- Dmitry Medvedev criticized the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin
- Maria Aleksetevna Lvova-Belova denounced the arrest warrant because Moscow is not under any obligation to respect the court's decision
- US President Joe Biden called the arrest warrant against his Russian counterpart "justified"
Russia's Security Council Deputy Chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, criticized the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrant of Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes over his invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday, Medvedev suggested that the Kremlin can launch a hypersonic missile at the ICC's headquarters in response to the arrest warrant. The Putin loyalist said in a Telegram message that "everyone is answerable to God and missiles."
Russia's Dmitry Medvedev Criticizes ICC
Medvedev noted that it was entirely possible to imagine how a hypersonic missile fired from a Russian warship in the North Sea would strike the ICC building in Hague. He added that such a fast-moving projectile would not be shot down.
He also warned the judges of the ICC to "watch the skies closely" as he called the court a "pathetic international organization." The threat comes after the court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president on Friday, claiming that he was responsible for war crimes and "unlawful deportation of the population" of children from occupied areas in Ukraine, as per Fox News.
The court also issued another warrant targeting the Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, Maria Aleksetevna Lvova-Belova. The warrants come as many as 16,226 children in Ukraine have been deported during the 13-month-long war with Moscow's troops.
United States President Joe Biden also called the ICC's warrant against Putin "justified" in a statement over the weekend. The Democratic leader added that the Russian strongman has "clearly committed war crimes."
Several other Russian government officials brushed off the ICC's arrest warrant, an organization that the country does not recognize. Furthermore, the US and China were no signatories in the 1998 Rome Statutes, which gave the court its authority.
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Arrest Warrant Against Vladimir Putin
In a statement on Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the ICC"s decisions do not affect Russia, including from a legal perspective. She noted that Moscow was not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, meaning that it has no obligations under it, according to Alarabiya News.
In response to the ICC's statement regarding the deportation of children, Lvova-Belova said that they were helping the children of the country and taking them out of war zones. She added that they were creating "good conditions" for them.
Several other pro-Kremlin figures have also criticized the ICC over its arrest warrant for the Russian president. The editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonyan, made a veiled remark about a potential missile strike against the court.
The speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said that Moscow views any attack on the President of the Russian Federation as an aggressive act towards the country itself.
Russia's permanent representative in the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said that the ICC was walking down the road to self-destruction with the absurd decision they made with the warrant, said The Moscow Times.
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