Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in the Netherlands on Thursday for a surprise visit to the city that is home to the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy’s visit to The Hague, which calls itself the international city of peace and justice and hosts the ICC and the United Nations’ top judicial organ, the International Court of Justice, came a day after he denied that Ukrainian forces were responsible for what the Kremlin called an attempt to assassinate Putin in a drone attack.
On a visit to Helsinki on Wednesday, Zelenskyy told reporters: “We didn’t attack Putin. We leave it to (the) tribunal.”
The ICC said in a March 18 statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
But the prospect of Putin being sent to The Hague is a remote one as
the court does not have a police force to execute warrants and the Russian president is unlikely to travel to any of the ICC’s 123 member states that are under an obligation to arrest him if they can. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has made repeated visits to Ukraine.
