obvious in this case, if they had decided on a war crime, for example, in the case of Bucha, then there probably wouldn’t have been so much legal discourse, but apparently, their main goal here was to establish a connection between the President of the Russian Federation and the crime. In the case of Bucha, it is difficult to establish the connection between the president and the crime.
The expert of international law emphasized that in this case, within the framework of the children’s adoption program, the fact that it was Putin who signed the decree according to which Ukrainian children should be adopted and given Russian citizenship is evident. It is not possible to say whether this is an overstepping of the legality, it is mainly politics or not, it is difficult to describe it this way. Petrosyan notices that there is a legal discourse, but the issue is problematic and this is the first case in the practice of the international criminal court in general that this war crime enters the court to be interpreted.
We asked the expert of international law, even if the Hague court has made a decision to arrest Putin, how should that decision be implemented, are there certain mechanisms through which that arrest should be implemented? Gurgen Petrosyan said that the Hague court does not have any police system or such mechanisms to arrest the wanted person and here these decisions are mainly based on the cooperation of the states.
“States are obliged to arrest the President of the Russian Federation. This decision actually has a different goal. the goal is to limit the travels of the president of the Russian Federation, because 123 countries as such, he can no longer travel freely, because those 123 countries will be obliged to arrest and hand over Putin to the International Criminal Court. This is of course a very problematic topic, we have three examples in the case of the International Criminal Court, where an arrest warrant or an invitation warrant was issued against the sitting president, one was about the former president of Sudan, who was traveling to member states and there were a lot of difficulties for the member states. for, it was Chad, it was the Republic of South Africa, where the president of Sudan was in detention, but those states were not willing to implement the cooperation process. As a result, they were under a lot of pressure from the court to not fulfill their obligations, which they tried to avoid as much as possible, saying that the courthouse is not working, they cannot make a decision at such a speed, they tried to avoid it legally, but as a result, they were subjected to a lot of political pressure.” – said the latter.
Petrosyan stressed that in our case, if we are going to join the ICC (International Criminal Court), then in our case this issue will also arise and the visit of the President of the Russian Federation and the visit of other military officials to Armenia may be limited because there is an obvious problem because the Armenian we will be obliged to arrest them.
“Here the question arises as to what kind of political pressure we will be subjected to from the Russian side regarding our non-membership because this problem actually causes a large number of other problems,” Petrosyan noted.
We tried to clarify whether, in case of Putin’s visit, Armenia will have to arrest him, and the international law specialist said that Armenia will undertake to arrest him. It is necessary to distinguish two things, the first is the decision of the court of justice regarding the Lachin Corridor, and this is a matter of state responsibility.
“The International Criminal Court mainly deals with the criminal responsibility of the person, here it is necessary to separate these two natures. apart from that, it is necessary to separate the fact that there are also political components here. Azerbaijan is still not considered a prosperous state for the Western countries, and the same applies to us, because we are a small actor. And those games represent more serious topics of a more international level, where all that is directly related to their interests. As for Russia, of course, this decision creates two swords for Armenia from a political point of view. If we join the ICC, Russia will try to punish us in every possible way, if we don’t join, in the event that we announced it, then the Western countries will try to use it against us, saying, look, you are collaborating with a war criminal, etc., etc. Here, very serious political problems arise regarding our membership, and we must be able to take the right direction and make the right decision,” said Gurgen Petrosyan.
In response to Hraparak’s observation that the Hague Court will not become a political tool with this decision and does this not mean that it has exhausted itself and there is a need to establish a court with a new format, Petrosyan said that this presents serious problems for him. . He noted that this brings the world back to the Cold War, when the world was divided into two parts, and this same image can also become evident in this case, that it will not represent one global interest, but will represent the specific Western world.
“In fact, this does not lead us to a very good place, because we cannot compare the situation of Russia with Libya, Sudan or Syria – these are already very serious challenges that change the world order, so to speak. It will be very difficult for Armenia from the beginning, we will not be able to protect our interests because we will constantly fall either within the framework of the Western world or the Russian world. Our interests may suffer as a result of this, because such demands may be made against us regularly, bilaterally, which will not lead to the solution of our problems,” concluded Gurgen Petrosyan, president of the Armenian-German Lawyers Association.
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