Vladimir Putin has a Warrant for His Arrest. Does it Matter?

less nightmarish. We're talking about war crimes, the International Criminal Court, and most specifically the warrant that was just issued for Vladimir Putin's arrest, which is something you've probably heard about on the internet. People have various takes on this in order to kind of talk about what's actually been done, what it actually means, and sort of the history of attempts to hold the leaders of nations to account for war crimes. I want to talk to Nick Waters. Nick,

Welcome to the show. Higher Nick, you and I have some connections outside of this. First off, you're you're here on the show today because you work in an investigatory investigative capacity. Geez, can you tell that I'm not used to waking up this early for Belling Cat where we both work together. Your focus has been primarily on war crimes. You've been covering Ukraine lately, but you have a pretty wide purview and a pretty wide base of experience, including

crimes in Libya. Um and yeah, I wanted to talk to you a little bit. First off, welcome to the show. Thanks very much, mate, Um of behind the Bastards. I have the largest knife I could find in this place next to me. It's not quite machete, but yeah, I mean I thought I should have one just in case. That's that's good, I've got um. Well, yeah, I actually am more or less knifeless here. I do have a nine millimeter in the desk, but somewhat more limited span

of uses. Now, Nick, you and I. You and I have shared one of the strongest bonds that two men can share, which is eating some really delicious a rep us. But we also share an interest in the somewhat difficult history of attempts from our species to kind of grapple with the nature of war, crimes, of acts of genocide and hold people to account for them. I kind of think before we get into what's happened with Putin, we should talk about what the ICC is and what its

history comes from. Because this it actually dates back a little over one hundred years, attempts to make the ICC. I think nineteen nineteen was the first convention in which a number of European nations were like, boy, we should really have some sort of court put together to attempt to hold leaders and individuals to account for committing war crimes. Yeah. I'm not a familiar with the kind of the very

long history of attempts at international justice. Suffice to say that so far hasn't worked out quite how I think everyone expects it to. That, That is the TLDR, the international Justice good idea hasn't happened yet pretty much. Yeah, I mean there's been lots of yeah, lots of agreements obviously, kind of everyone knows Geneva Convention, et cetera, lots of other agreements about how not to kill people in the most horrific way as possible in war, and you know,

as part of that, like Roman Statue which created the ICC. Yeah, it was agreed in nineteen ninety eight. So yeah, there's been kind of like one hundred years or sort of efforts before the ICEC actually got here. Yeah. Actually probably Also, I need to say, like before we kind of get going anything, I'm not a lawyer, which is super important because I know all the lawyers out there will be

like angry about it. So nick I wanted to talk about what in particular this decision means because there's bit like, obviously, I think it's fair to say in the immediate term, probably nothing like it's not like the international um uh warrant agents are going to come out and arrest Vladimir in the Kremlin or in his his mansion that you see fake photoshopped images of on on Twitter all the time. Um. But yeah, yeah, yeah, so in kind of like day

to day stuff, Yeah, it doesn't have that much an effect. Um. So Russia doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. So it's not like, you know, the FSB are going to storm into the Kremlin and ar Resciputin and like export him to the Hague in a you know, different matter bag or something that's that's not going to happen. Um. But in other ways it's it's a big deal in other ways. Um. And also it's for me, like the biggest thing about this is that it's an indicator about

how seriously the ICC is taking taking this war. International justice moves so slowly, you know, we're talking like you know, mentioned in decades so to having a restaurants house. Yeah, in one year is like a really big deal for the ICEC at least. Yeah. And this is because, if I'm not mistaken, the both Putin and the woman, because he's not the only one, by the way, that's been been charged by the the ICCUM. There's also I'm gonna attempt to get her name right, Maria Lvova Belova, who

is the Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia. And part of the reason why this has happened so rapidly is that both Putin and Maria have made pretty unequivocal statements about the removal of Ukrainian children from their families, forced deportation and into Russia and adoption by Russian families, which is that is a war crime, that is an act

of genocide. Yeah, so I think the actual crime is unlawful deportation or the actual citation is on awful deportation of Ukrainian children, which yes, could be arguably and again at this point emphasized not a lawyer, Yeah, I think can feed into the kind of accusations of genocide. And so it's a pretty big charge to level against Putin and this commissioner this early on. I think it's also like one of the easier ones as well, Like in the view of the Russian States, this is a you know,

