Saturday in Sevastopol, the biggest city in Russia-annexed Crimea, was a hectic day for officials and some school students as a new children’s art school were to be inaugurated.
Those efforts got rewarded—in a much higher proportion—when Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a surprise and unannounced visit, himself drove into the school in a black SUV.
Later, according to Russian media reports, Putin was seen driving the SUV in the city at night before his helicopter flew to Mariupol. It was his first visit to Mariupol after being occupied by the Russians in September overcoming a dogged resistance by the Ukrainians.
The presidential visit was meant to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea.
But even more significant is the message the sudden trip is meant to convey. It was a show of outright defiance and ridicule declaration of Putin as a war criminal by The Hague-headquartered International Criminal Court (ICC).
On Friday, the ICC issued an arrest warrant on Putin accusing him of being involved in the abduction of children from Ukraine along with Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Russian President’s office.
The ICC statement said: “…there are reasonable grounds to believe that President Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova bear criminal responsibility for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation... We must ensure that those responsible for alleged crimes are held accountable and that children are returned to their families and communities.”
But then again, the ICC order itself, is a bad idea, mainly because it is non-implementable. After all, which country in its right mind, would arrest Putin to present him before the ICC?
Nor would there be any visible impact of the arrest warrant if Putin visits India in September for the G20 Summit in New Delhi because of the fact that India is not a member of ICC and is therefore not bound by law to arrest him whenever he lands in India.
The Russian President attended the G20 summits via video link in 2020 and 2021 while the 2022 edition in Bali was attended by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
But what would cause the greatest damage is the undermining of the ICC’s credibility which issued an order it cannot implement.
The ICC move will also weaken the case that the NATO and European countries allied with the US were trying to build by setting up a war crimes tribunal to try Putin. If the tribunal gets going, ICC’s legitimacy would erode.
It would also mean that in the aftermath of the Ukrainian conflict, one more international arrangement is being diminished in stature.
Already several institutional mechanisms have come under challenge since the start of the Ukraine conflict from February 24, 2022, including the dollar-based International systems of exchange and a serious challenge to the SWIFT banking system through which the US-led West was imposing punitive sanctions.
On the other hand, there are increasing signs of a reordering of strategic alliances and the formation of blocs.
On Saturday, the Russian defence ministry said that Russia, Iran and China had recently concluded a three-way naval exercise off the Iranian port of Chabahar even as Chinese President Xi Jinping is undertaking a three-day visit to Moscow.
Significantly, China had recently successfully achieved the impossible by brokering a deal between staunch rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.
