Biden says Putin ‘clearly committed war crimes’ and ICC charges are justified

US President Joe Biden said on Friday his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had ‘clearly committed’ war crimes during Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since conflict erupted in the former Soviet nation in February last year.

“He clearly committed war crimes,” the US president said Friday, referring to the Russian leader.

Speaking on the arrest warrant for Mr Putin issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday, Mr Biden said: “Well, I think it is justified. But the question is – it is not internationally recognized by us either. But I think that makes a very strong point.

The United States is not a member country of the World Court.

The international tribunal has charged Mr Putin with war crimes by removing hundreds of Ukrainian children from orphanages in the war-torn country.

The Russian president and his commissioner for the rights of the child, Maria Alekseyevna Lvoya-Belova, carried out the “illegal deportation” of children “from the occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.

The first such arrest warrant against the Russian leader allows the Court’s 123 member states to detain Mr Putin for trial if he sets foot on their territory, making several nation states dangerous territory for the president of the Kremlin.

Moscow rejected the arrest warrant outright on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia does not recognize the ICC and considers its decisions “legally void”.

The decision of the International Court to issue an arrest warrant against Mr. Putin for war crimes is “scandalous and unacceptable”.

Mr Peskov declined to comment when asked if the Russian president would avoid traveling to countries where he could be arrested on an ICC warrant.

In a separate finding, the United States accused Russian forces of committing war crimes in Ukraine and said it supported accountability for war crimes perpetrators.

“There is no doubt that Russia is committing war crimes and atrocities (in) Ukraine, and we have made it clear that those responsible must be held accountable,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. press release sent by e-mail.

“This is a decision that the ICC prosecutor made independently based on the facts before him.”

According to a US-backed Yale University report, Russia captured at least 6,000 Ukrainian children from at least 43 camps and other facilities as part of a “large-scale systematic network”.

Separately, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said his office had registered more than 70,000 potential war crimes cases so far in the past 13 months.