wonderful thing they're doing. They are essentially kind of rescuing these children from and you can't see if I'm doing air quotes right now, like Grainian Nazis educating them and bring them up as Russian children, and you know, they're they're taking these children away from their culture, their families, and their country to basically race who they all, which act plays a quite big part in the actuation that could be part of a active GENOCIDEA yeah, and it's

it's interesting to me Levova Belova has kind of described this like her justification of this, and I think the Russian states justification of this is both that, yeah, the Ukrainians or Nazis, and also I've heard claims from her that like, well, we're removing children from a dangerous war zone, which you know that begs the question why is it

a dangerous war zone right now? Among other things. But one of the things that's interesting to me is that Levova Belova is not just part of the state apparatus of carrying out this act, but has also thanked putin publicly for making it possible for her to adopt a child from dun Boss, which is one of the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine. So yeah, it is It is kind of interesting the stuff that had to fall into place for this to be able to happen in such

an expeditious manner. Yeah, I think it helps that they've or the Russian state views this act is something that is beneficial, and so they want to say, hey, look we're rescuing these children. And you can see kind of similar You've seen similar vibes with like basically stealing Ukrainian

cultural heritage from museums and stuff like that. They or the Russian state believes, you know, that they are doing the right thing, like we are very proud that we have taken these objects away and we are saving them again from Ukrainian artsies. And so they make public announcements about it. They say, yeah, we're doing the thing. It's awesome, isn't it. Yeah, And so the result is quite a lot of evidence that they're doing these pretty bad things.

And so yeah, there's there's quit lot of evidence there. There are statements from his Commissioner for Children from Peutin. It's pretty clear what's happening. So it's quite a I think it's quite an interesting charge to bring. Yeah, and we're just so people are aware of the scale. President Zelinski, if Ukraine at least has says that his country has recorded about sixteen thousand cases of forcible deportations of children. That's not like a final number, just like the death

tallies and whatnot are not final numbers. But that's that is the Ukrainian state's estimate of how many kids have been taken away, which is a I mean, that's a pretty staggering number. I mean, yeah, that's a huge number of children. Yeah, yeah, I know, that's an absolutely huge number of children. And then you have to account you know that it's not just a children they're the victims.

It's also their families who are the victims. So are we're talking about like a knock on effect with you know, tens of thousands of people who've been affected by these arcs, if not more than that, Yeah, I think probably. I mean sixteen thousand children, that probably higher than the tens of thousands in terms of family members and whatnot who are impacted by this. In terms of what technically this

means for Putin. There's about there's I think one hundred and twenty signature signatory nations to the Rome Statue it Um, and within those countries, theoretically, if if Putin or if Maria were to travel there, they would theoretically be arrested if they were to set foot in one of those signatory nations. Yes, so theoretic theoretically doing a lot of walking there. Yeah, doing a lot of heavy lifting. Okay. So yeah, in theory, if Putin traves to any of

these nations, he should be arrested. But some of the nations don't recognize or believe that heads of states are basically immune, and I imagine there will be several of those signatories who will likely refuse to extradite Putin should mister Putin visit them. And this has actually happened before, so I think it was South Africa refused to extradite a former head of states. I think it was a

leader of self suit done. But yeah, it wasn't it wasn't it Olmarba Shar, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe it was Olmarba Shar. Yeah. So he mactually travel our m and was not arrested and extradited as theoretically should have been. However, um, it still gives mister Putin and especially a security details some headaches because they're still going to have to check with these states when they go and visit you know, Hey, are you going to like arrest him yea, which is not like a

cool usually have to ask. And then if they were planning to arrest him, you know, they might not tell them that they're planning to arrest them. So there's always going to be well at the moment, there's still like a cost applied to mister Putin t other of traveling to these countries that would still you know, might still like consider the IC jurisdiction over the heads of state to be lacking. Um. Yeah, yeah, so there's still there's

still like some some cost applied. Though if I'm rembering correctly, there have been three sitting heads of state that have

