WHAT’S THE LEGAL BOTTOM LINE? WHY WON’T THE US ARREST PUTIN WHEN HE LANDS IN ALASKA?
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, on March 17, issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war crime of unlawful deportation of people from their country, specifically Ukrainian children from regions of Ukraine occupied by the Russian army.
He is also cited as subject to arrest on suspicion of a second, separate war crime: illegally transporting people, specifically Ukrainian children, from their homes in territories of Ukraine occupied by the Russian army.
The arrest warrant also named Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, who serves in Putin’s administration as Russia’s Federal Commissioner for Children’s Rights, as subject to arrest on the same two criminal counts.
The ICC has jurisdiction in countries signing a 2002 international treaty agreement, called the Rome Statute, obligating signing nations to cooperate with ICC investigations and prosecutions. The ICC is the only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Russia signed the Rome Statute in 2000 and withdrew from the agreement in 2016. The US has never signed the Rome Statute.
As such, as long as President Putin does not fly into the airspace of a Rome Statute signee – the country nearest to Alaska and Russia is Canada – then the Russian leader would not be subject to arrest.
However, if the ICC arrest warrant is reckoned legitimate on moral grounds, then the Trump administration’s failure to deliver Putin up to the ICC could be considered official US acceptance of and unwillingness to take action against a war criminal.
OK, BUT DO THE CHARGES HOLD WATER? IS THE KREMLIN KIDNAPPING UKRAINIAN CHILDREN?
By almost any reasonable measure, the answer to that is “yes.”
Russia has invaded Ukraine not once but twice, in 2014 and in 2022, and following each invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory by the Russian army, Russian state agencies have followed to impose Russian government control over adults and children living in Russia-occupied territory.
Among the Russian state institutions taking over in occupied Ukrainian territories has been Lvova-Belova’s agency, which has headed up government initiatives affecting Ukrainian children in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.
According to Lvova-Belova and official Kremlin statements, the Russian state has transported underage Ukrainian citizens to locations outside Ukraine for their safety and psychological welfare. The Kremlin position is that the Russian state removed the Ukrainian children – most orphans or living in state institutions for other reasons - from Ukraine for their own good.
But, per the Geneva Convention, of which Russia is a signee, a warring state may not willy-nilly transport people, children, or adults, from a country that state is at war with, into the state itself, except for short-term welfare purposes.
By that agreement, which has governed most warfare in Europe, including World War II, forced relocation of civilians in an occupied territory must be to a third-party, neutral country.
During World War II, Switzerland played this role. But, in the Russo-Ukraine War, by Russian state policy, children removed from Ukraine are placed in Russian institutions, sometimes as far away as Siberia.
In those institutions, by Russian state policy, the Ukrainian children are subjected to Russian state propaganda, punished for using the Ukrainian language, taught in school that Ukraine is a Nazi state, and forced to participate in “patriotic” Russian youth activities designed to make children enthusiastic Russian leadership and wanting to volunteer for service in the Russian military.
Parallel with that, as with Russia-born children, authorities push the Ukrainian children in Russian custody to receive Russian passports and become Russian citizens.
State-sponsored removal of children from the country they were born in is a near-textbook definition of the war crimes – illegal forced deportation of persons, and illegal transport of persons.
Forcing citizenship on the people of a country the state is at war with, and the re-education/brainwashing of captured citizens of an adversary state into hating their own country are also war crimes. However, the ICC arrest warrant does not cite Putin or Belova-Lvova for that.
SO HOW BIG IS THIS KREMLIN PROJECT TRANSPORTING UKRAINIAN CHILDREN INTO RUSSIA?
Russian armed forces currently occupy about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, which has placed Russian state control over 7-8 million Ukrainian citizens. Most of the Ukrainians who are not adults, as in most places, live with parents or other guardians who are responsible for them.
