Any attempt to arrest President Vladimir Putin after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the Kremlin chief would amount to a declaration of war against Russia, his ally Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
\nThe ICC issued an arrest warrant on Friday, accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. It said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility.
\nFormer President Dmitry Medvedev told Russian media that the ICC, which countries including Russia, China and the United States do not recognise, was a \u201clegal nonentity\u201d that had never done anything significant. Any attempt to detain Putin, though, would be a declaration of war, said Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Putin\u2019s powerful security council.
\n\u201cLet\u2019s imagine \u2014 obviously this situation which will never be realised \u2014 but nevertheless let\u2019s imagine that it was realised: The current head of the nuclear state went to a territory, say Germany, and was arrested,\u201d Medvedev said.
\n\u201cWhat would that be? It would be a declaration of war on the Russian Federation,\u201d he said in a video posted on Telegram. \u201cAnd in that case, all our assets \u2014 all our missiles et cetera \u2014 would fly to the Bundestag, to the Chancellor\u2019s office.\u201d
\nThe Kremlin says the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes.
\nRussia\u2019s Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine has triggered the deadliest European conflict since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
\nRelations with the West, Medvedev said, were probably at the worst point ever.
\nAs president from 2008 to 2012, Medvedev cast himself as a pro-Western reformer. Since the war, though, he has turned into one of the most publicly hawkish Russian officials, insulting Western leaders and delivering a series of nuclear warnings.
\nNuclear risks had risen, he said.
\n\u201cEvery day\u2019s delivery of foreign weapons to Ukraine brings closer the nuclear apocalypse,\u201d Medve\u00addev said.
\nAfter the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, he said, the West had considered itself the boss of Russia but Putin had put an end to that. \u201cThey were very offended,\u201d Medvedev said, adding that the West disliked the independence of Russia and China.
\nHe said the West now wanted to crack Russia apart into a host of weaker states and steal its vast natural resources.
\nPutin casts the conflict in Ukraine as an existential struggle to defend Russia against what he sees as an arrogant and aggressive West which he says wants to cleave Russia apart.
\nThe West denies it wants to destroy Russia and says it is helping Ukraine defend against an imperial-style land grab. Ukraine says it will not rest until all Russian soldiers are ejected from its territory.
\n\u201cUkraine is part of Russia,\u201d Medvedev said, adding that almost all of modern-day Ukraine had been part of the Russian empire. Russia recognised Ukraine\u2019s post-1991 sovereignty and borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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