faced ICC charges in office. We talked about Omar Bashir, m Momar Kaddafi, and now Putin is number three, which is if we're if we're looking at the history of the last you know, I mean just since the establishment of the ICC, fewer than the number of world leaders who have been involved allegedly in crimes against humanity, I think fair to say, which brings us to the question of, like, what does it mean to be a signatory to rome, to the ICC, what does it mean to actually be

bound by any of these rules? Because both Russia and the United States I was looking at a map earlier that kind of lists out every country's relationship to the ICC, and both Russia and the United States are in the position of like having endorsed aspects of the ICC and then not signed on right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Again, not a liar, not that familiar with how the ICC works in practice, But basically, if you sign up to the ICC, you have to agree to enforce their judgments, you know,

including a restaurants, which again is something in the US, and US and Russia haven't done. The idea that basically the ICC markets itself as markets itself basically thinks of itself as a court of last resort. So you know, they're not going to be out there prosecuting individual sold or fair unlikely to be prosecuting like individual soldiers who've like say, executed like teen Prinson of War in a ditch. That's something that is unlikely that the ICC is going

to prosecute. They are going for you know, high in commanders, people who've carried out like extremely severe acts, and especially in cases where like a state is not able to carry out such prosecution. So for example, take the UK, so UK has in theory conducted investigations into allegations of war crimes in a Rock, conducted by its troops. That was I had so the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. It was pretty shambolic. It is extremely shambolic. It was a

really bad investigation. The not just for the victims who basically no one really ever got justice from it, very very few people ever got justice from it, but also the people who are actually accused were sometimes like investigated

multiple multiple times. But because the UK made some kind of effort to investigate it, even if it was absolute shambolic, it's unlikely that the ICC has ever actually going to investigate UK soldiers for war crimes in the Rock, because in theory that should be the UK carrying out their investigation, and in theory they have carried out their investigation. It's

completely inadequate. But yeah, that's that's the justification. That's in incredibly interesting to me because it does seem like On one hand, I could see the logic, and this is part of why, like the US, the United States, my country's justification for why we are not a signatory is that the Constitution does not allow us to agree to have our citizens tried for crimes that they are being tried for in the United States by an international court.

Something along those lines. And I can understand the idea that, like, well, national sovereignty, like, the only way we're going to get anyone to agree to let this thing exist in abide by any aspect of its rulings is if it does not overly interview with their national sovereignty and to including their ability to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes.

On the other hand, the state of affairs, as you've just related, the state of affairs is inadequate, right, Like that is, the system that has been developed is not adequate to trying or achieving justice in a case like the Iraq War in which there were a lot of

crimes committed that people have not been punished for. And I I mean, obviously you have to kind of marry that to the fact that the attempt to do something at all in this way is extremely new, as we've said, like there are we have, like most of the people who work on my show are older than the ICC,

and so that's that's still an achievement. I don't know, I'm wondering kind of like what you see is like the positive future for attempts to hold individuals and nations to account here, Like is that is it continuing to grind like this or do you see kind of a more positive opening coming forward as a result of particularly the attention that all of these these war crimes in Ukraine have gotten. I mean, I think it will continue

to grind. When you look at the history of a trusties have taken place in conflict over the last you know, like twenty years, it's just absolutely huge. Yeah, you know, there's like a trusty upon a trustity upon a trusty, and the ICC can only investigate a tiny number of those. The reality is that only a tiny fraction of those atrocitees will ever actually be investigated in victims faced justice.

That is the reality of the situation. The ICC does, you know, carry out investigations and does CARRYCT prosecutions, but again we're talking like the most grave crimes possible, and usually you know, really senior people who often are able to evade those kind of prosecutions. I think there's a better chance of some kind of justice at like a

national level with universal jurisdiction. So recently, universe or jurisdiction was used in Germany to prosecute two Syrian officers who have basically carried out torture against Syrians during during the revolution, and those those two Syrian officers have basically fled to fled to Germany and related prosecuted that. And so it's not just the ICEC. It's all so universe jurisdiction is

you know, trumbunals. There's other stuff there. But again, like this is only a tiny fraction of everything that gets investigated. And I've been reading of going through several different books about Joseph Mengela most recently and including some accounts from you know, Jewish doctors who are enslaved and who are forced to work at Auschwitz. And I've been thinking a lot about the the Nate, like the different kinds of

war crimes. Right, you have a group of Australian or US or British soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq who commit a massacre, kill a number of civilians, and that is

