By Deutsche Welle
May 4, 2024, 7:25 PM EDT
Russia issued a search warrant against Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky this Saturday, without making public its reason, according to an announcement published on the regime’s Interior Ministry website. The communication barely details that the arrest warrant is related to a crime contemplated in the Russian Penal Code.
Zelensky is a particular target of Russian officials. The day after the launch of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory, Russian leader Vladimir Putin called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow Zelensky. Also this Saturday, Russia declared the search and capture of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who served as head of state between 2014 and 2019.
The list of people wanted by Russia is very extensive and includes Russian or foreign personalities, especially Ukrainians. In February the name of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was added along with those of other officials from the Baltic countries. To justify this decision, the Kremlin invoked the opposite view of history that Russia and those States have.
The ICC is looking for Putin
The Baltic countries, fearing the Kremlin’s military ambitions, consider the USSR to have occupied them, while Moscow sees itself as a liberator and judges any other approach as a “falsification of history,” a crime in Russia. In the case of Kallas, she is accused of having destroyed and damaged monuments to Soviet soldiers in Estonian territory, over which Russian Justice naturally has no jurisdiction.
Additionally, regime authorities have previously issued arrest warrants for other senior Ukrainian officials. In December of last year, the Russian Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant against the head of Military Intelligence (GUR) of Ukraine, Kirilo Budanov, after the Russian Investigative Committee initiated criminal proceedings against him and three other Ukrainian soldiers. .
Putin, on the other hand, has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, which considers him responsible for war crimes for the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine, and runs the risk of being arrested if he steps on the territory of any of the countries. that recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. This was recalled by the Kiev Foreign Ministry in a statement, where it maintains that the inclusion of Zelensky on a list of people wanted and captured shows “Moscow’s desperation.”
“Russian information about the alleged inclusion of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky on the list of people wanted by the Russian Ministry of the Interior demonstrates the desperation of the Russian state and propaganda machinery, which does not know what else to invent to attract attention. ”. The text adds that “unlike the useless Russian announcements, the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court against the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, for war crimes, is real and enforceable in 123 countries.”
DZC (EFE, AFP)