BY Joseph Kishore

On Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, for alleged war crimes.

The move is transparently political. It takes place as the US and NATO powers are orchestrating a massive escalation of the war against Russia over Ukraine, and amidst ever more open statements from government officials that the aim of the war is regime change in Moscow. 

The specific allegations filed against Putin and Lvova-Belova are listed under Article 8 of the Rome Statute, adopted in 1998, which includes “grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions” and “other serious violations” of international law. The arrest warrants specifically allege “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” 

The official filing of warrants were approved by judges in the ICC and announced by Karim A. A. Khan, a British lawyer and the ICC’s chief prosecutor. It follows months of propaganda, spearheaded by the Biden administration, alleging “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” on the part of the Russian government.

While the existence of the warrants was made public, the supposed evidence underlying them was not. The specific claims of the “unlawful deportation” of children have been promoted in the US media, including the New York Times, based on unsubstantiated allegations by the Biden administration and the Ukrainian government. 

One often cited study, published by Yale University in February, claims that 6,000 children have been transported to Russia. The institute that conducted the study is part of the US government-backed “Conflict Observatory,” which was established for the purpose of producing war propaganda. The initial $6 million in funding for the “observatory” was provided by the State Department’s “Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations,” which states that its mission is to “anticipate, prevent, and respond to conflict that undermines US national interests.”

For its part, Russia has acknowledged the movement of populations from the war-ravaged eastern portions of Ukraine to Russia, including children primarily from orphanages. It has noted that anyone—including teachers and childcare workers—who continues to work in areas under Russian control are in danger of being accused as collaborators and killed by far-right Ukrainian forces.

As with the previous charges of war crimes, the US-led campaign is characterized by a staggering level of hypocrisy. By any objective standard, every US administration in recent memory is guilty of crimes far worse than any that have been alleged against Putin: From the nuclear obliteration of two Japanese cities at the end of the Second World War; to the leveling of North Korea between 1950-1953, to the point where not a single building was left standing; to the mass slaughter and pyrochemical incineration that was the US-led Vietnam War; through the thirty years of unending and expanding war that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The state leading the campaign for war crimes charges against Putin is responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the bombing of wedding parties and other civilian gatherings in Afghanistan, the Guantanamo Bay prison, and drone assassination.

Since the issue of the mistreatment of children is raised in the arrest warrants, we should recall the infamous statement by then US ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, who declared in 1996, in reference to half a million dead children from US-backed sanctions against Iraq, “We think the price is worth it.”

The United States does not even recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC out of concern that it could at some point be used to indict and prosecute American government officials. While the Rome Statute, under which the warrant against Putin has been issued, was signed by Bill Clinton, he never sent it to the Senate for ratification. In 2002, as his lawyers were drawing up memoranda intended to justify “preemptive war” and torture, President George W. Bush informed the UN that the US no longer intended to ratify the statute. 

In 2020, the Trump administration announced that it was placing economic sanctions and travel restrictions on ICC investigators after they began looking into charges of war crimes, including torture, rape and sexual violence, by the US military in Afghanistan and at CIA torture centers in Eastern Europe. The ICC’s new prosecutor, Khan, dropped the investigation of US torture in 2021, shortly after he was appointed.

The central purpose of the warrants is to fuel the propaganda offensive for an enormous escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia. It Is clearly timed to coincide with the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow, starting on Monday, which has the stated aim of discussing a proposal for a negotiated settlement to the war, including an immediate cease-fire.

The US and NATO powers, however, do not want an end to the war but its expansion. On Friday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that “we certainly don’t support calls for a cease-fire.” Amidst a catastrophic loss of life by Ukrainian forces, the US and its European allies are flooding the country with advanced weaponry in preparation for a major offensive within the next two months.

The charges of war crimes are part of an effort to brand the Putin government as an outlaw regime, justifying a war for regime change, which has as its aim the dismantling of Russia. 

The New York Times, which functions as a channel for US intelligence agencies, wrote in its article on the warrants (”Arrest Warrant From Criminal Court Pierces Putin’s Aura of Impunity”) that they put “Mr. Putin in the same ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader imprisoned for abuses during the Balkans war; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World War II.”

The message is that whatever the immediate impact of the charges, they are intended as a signal, not only to Putin but also to Xi, that the war will be escalated until Putin ends up with a similar fate as Milosevic. 

The US and NATO powers are presently discussing behind the scenes plans for the introduction of NATO troops into the conflict. The propaganda over war crimes and “genocide” could be used to blame Russia for any provocation or manufactured incident that would be used as a justification. 

None of this implies support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the actions of the Putin government, which represents a faction of the Russian oligarchy. The invasion of Ukraine was a reactionary and bankrupt response of this oligarchy to Russia’s encirclement by the US and NATO. But the United States systematically provoked the war and now, more than one year after it began, is preparing a massive and catastrophic escalation.

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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/18/pers-m18.html

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SAVING CHILDREN FROM THE BOMBS OF THE KIEV REGIME IS A CRIME?

SAVING CHILDREN FROM THE BOMBS OF THE KIEV REGIME IS A CRIME???

SAVING CHILDREN FROM THE BOMBS OF THE KIEV REGIME IS A CRIME???????