a war crime. But there's also the kinds of war crime that is a war crime that is the result of individuals taking individual actions right as opposed to the actions of a state, and the actions that are a result of years worth of directed culture efforts, which I think is part a way to look at what the Russian state's attitude towards Ukrainians are and a lot of the crimes that have been committed over there, the denial of the existence of Ukrainians as a people is deeper

and more complex than the kind of crime that a soldier might commit in a moment of passion, and fundamentally different from that. And it's one of those things. If you like, for example, to go back to Mangola, if you're trying to judge Mangola for his crimes, you have to judge the entire German medical establishment, which joined the Nazi Party in higher numbers than any other group in the country, and which was directly implicated in how Auschwitz

functioned and why it worked the way it did. And there's realistically, like most of the doctors Mangola, there were attempts to punish him. Obviously he escaped, but the doctors who educated him, who taught him, who inculcated him in the attitudes that were directly responsible for the crimes that he committed, were never punished, And legally, I don't know

how you would punish people for that. How do you hundh someone for promuligating ideas like the ideas that Ukrainians are not a people, which leads to a lot of the violence that you're seeing over there, Like, how do you like there's not realistically, in at least in my understanding of the law, a way to punish that. But

it is a factor in these crimes. Yeah, the creation of a culture absolutely is and a key Like a really good example of this is the radio station Rwanda, Yes, who you know broadcast basically will effectively called to genocide. And I think they were actually ended up being prosecuted by the ICC, I think actually as well. I believe, Yeah, I believe there were at least attempts. Yeah, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Yeah, I mean it's one thing

when you're talking about like direct incitements to violence. It's another one you're talking about like kind of the stuff that Dugan is responsible for, which is absolutely a factor the kind of id the ideas that he was one of the people who has kind of promuligated under the direction of Putin and others in the Russian state are like a factor in the behavior that we've seen over there.

But it also is harder to kind of qualify it as a direct call for war crimes in some cases, although some of the stuff Dugan has said, I think you could you could argue is certainly like a direct call to violence. Yeah, I mean, like yeah, where it's really difficult to kind of get that to raise up to the threshold of prosecution. It's really difficult thing to do, especially if you are external to the culture that is or to the organization that is creating that internal culture.

And I'm like very familiar with this kind of stuff, having for those of you if you listened from one will be familiar. I was an army officer, so like quite a big part of my job was making sure that like the culture within my cartoon was a beneficial, good culture in which the blokes would knock go off and like murder people. And you read about stories like my Lie or there's a really good example for this

book called Black Hearts. This American pluting in Iraq, and it's really clear where basically institutional culture has completely failed or has created a culture in which basically committing atrocities or murder is either you know, mildly ignored or actively encouraged.

And yeah, that that culture is something that is really difficult to police because it really has to come from within the institution itself, you know, unless you just completely destroy the institution itself, which is also another option, which is what the Canadians did were the Airborne Regiment after some of their guys in Somalia like roasted some poor guy alive on a fire. Jesus, the Canadians basically just disbanded the entire Airborn regiment. They basically said, like, the

culture in this regiment is not it's too far gone. Basically, we're going to disband this entire regiment, which is what they did. So you can do that too, but it's quite a difficult thing to do, kind of The last thing I wanted to go over is the most recent the response of the Russian state to these warrants. One of them has been they've announced that they are in carrying out an investigation into the ICC, which is it, you know, Um, I'm sure as meaningful as the sentence

I just said. And I the other thing that they've done is sort of threatened to launch a hypersonic warhead at the Hague, which I mean, like, it's not he does have a lot of missiles, so it's you can't like completely disregard a threat from a nuclear armed nation to launch missiles at the Hague. But um, it's also just you know, threats like the are not completely and in fact, there's a provision in um what is it called. Let me let me double check on the name here.

