Serbian president criticizes ICC arrest warrant for Putin
However Serbian populist President Aleksandar Vucic, who had prior to now boasted about his private relation with the Russian chief, criticized the courtroom’s determination.
“I think issuing an arrest warrant for Putin, not to go into legal matters, will have bad political consequences and it says that there is a great reluctance to talk about peace (and) about truce” in Ukraine, Vucic instructed reporters in Belgrade.
“My question is now that you have accused him of the biggest war crimes, who are you going to talk to now?” Vucic stated.
“Do you really think that it is possible to defeat Russia in a month, three months or a year?” he requested, including: “There is no doubt that the goal of those who did this is to make it difficult for Putin to communicate, so that everyone who talks to him is aware that he is accused of war crimes.”
Requested if Putin could be arrested if he involves Serbia, Vucic stated that it’s “a pointless question, because it is clear that as long as the conflict (in Ukraine) continues, Putin has nowhere to go.”
Though Serbia is searching for European Union membership, it has maintained shut ties to Russia and is the one European state that has refused to hitch worldwide sanctions in opposition to Moscow.
Vucic, a powerful opponent of worldwide conflict crimes courts, was a rating official of an ultranationalist social gathering whose chief Vojislav Seselj and a number of other different members ended up within the worldwide conflict crimes courtroom on trials for crimes they dedicated in the course of the wars within the Nineties.
Within the late Nineties, Vucic was info minister within the authorities of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in the course of the conflict in Kosovo the place Serb troops have been accused of varied conflict crimes dedicated in opposition to Kosovo Albanian separatists.
Milosevic was arrested in Serbia on conflict crime prices in 2001. He died on the worldwide conflict crimes courtroom within the Hague in 2006 earlier than his trial on the crimes dedicated by Serbian troops in the course of the wars within the Balkans within the Nineties ended.