section_path: War crimes and attacks on civilians/International arrest warrants
section_name: International arrest warrants
paragraph_text: International arrest warrants
  
  The International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into possible crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes committed in Ukraine. On 17 March 2023, the ICC issued a warrant for Putin's arrest, charging him with individual criminal responsibility in the abduction of children forcibly deported to Russia. It was the first time that the ICC had issued an arrest warrant for the head of state of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (the world's five principal nuclear powers). Moscow has denied any involvement in war crimes, a response Vittorio Bufacchi of University College Cork says "has bordered on the farcical", and its contention that the images coming out of Bucha were fabricated "a disingenuous response born by delusional hubris, post-truth on overdrive, (that) does not merit to be taken seriously." Even the usually fractured United States Senate came together to call Putin a war criminal.
  
  One of several efforts to document Russian war crimes concerns its repeated bombardment of markets and bread lines, destruction of basic infrastructure and attacks on exports and supply convoys, in a country where deliberate starvation of Ukrainians by Soviets the Holodomor still looms large in public memory. Forcible deportation of populations, such as took place in Mariupol, is another area of focus, since,
  
  forced deportations and transfers are defined both as war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Protocol II and Article 8 of the Rome Statute—and as crimes against humanity—under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. As both war crimes and crimes against humanity, they have several mechanisms for individual accountability, the International Criminal Court and also, at the individual state level, universal jurisdiction and Magnitsky sanctions legislation.
  
  The ICC also issued arrest warrants for military officials Sergey Kobylash, Viktor Sokolov, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov.