Ex-Russia President Dmitry Medvedev compared the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin to toilet paper.

Moscow:

The Kremlin stated Friday that the International Criminal Court’s choice to challenge an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin was legally “void” because Moscow does not recognise the Hague-primarily based court’s jurisdiction.

Top rated Russian officials and propagandists seethed with anger, whilst members of the opposition hailed the move.

“Russia, just like a quantity of unique nations, does not recognise the jurisdiction of this court and so from a legal point of view, the choices of this court are void,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia is not a member of the ICC.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated the choices of the ICC “have no which means” for Russia.

“Russia is not a celebration to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations beneath it,” she stated on Telegram.

“Russia does not cooperate with this physique and feasible ‘recipes’ for arrest coming from the international court will be legally void as far as we are concerned,” Zakharova stated, with no referring to Putin by name.

Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev also took to Twitter, likening the warrant to toilet paper.

The ICC announced earlier Friday it had issued an arrest warrant against Putin for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian young children.

The court had also issued a warrant against Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, on related charges.

“There have been sanctions against me from all nations, even Japan, and now an arrest warrant…,” Lvova-Belova was quoted as saying by state news agency RIA Novosti.

“But we will continue our perform.”

– ‘Lock him up’ –

The head of the Investigative Committee, which probes significant crimes, ordered a probe into the ICC warrants against “Russian citizens”.

“Russia’s Investigative Committee will recognize certain people from amongst the ICC judges who produced the of course illegal choices,” investigators stated in a statement.

Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian state broadcaster RT, implied that Moscow could respond militarily to any attempts to arrest the Russian president.

“I would like to see the nation that arrests Putin by the choice of the Hague. Some eight minutes right after. Or even so extended the flight time will be to its capital,” Simonyan stated on social media.

Members of the Russian opposition praised the move.

“Congratulations to Vladimir Vladimirovich on his arrest in absentia! This is just the initial step,” Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade behind bars, stated on social media.

“Lock him up!” tweeted activist Vladimir Milov, an ally of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

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