Putin prohibits the enforcement of foreign court rulings in Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree published this Monday in the official bulletin that prohibits the application of sentences from foreign criminal courts, a measure that shields Russian President Vladimir Putin from the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The decree signed by the Russian president stipulates that the courts of foreign countries “without the participation of the Russian Federation, and of international judicial bodies whose competence is not based on an international treaty” with the participation of Russia or resolutions of the UN Security Council, will not be executed in the country. This concerns amendments to Article 6 of the Federal Constitutional Law on the Judicial System of the Russian Federation.

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Russia withdrew its intention to join the Rome Statute, the basis for the functioning of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant in March 2023 against Putin for the crimes of forced deportation and illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to territories occupied by Russia during the war in Ukraine. Russia signed the Rome Statute – the founding document of the ICC – in 2000, but never ratified it and in 2016 revoked its signature after the court ruled that Moscow’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was a “permanent occupation”. Despite the arrest warrant for the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children, Putin traveled at the time to countries like Mongolia, which are signatories to the statute and ignored the call to arrest the Russian leader. Russian Justice responded to the arrest warrant by condemning in absentia to prison sentences ranging from 3.5 to 15 years to nine prosecutors and judges of the ICC, including prosecutor Karim Khan, Costa Rican Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godínez and Peruvian Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza. Russia accused the ICC judges and prosecutors, among others, of initiating a criminal prosecution, including their detention, of representatives of a foreign state who have international immunity.