An official arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin was filed Friday by the International Criminal Court, which accuses the Russian president of orchestrating war crimes in Ukraine. The charges stem specifically from accusations that Russia unlawfully deported children from Ukraine to Russia and Russian-controlled areas—something experts fear has displaced 16,000 children. The international court also issued a warrant to Russia‘s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, on the same war crime charges. While countless reports from Ukraine have detailed other Russian atrocities—like the bombing of a theater in Mariupol that killed 600 civilians—Moscow has repeatedly denied all accusations of war crimes.
