March 17, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Human Rights Watch called the International Criminal Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “wakeup call to others committing abuses or covering them up” in a statement on Friday.

“This is a big day for the many victims of crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine since 2014. With these arrest warrants, the ICC has made Putin a wanted man and taken its first step to end the impunity that has emboldened perpetrators in Russia’s war against Ukraine for far too long,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch.

The ICC issued the arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the official at the center of the alleged scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The Russian government does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC in The Hague, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, according to state news agency TASS.

Russia withdrew from the ICC treaty under a directive signed by Putin in 2016.

It's been a busy day of developments related to the war in Ukraine, with Russian President Vladimir Putin getting an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, additional details released about the upcoming meeting between the Russian leader and his Chinese counterpart, and an announcement of more fighter jets for Ukraine. 

As nighttime approaches in Kyiv, catch up on what's happened so far:

ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin: The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official at the center of the alleged scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Moscow said the court has “no meaning” for the country as Ukrainian officials praised the announcement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Chief of Staff, Andri Yermak, said the arrest warrant is “just the beginning.”

Turkey, Finland and NATO: Turkey has decided to start the process of ratifying Finland's accession to NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. Finland — along with Sweden — both announced their intention to join NATO in May, dropping decades of neutrality after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While Finnish President Sauli Niinistö welcomed Turkey’s decision, he said its membership is “not complete” without Sweden.

Putin and Xi will meet: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping plan to discuss the war in Ukraine and will sign documents attesting to their closer ties when they meet in Moscow next week, a Putin adviser told Russian state media.

US officials said they will be eyeing the meeting closely as China considers sending weapons to Russia. US officials also said they are working to get Xi on the phone with Zelensky, believing that hearing directly from him would be important for perspective.

More fighter jets for Kyiv: Slovakia announced it will send 13 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, making it the second NATO member to pledge the aircraft after Poland said on Thursday that it would transfer four of the jets to Ukraine in the coming days

Situation in Bakhmut: A Ukrainian soldier said that Russian forces have been “partially exhausted” in some parts of the battered eastern city of Bakhmut, but the intensity of fighting is still "extremely high."

According to the UK's defense ministry, while Russian and Wagner forces have obtained footholds west of the Bakhmutka River in the center of the city, "more broadly across the front line, Russia is conducting some of the lowest rates of local offensive action" since at least January.

Meanwhile, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin repeated his complaints of inadequate munitions supplies from Russia.

Here's the latest map of control:

Moscow rejects an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a government spokesperson said Friday.

The ICC also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, the official at the center of an alleged scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The warrants have “no meaning” for Russia, including from a “legal point of view,” said Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia's Foreign Ministry.

How war crime prosecutions work: Located in The Hague, Netherlands, and created by a treaty called the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court operates independently.

Most countries on Earth are parties to the treaty, but there are very large and notable exceptions, including — pivotally — Russia, the US and Ukraine.

Anyone accused of a crime in the jurisdiction of the court, which includes countries that are members of the ICC, can be tried. The court tries people, not countries, and focuses on those who hold the most responsibility: leaders and officials.

While Ukraine is not a member of the court, it has previously accepted its jurisdiction.

However, the ICC does not conduct trials in absentia, so Putin or any other Moscow official would either have to be handed over by Russia or arrested outside of Russia to face ICC proceedings.

You can read more about how the court functions here.

With previous reporting from CNN's Zachary B. Wolf.

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö welcomed Turkey’s decision to begin the ratification process of Finland’s application to NATO, but said its membership is “not complete” without Sweden. 

The two countries launched joint membership bids for the US-led alliance in the summer of last year.

“It is very good to hear this news,” Niinistö told reporters in Ankara on Friday, speaking alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It is surely for all of Finland very important [...] so thank you."

The Nordic neighbors have many “common interests” and share the Baltic Sea shore, Niinistö continued, saying he would like to see Sweden become part of the alliance by the time members meet in Vilnius for the annual NATO summit in July.

Erdogan said a the news conference on Friday that Turkey’s approach towards Sweden remains the same, and that it would not change unless “positive steps” were taken.

“We handed Sweden a list of 120 terrorists and demand repatriation, which failed to deliver,” Erdogan said, adding, “what matters for us is the result. And as long as we don’t see the results in compacting terrorism or even to the point of infiltrating into their parliament, our approach would be as it is today”.

The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin is "just the beginning," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, posted on Telegram.

The ICC announced Friday that it had issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, an official at the center of an alleged scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba also applauded the warrant, saying the "wheels of justice are turning."

