By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.
The court accused Putin of having ordered the deportation of Ukrainian civilians, notably Ukrainian children, to Russia from the parts of Ukraine that Russian forces have occupied since their invasion a year ago.
"It is forbidden, by international law for occupying powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to another territory," the ICC's President Judge Piotr Hofmanski said in a video release.
The development is a landmark moment in the war, formally applying the stigma of criminality to Russia's head of state and commander-in-chief. It comes on the same day that the Kremlin announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Moscow next week, during which analysts expect Xi to renew China's support for Russia in the conflict.
While China has abstained in the many UN motions criticising Russia over the last year, it has enthusiastically upped imports of Russian commodities, providing vital support to an economy that has been heavily sanctioned by the U.S., EU and other western democracies.
The U.S. State Department estimated last July that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, from their homes to Russia – often to isolated regions in the Far East.
Russia has not made any secret of the deportations, which it has characterized as rescue missions for a civilian population that is largely Russian-speaking and which had previously been sympathetic to Russia in the decades following the breakup of the Soviet Union.