According to a March 2025 study by Yale University, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have probably been forcibly deported from Ukraine into Russia. More than 8,400 children have been specifically identified by the study as having been transported to 43 facilities in Russia, or to 13 facilities in authoritarian and allied-with-Russia Belarus.
Russian authorities target “vulnerable groups of children for deportation, including orphans, children with disabilities, children from low-income families, and children with parents in the (Ukrainian) military,” the report says in part.
Some children removed from Ukraine “were physically abused, denied communication with their families in Ukraine, given inadequate access to food and care after being taken to Russia.
Russia has refused to give Ukrainian authorities a list of children taken to Russia – as required by international law – and has engaged in various activities to conceal their forced deportation and illegal adoption of children from Ukraine,” the report says.Ukrainian government figures closely match the Yale University findings. According to the state-sponsored initiative Bring Kids Back, Ukrainian authorities know of 19,546 children removed from Ukrainian territory by Russian authorities.
A statement published by Ukraine’s Office of the President accused the Kremlin and its operators of “forcibly taking children from orphanages, killing parents, splitting families during filtration processes, creating unbearable living conditions in occupied areas, and brazenly kidnapping children from their homes and schools,” and called Russian state policy to make Ukrainian children Russian citizens “More than a tragedy; it’s a deliberate attack on Ukraine’s future.”
Of those, 1,509 have returned; some after parents travelled to Russia to track their children down, some because they became adults and were allowed to return home on their own, and some by escaping their Russian warders, testimonies published by the group said.Lvova-Belova has said Russia is opening its homes to children in need. She has fostered a teenage boy from Mariupol.
FINE, PUTIN IS NOT A NICE GUY. BUT IS IT A BIG DEAL FOR A US PRESIDENT TO MEET WITH HIM?
US President Donald J. Trump has a solid record of meeting with – and by his words often befriending – authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning foreign officials, most notably with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Philippines’ Rodrigo “The Punisher” Duerte, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
During Trump’s first presidency, his White House effectively went around the US-supported national leadership of Afghanistan, in a time of war, in order to cut a peace deal with the Taliban, an organization deemed “terrorist” by the US government.
The ICC currently has, among others, issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony (Uganda, former commander in chief of the Lord’s Resistance Army, wanted on 18 counts of war crimes and 21 counts of crimes against humanity); Ahmad Haroun (Sudan, former Interior Minister, 22 war crimes counts, 20 crimes against humanity counts); and Iyad Ad Ghaly (Mali, leader of the Asnar Eddine group, four counts of war crimes, six counts of crimes against humanity.
However, the ICC also has indicted (2024) close US ally and Trump “friend” Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel, Prime Minister, two counts of war crimes, three counts of crimes against humanity). During a July 8 2025, meetings with Netanyahu at the White House, Trump praised him as a defender of democracy and rule of law, notwithstanding the active ICC arrest warrant against the Israeli leader.
Arguably, a Trump meeting with Putin is a formal White House green light to future criminal acts by Putin and the Russian state against Ukrainian children.
WELL IT’S WAR. MAYBE RUSSIA IS COOPERATING WITH UKRAINE TO BRING THE CHILDREN HOME?
The Kremlin says its only priority is the children’s welfare.
The Ukrainians say “no” and point to a June 2025 official list presented to Moscow by Kyiv with the names, locations and other identification data of 339 Ukrainian children currently in Russian state custody. The Ukrainian state-to-state message demanded Russia return the children immediately. The Kremlin has not responded and the children appear still to be in Russia.
Later that month Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry announced, and published the link to a website operated by the “government” of the “Luhansk People’s Republic,” the Russian-created-and -run authority in the occupied portion of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region.
According to comments at the time by Mykola Kuleba, head of Save Ukraine, the searchable database listed 294 Ukrainian children presented for adoption with details such as photos, age, gender, eye and hair color, and personality traits like “obedient” or “calm.” He claimed many of the children had been abducted and accused the Russian state of child trafficking.