With the warrant, "the world has received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and that its leadership and accomplices will be brought to justice," Ukrainian General Prosecutor Andriy Kostin said in a post on Facebook Friday. "This means that Putin must be arrested outside of Russia and brought to trial. And world leaders will think twice before shaking his hand or sitting down with him at the negotiating table."

Kostin called the move a historic decision and said he was personally grateful to the ICC. 

"In particular, regarding forced deportation of children, [the] Prosecutor General's Office has submitted more than 40 volumes of materials to the ICC — more than 1000 pages,” he added. "Today's decision is a historic step. But it is only the beginning of a long journey to restore justice."

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, a member of Putin's government, it announced in a news release Friday.

Lvova-Belova is the official at the center of the alleged scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The ICC said both Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."

Some key background: According to the US and several European governments, Putin's administration has carried out a scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, often to a network of dozens of camps, where the minors undergo political reeducation.

“Lvova-Belova’s efforts specifically include the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families, the so-called ‘patriotic education’ of Ukrainian children, legislative changes to expedite the provision of Russian Federation citizenship to Ukrainian children, and the deliberate removal of Ukrainian children by Russia’s forces,” the US Treasury said in September.

Her government title is commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the Russian President.

The ICC statement Friday said there are "reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes," both for having committed the acts directly or through others in his command, and for "his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates."

Russia has characterized reports of forcible relocation as “absurd” and said it does its “best” to keep minors with their families.

The ICC announcement comes just days after several US news outlets reported the court was planning to open two war crimes cases tied to the invasion of Ukraine and issue arrest warrants against “several people." According to the New York Times, the ICC was set to first open a case on Russia’s alleged abduction of Ukrainian children. Then a second case would focus on Moscow “unrelentingly” targeting civilian infrastructure, including water supplies and gas tanks.

The cases would represent the first international charges to be brought since the start of Russia’s war and come after months of work by special ICC investigation teams, according to the NYT.

CNN's Mick Krever, Zahid Mahmood and Sugam Pokharel contributed to this report.

Russian forces have been “partially exhausted” in some parts of Bakhmut, Yurii Syrotiuk, a Ukrainian soldier, told the country’s national broadcaster Friday. 

“Last week, the enemy was furiously attacking, and the attacks were of a maximum nature. The enemy was in a hurry, threatening, telling that Bakhmut was surrounded, and sent its soldiers to be killed, in particular, on our part of the front,” Syrotiuk explained. “Accordingly, the fighting was as intense as possible, it exhausted the enemy, and indeed, as of yesterday and today night, the intensity of artillery fire has decreased.”

Ukrainian counter offensives had forced Russia to adopt a more defensive stance, Syrotiuk said, adding that Russian forces had "to move to partially defensive actions, to use barrage fire and cluster munitions. Because to conduct offensive fire at this pace means not only a lot of artillery, but also heavy losses in manpower.”

Despite this assessment, Syrotiuk said the situation in and around Bakhmut remained very active. 

“Compared to last week, we can say that the intensity has decreased. But what do we mean by a decrease in the intensity of fire? Here, where I am standing, an enemy mine flies over me about every minute,” he explained. “So we are talking in comparison to last week. Otherwise, the intensity is extremely high. The firefight lasts around the clock."

The White House is seeking to preempt attempts by China to frame next week’s meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as a peacemaking mission, suggesting any framework offered by Beijing would be "be one sided and reflect only the Russian perspective.”

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said a proposal from China could include some type of ceasefire, which he said would merely be a way for Russia to regroup before launching a reprisal. “A ceasefire now is effectively the ratification of Russian conquest,” he said.

“Russia would be free to use a ceasefire to only further entrench their positions in Ukraine to rebuild, refit and refresh their forces so that they can restart attacks on Ukraine at a time of their choosing,” Kirby added.

China has sought to present itself as a neutral peace broker for the war in Ukraine, including releasing a paper calling for a political settlement, but US officials have viewed such proposals with deep skepticism. “We do not believe that this is a step towards a just and endurable peace,” Kirby said.

Meanwhile, the US remains concerned that China may be considering providing Russia with lethal military assistance, but hasn't "seen any indication, any confirmation" that such a decision has been made, Kirby said.

The US has been encouraging Xi to hold a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hear the "Ukrainian side as well," and President Joe Biden also remains open to a phone call with Xi, but there is currently no active planning to set up such a conversation, Kirby said.

Turkey has decided to start the process of ratifying Finland's accession to NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara Friday.

"We have decided to start the parliamentary ratification process of Finland's NATO Accession Protocol," Erdogan said.

Finland — along with Sweden — both announced their intention to join NATO in May, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a sudden shift in attitudes toward joining the bloc.

Erdogan said he believes NATO "will become even stronger through Finland's membership" and "will play a more efficient role in preserving global security and stability."