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Briefing by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry MV Zakharova (March 16, 2023)

by Maria Zakharova

Russia Is not party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it. 

Russia is not cooperating with this body, and any arrest "recipes" emanating from the International Court of Justice will be legally null and void for us.

Who would have thought only 15 years ago that in the West the care of children, their salvation and their treatment would become a criminal offence?

But everything led to it.

The experiments of the "enlightened West" on sex reassignment in children, the persecution of doctors who believe that there are only two sexes, a perverted interpretation of the rights of minors, the destruction of the institution of the family, the replacement of "mother" and "dad" with the degenerate terms "parent A" and "parent B", propaganda of perversions among minors - all this is not an unfortunate accident, but a large-scale policy in NATO countries. 

And the states that, like Hungary, try to resist within the Alliance, are subject to real persecution. Sanctions and harassment against Leonid Roshal and Maria Lvova-Belova are signs of the dehumanization of liberal dictatorships.

source: Bruno Bertez

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by Boris G. Karpov

Europe's most famous clown, Zelensky, had been asking for it for a long time without really explaining why. He won his case today: The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and, for good measure, the Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights. Both are accused of forcibly deporting children from Ukraine to Russia during the special military operation.

I admit I don't know what to say, it's so absurd, the first reaction from my friends and I was a huge burst of laughter, then I said to myself "It's not possible, they are completely crazy".

I don't even dwell on the fact that Russia denounced the ICC and withdrew from its proceedings, so of course its judgments do not concern us, this is a detail.

On the reason now: The children that Russia took out of Ukraine were because they were orphans who were mostly placed in orphanages in Donetsk. With the Ukrainians bombing civilian structures in Donetsk on a daily basis, it was decided to bring these children to safety in Russia. It is therefore rather a decoration that Putin and those responsible should receive for having saved these children!

This is of course only a pretext. The fact is that on the ground the Russian forces in the former Ukraine are progressing everywhere and that the United States is starting to get angry: The billions of dollars sent are useless. Moreover, the sanctions against Russia have had the sole result of demolishing the economies… of Western countries!

It was therefore necessary to act on another ground, and it only took a few phone calls for the magistrates of the ICC, like good little submissive pugs, to comply.

The western world is going crazy! Total, dangerous madness, because the clowns who run it are ready to do anything, really anything, to bring down Putin's regime, even though it is supported by an immense majority of Russians. All their actions for years, far from undermining the confidence of Russians in Putin, strengthen their support! Today many are those who demand the use of more powerful weapons to end it, whatever the collateral damage caused. No doubt attacking Putin himself will further strengthen their support and demand more powerful actions in Ukraine: Wanting to minimize Ukrainian civilian casualties is good, but there are limits!

You have to realize that in Russia, the person of Vladimir Putin is sacred: It was he who in twenty years brought Russia out of chaos and developed the country at an unimaginable speed, allowing all Russians to take advantage of it. That the West directly attacks him as a person will have very serious consequences both at the popular level and at the level of political leaders.

On a personal note, I propose that a delegation from Western countries led by Biden and Macron, the 2 most excited, accompanied by the leaders of the Baltic States, England, Germany and Poland, come in person to Moscow to look for Vladimir Putin and drag him to The Hague.

Another proposal read on the runet: Launch a kinzhal on The Hague. I admit that…

"According to a source in the presidential administration, the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague aims to "demoralize and divide" the Russian elite.

“The decision will certainly have no legal consequences, everything is taken with only two mundane objectives. The first is to create a high-profile news opportunity, primarily in the Western news agenda. To show that “we are doing everything to help Ukraine punish Russia for its military actions”. Well, the second is to cause confusion and hesitation in the elites, so that someone “twitches”. But now it is understood that everyone who wanted to "betray the Kremlin" has already done so. So, in this regard, the goal will certainly not be achieved said a source in the administration of the Russian president."

Update (Moscow 21:50 p.m.)

« Vladimir Putin will continue his trips abroad, despite the order issued by the ICC for the arrest of the Russian president, according to sources within the presidential administration.

“The decisions of the International Criminal Court in The Hague can have no influence on the president's plans. Obviously, even if we reason in the Western paradigm and follow this logic, the head of state will enjoy immunity in any case. Moreover, if we are talking about official state visits or trips to certain events, then all these points are already discussed at the organization stage. This decision will therefore not affect Putin's travels in any way."

Yankees, don't touch Putin!

The absurdity heard from The Hague says one thing: the West is hysterical.
Documents from the foreign court in The Hague do not apply to Russia.

Washington and Brussels have exhausted all possibilities for sanctions and hostile action. They failed to break the citizens of the Russian Federation and destroy the economy of our country.

Washington and Brussels conclude:
There is Putin – there is Russia.

That's why they attack him.
Putin's strength lies in the support of the people, the consolidation of society around him.

We regard any attack on the President of the Russian Federation as an attack on our country.

source: Rusreinfo

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-d9Csq41kg

It’s been more than 20 years since the US and its allies invaded Iraq in what is now widely acknowledged was a war crime based on lies. And yet many of the same perpetrators who pushed those lies and the Iraq invasion remain prominent and respected members of the foreign policy establishment as they today push the Ukraine War.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to British politician and talk show host George Galloway about his principled opposition to the Iraq War.

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