I'm so bad at remembering the names of laws. Um, the American service Members Protection Act that does theoretically allow the use of military force by the US if American citizens are extradited. Um, So like this is this is like a much cruder version of that like if you arrest us, will well will nuke they. But it does like it's one of those things we're laughing about it. But if you if you were to go back ten years and imagine that threat being leveled, like even by Putin,

it would seem like farcical. Um, I guess it is farcical, but we're here. Yeah, it's it's It's completely insane, isn't it. Yeah, I mean, like how do you respond to that, Like right, like I'm gonna I'm gonna hypeersonic. They the Hague response,

it's just like, yeah, it's mad. Like when if you go to the Hague, like the ICC, you know, you'll have like the security guards sat there with their little kind of nine mill pistol and they kind of buzzy through that kind of stuff, and like the idea of them kind of you know, trying to fight off like a delta force assault on the ICEC in the case where like in a reckon soldier there's like, oh, it's farcical.

But then the idea that they could do anything, because like a hypersonic missile is like thirty seconds away from like obliterating the entire you gotta really, you gotta really lead them. I mean, I mean, the only kind of benefit I suppose is that like the ICEC is on the outskirts of the Hague, so they would irradiate actually quite a bit of a residential area and then a

lot of sand dunes. Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean one of the app sides is that if Russia does nuke the Hague, we will have deeper concerns than what to do about international criminal law and the wake of that, including taking sufficient iodine pills, which I'm not by I mean people everyone gets is antsy about enough today. I don't think this is like a realistic threat. I don't think it's likely that the Russian State is going to

nuke the ICC. Unfortunately. Part of why it's unlikely is that it's unlikely that Putin is going to face direct justice for his actions unless he is somehow overthrown right, like that is realistically the only case by which he winds up in front of the ICC is if he is forced out of power. Yeah. I mean like when I when this you know, news first broke, there were some people who are saying, hey, is this a big deal? Little like will never you know people mc justice and like, yeah,

he might. He probably won't, but on the off chance, it's always good to have that there. You know, I went Slobodamnosovich, Uh, you know step down was president president of Serbia. You know there was I think there was a a which meant that he couldn't actually be extracted to the ICC. So everyone said the same thing, you know, he's never going to face justice, and then he ended up at the ICCA. And if there is some kind of cool or something, you know, not now, maybe in

the year's time, two years time, fifteen years time. You know, Putin is a very valuable bargaining chip, and being able to send him to the Hague would be an extremely powerful message of hey, guys, we're entering a new era. Like the Russian state doesn't want to be associated with

what happened under Putin's rule. He go have mister Putin put him on trial, and you know, he becomes like quite an important bargaining chip, and so yeah, the chance of it happening is like pretty small, but it's still there. It's still worth doing this. And that's I think where I land is. I've just been again reading about. In this winter of nineteen forty four was a rebellion in Auschwitz by a number of members of the Sonder Commando, which was a group of prisoners who were tasked with

the actual like job of making the camp function. And these guys rebelled, They blew up a bunch of stuff, and the whole attempt, this whole like attack that cost hundreds of them their lives, was in the hope that one of them would get out and tell the story of what had been happening inside. And when you think about it that way, what historically, and not just going back to the Holocaust, but the entire long history of war like human war crimes which go back as far

as war. The desire of victims to have someone be aware of what has happened to them, I think makes this a positive move in the middle of an incredibly dark chapter in human history and an incredibly awful war. The fact that this is happening at all, as flawed, as imperfect as the whole and it's you know, people keep bringing up things like the inequities of of the prosecution of like the United States and Israel for a

number of different acts of their states and militaries. But like, even given all that, the fact that this is happening at all is I think meaningful. I do think it matters. It's definitely a meaningful like it's very much like a statement of intent from the ICC, and especially from the new prosecutor, the ICC cream con who came in last year, and he's kind of like, as far as I can tell, come in and shaking a few cages and it's a very clear statement of intent from both himself and from

the court as well. Yeah, well, I think that's as good a note as any to end on, Nick, Do you want to direct anybody towards um place they can can donate or something they can or a place they can go to read up more on this series other issues of international criminal justice. I mean, yeah, I'd direct people to to Bellencato coom, which is who I work for my twitters and non school Waters eighty nine. I don't really go onto it that much anymore. Something happened there,

I don't know. You may, yeah, but I past occasion every so often, But yeah, felling out the com would be you wor'd recommend that's where like our work is anyway. Yeah, well, Nick Waters, thank you so much for coming on, for lending your expertise here. That's going to do it for us here. It could happen here. Sorry for using the word here so many times. Have a lovely day, everybody. It could happen here. As a production of cool Zone Media.

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