On Monday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave a foreboding warning, saying that if the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to issue an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, Russia may target it with a hypersonic missile.
Putin’s trial at the ICC would have “monstrous” repercussions for international law, according to Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Federation’s Security Council, in a comment posted on his Telegram channel.
Using the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children as evidence, the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands, declared on Friday that the Russian president had committed war crimes in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began almost 13 months ago. It was the first time that a warrant for the arrest of the head of one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council had been issued.
“Alas, gentlemen, everyone walks under God and rockets”
“The ICC judges got excited in vain. Look, they say, we are brave, and we raised a hand against the largest nuclear power without c******* ourselves,” wrote Medvedev.
“Alas, gentlemen, everyone walks under God and rockets. It is quite possible to imagine the targeted use of a hypersonic ‘Onyx’ from the North Sea from a Russian ship at the Hague courthouse,” he went on, referring to a naval cruise missile.
“And the court is just a miserable international organization, not the population of a NATO country. That’s why they won’t start a war. They will be afraid. And no one will feel sorry for them. So, judges of the court, look carefully into the sky…,” Medvedev added.
As over 40 ICC member states requested an investigation, the head prosecutor of the court, Karim Khan, declared on March 2, 2022, that his office will be investigating potential war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.
Just days after Putin began his full-scale invasion of the neighboring country, officials and foreign leaders had been urging him to be held accountable due to the rising number of civilian deaths in Ukraine.
On Friday, Khan announced that his office had identified the deportation of “at least hundreds of children taken from orphanages and children’s care homes.”