Ukrainian officials have said the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant that was issued last week for Russian President Vladimir Putin has made negotiations with the Russian leader impossible.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on Twitter after the warrant was issued that now that labeling Putin “an obvious international criminal directly means there will be no negotiations with the current Russian elite.”
Other Ukrainian officials told POLITICO that peace talks are hard to imagine now that the warrant was issued over allegations that Russia is forcibly deporting Ukrainian children. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pointed to the fact that the Ukrainian government previously ruled out negotiating with Putin, although Zelensky later softened on the position slightly.
“We knew long before the ICC arrest warrant that talking to Putin made no sense. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council adopted a legal resolution on September 30 of last year declaring that any negotiations with Vladimir Putin were impossible in response to Russia’s attempted annexation of additional Ukrainian territories,” Kuleba said.
The ICC warrant was issued a few days before Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow after Beijing released a potential 12-point peace plan for Ukraine. After talks on Tuesday, Putin said he welcomed the Chinese proposals, and Xi is expected to speak with Zelensky soon.
The Biden administration has rejected Beijing’s efforts for peace and has come out against a ceasefire in Ukraine. The US also supports the arrest warrant for Putin even though, like the US, Russia is not a party to the ICC. The administration has previously rejected ICC efforts to investigate non-member states.
In 2021, when the ICC opened an investigation into Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly condemned the move. ” The United States firmly opposes and is deeply disappointed by this decision,” Blinken said in a statement. “The ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter. Israel is not a party to the ICC and has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction, and we have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.”
How many staffers does it take to keep track of Blinkens lies so he doesn’t contridict himself? I’m guessing they have no hope for Biden, he’s a jabber jaw.
The Chinese World Empire is approaching very rapidly, and we, the US, are its biggest enabler.
Pfft, when the Ukrainians decide to negotiate they will negotiate, with the guy that can make deals if that is Putin then it is Putin.
Ahem. This is a proxy war. The U.S./U.K. is in command here. Ukraine has no say in the matter.
So that clears all the smoke on the why and the timing of the ICC intervention against the threat of peace.
Putin’s ‘crime’, child protection in violation of the Nazis’ right to kill them.
Anyway, the peace offensive and the Nazi response was all foreseen. Xi and Putin staged it for the outside world, not the Nazis. And I’m guessing it played very well.
Every action and decision has one purpose: burn all the bridges.
Pipeline, ICC….
There is no way back.
Ukraine Says ICC Arrest Warrant Means No Negotiations With Putin
really, it was only 2 days ago that uncle sam said that there will be no cease-fire.
WTF is actually going on any more.
at some point somebody will realize that uncle sam does not have anybody else’s best interest at heart.
Specifically, Biden said he was not interested in the Chinese administration seeking peace. “Disinterested” was the word used. Biden is no diplomat. He is stupid.
I’m very much inclined to agree vlp1730, very much.
A Ukrainian presidential “advisor…wrote…that” the ICC “labeling Putin ‘an obvious international criminal directly means there will be no negotiations with the current Russian elite.’”
“Y’see,” the advisor elaborated, explaining the logic of Ukraine’s post-warrant position:
“before – when it was only a q. of Russia invading Ukraine over NATO and our war on the pro-Russian Donbas – negotiations were not totally impossible.
“But now? With a court – whose authority the US rejects for itself or Israel – issuing a symbolic arrest warrant? That really exposes how bad Russia is, so no way we’re gonna negotiate with them now! – Forward and into the meatgrinder! To the last Ukrainian!”
What about the Kiev administration shelling its own citizens in the Donbas? Killing 14,000 over a period of 8 years.
The “Kiev administration” wasn’t the only force shelling the Donbas. And its troops were the largest casualty group.
This is a very light hot-take, here, to the point of in-credibility. Many, many well-credentialed observers flat out disagree with such an assertion(s).
The post-2014 “Kiev Administration(s)” was, of course, naturally the chief stakeholder in the shelling of the Donbas post-2014 Maidan coup resistance.
Whether or not “not the only force” means the far right elements, included, or not, clearly these had become “government” post-2014, indeed as the “plumbers” of the coup on ground (literally sniping from Maidan buildings to create the, um, “revolutionary” pre-text).
And it’s also highly improbable that Kiev troops were the bulk of casualties, here. Unless, that is, all the rest of these very credible commentators got it wrong, otherwise, when asserting that most of the 14K killed were Donbas (what else could really be the case after an 8yr Western-supplied Kievan military buildup? Nothing of that scale occurred in the Donbas from the Russians during that time).
(While were at it a moment of silence for the herded-then-burned-alive-in-building trade unionists in that Odessa incident.)
But I’ll just highlight a highlight, the well-known massive spike in “Kiev Administration” shelling of the Donbas in the week or so before the Russian intervention (presumably it’s okay if we use that word instead of “invasion” since US-approved invasions, regardless legality, are instead called “interventions”. Geese and ganders, etc.), many noting possibly designed to finally prompt the desired (yes, desired aka quagmire-type play; See Z. Brzezinski) Russian intervention.
It’s also well-known that Zelensky had long ago been amenable to, indeed, had presidential-campaigned-on, negotiations with the Donbas areas, but was in-no-uncertain-terms told by the far right (as-in, real Nazis) elements (elevated by the 2014 Maidan into formal governance and military leadership) that the only solution to the Donbas question was military.
was i clear? whole idea of a freakin’ symbolic court order being determinative of a ‘no negotiations’ stance is as stupid-assed as these things get…
saw the same thing on nyt threads when it was announced – ‘what? an international legal order – by a body the u.s. rejects – issued an arrest warrant? now there can never be negotiation!’
this by endless war, ‘absolute victory and unconditional surrender’ zealots who have now seized on the court as their latest rationale for being against negotiation.
Nicely said sir, well said.
Negotiations are no longer between kings and emperors but between states/nations. If the Russian nation sends Putin to negotiate for it, then the Ukrainian nation, hence Zelenskiy, will have to accept that. The alternative is no negotiations ever. The ICC must now make clear that Putin cannot be arrested during the following circumstances: visit to the UN in New York and negotiations outside Russia for ending the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Deciding where, if at all, the arrest warrant gets executed isn’t the ICC’s job. But presumably diplomatic immunity would cover him at the UN, and any given jurisdiction asked to host peace talks could agree to not enforce the warrant.
Coincident…? Appears to be pre planned…!
Yes, that is why our War Party ordered the ICC to do this. Avoid negotiations, put off ending the war in hopes that somehow it will come right.
Sort of like what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Syria and Libya and Yemen and Somalia and Sudan. It never worked before, but it did let those in power slide away after enjoying a full career in power.
A Wash. puppet will always do what Wash. wants when Wash. pulls its strings. Thing is, you can’t fool all the people all the time. It may take a little longer, but if Wash. goes to war with China, Russia or any other country, that will be the end of the apathy in the American people. People are buying weapons and stockpiling ammo all over the US, that should be a clue that things can really get out of hand for the psychopaths in Wash.
Biden wants war and behind Biden is Nuland and the Kagan clan plus Blinken and Sullivan and all the neo-Nazis in congress. We are in deep trouble with these people. They are criminals.
At best with a conventional war Europe would look like the ME. Biden and co are irrational enough to believe they can win a nuclear war against China and Russia in that case nothing worth living for would be left. At least the three biggest nuclear powers at war, how could it end?
You can bet your boots that if Stalin were running the show again he wouldn’t put up with the Ukraine’s shenanigans for one minute. I’m just sayin’.