Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid an unannounced visit to the International Criminal Court on Thursday. issued an arrest warrant to Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
Zelensky visited The Hague, where the ICC is positioned, in addition to the UN’s highest judicial body, the International Court of Justice. The Dutch city known as the international city of peace and justice.
Zelenskiy was greeted by the president of the court, Piotr Hofmański, in front of the ICC constructing. Court personnel crowded the windows to watch Zelensky’s arrival and raised a Ukrainian flag alongside their very own flag outside the constructing.
ICC judges last month announced they’d found “reasonable grounds to imagine” that Putin and his kid’s rights ombudsman were accountable for the illegal deportation and illegal transportation of kids from occupied Ukraine to Russia.
But the probabilities of Putin facing trial in The Hague are slim, the court has no police to perform his orders, and the Russian leader is unlikely to go to any of the ICC’s 123 member states, which have a duty to arrest him in the event that they can.
The visit got here a day after he denied that Ukrainian forces were accountable for what the Kremlin called the attempted assassination of Putin drone attack.
![Zelensky's visit to The Hague, home to the ICC and the UN's highest judicial body, the International Court of Justice, came a day after he denied that Ukrainian forces were responsible for what the Kremlin called an attempted drone attack on Putin.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/AFP_33ED92C.jpg?w=1024)
During a visit to Helsinki on Wednesday, Zelensky told reporters: “We didn’t attack Putin. We leave that to the tribunal.”
The Ukrainian Air Force Command said on Thursday that Russian forces attacked many regions of Ukraine with Iranian drones overnight. At night air raid sirens sounded in Ukraine, and explosions were reported in southern Odessa and the capital Kiev.
The Ukrainian military said that in Odessa, three drones — with inscriptions “for Moscow” and “for the Kremlin,” referring to an alleged Ukrainian attack on Wednesday — hit the dormitory of an academic institution, but the fire was quickly extinguished and there have been no casualties. Kiev was targeted by drones and missiles, its military administration said, in the third air strike on the capital in 4 days. They were all shot down.
The ICC said in a March 18 statement that Putin “is allegedly accountable for the war crime of unlawfully deporting (children) and unlawfully transferring (children) from the occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has visited Ukraine repeatedly and is opening an office in Kiev to facilitate his ongoing investigations in the country.
Nonetheless, the ICC doesn’t have the authority to prosecute Putin for the crime of aggression – the illegal invasion of one other sovereign country.
![The Ukrainian Air Force Command said on Thursday that Russian forces attacked many regions of Ukraine with Iranian drones overnight.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/AFP_33ED938.jpg?w=1024)
![Zelensky was in the Netherlands on Thursday for a surprise visit to the city where the International Criminal Court is located.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/AFP_33ED8LC.jpg?w=1024)
The Dutch government proposed host a court that could be established crime of aggression and an office for collecting evidence is being established.
The brand new International Center for the Prosecution of Crimes of Aggression needs to be operational by the summer, Eurojust, the EU’s judicial cooperation agency, said in February.
Zelensky’s visit to The Hague got here as questions continued to flow into around Russia’s claims that it thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin on Wednesday.
Moscow called it a failed assassination attempt against Putin and promised retaliation for what it called a “terrorist” act.
During the night, anti-aircraft sirens sounded in Kiev, but there have been no immediate reports of any air strikes on the Ukrainian capital.
Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time and was staying at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence near Moscow, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
![The Dutch government has offered to set up a court that could be set up to prosecute crimes of aggression, with the office to collect evidence.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/AFP_33ED8JX.jpg?w=1024)
![The ICC said in a March 18 statement that Putin](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/AFP_33ED88R.jpg?w=1024)
There was no independent verification of the alleged attack, which according to Russian authorities took place overnight, but didn’t provide any evidence to support it. There have been also questions as to why the Kremlin took hours to report the incident and why videos of it surfaced later in the day.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States was “unable to confirm the authenticity” of Russian claims about the Ukrainian attack on Moscow.
Asked whether the U.S. believed Putin was a legitimate goal for a potential Ukrainian strike, Jean-Pierre said that since the starting of the conflict, the U.S. “has not encouraged or enabled Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”
Asked whether the United States was concerned that the indictment could have been a false flag operation by Russia to function a pretext for more aggressive military motion in Ukraine, Jean-Pierre said he didn’t want to speculate, but added: a history of doing such things.
The Netherlands has been a strong supporter of the Ukrainian war effort since Russia invaded last 12 months. Amongst the military equipment promised by the government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte are 14 modern Leopard 2 tanks, which he’s buying along with Denmark. They’re to be delivered next 12 months.
The Netherlands has also teamed up with Germany and Denmark to buy a minimum of 100 older Leopard 1 tanks for Ukraine.
Amongst other military equipment, it also deployed two Patriot air defense missile systems and promised two minehunter ships, and deployed military forensics experts to assist with war crimes investigations. Zelensky’s visit got here on a day when the Dutch remember their war dead