Russian President Vladimir Putin taking on the rotating monthly presidency of the 15-member United Nations Security Council came just after a young boy was killed by artillery launched by Moscow’s invading forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Saturday.
“Unfortunately, we … have news that is obviously absurd and destructive,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address Saturday night. “Today, the terrorist state began to chair the U.N. Security Council.”
The Ukrainian leader announced that a five-month-old child named Danylo had been killed by Russian munitions in Donbas on Friday. “One of the hundreds of artillery strikes that the terrorist state launches every day,” the Ukrainian leader said. “And at the same time, Russia chairs the U.N. Security Council.”
Even though the position at the top of the Security Council is largely ceremonial, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Russia’s presidency a “slap in the face to the international community” given the ongoing conflict.
The last time Russia held the rotating monthly presidency was in February 2022, when Putin ordered the brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
At present, in addition to the five permanent members, the U.N. Security Council also includes countries supportive of Ukraine such as Japan, Ghana, Malta and Albania, along with others such as the United Arab Emirates, Mozambique and Brazil which take a more neutral approach to the conflict.
In his Saturday address, Zelenskyy also said he had spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron for an hour on Saturday. He also welcomed Switzerland’s decision — as another temporary U.N. Security Council member — to join the 10th sanctions package against the Russian state.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
A man sentenced to two years in prison in a case launched against him after his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school is on the run from the authorities, a spokeswoman for a provincial court told journalists.
Earlier Tuesday, a judge in the town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, found Alexei Moskalyov guilty of discrediting the Russian army on social media and sentenced him to two years in a penal colony.
Moskalyov was not present at the hearing.
Once the proceedings were over, a court spokeswoman, responding to inquiries as to Moskalyov’s whereabouts, said: “The defendant, Mr. Moskalyov, was not present when the verdict was announced because he fled house arrest last night.”
Her words were met with applause and several cries of “Bravo!” from some of those in attendance.
Formally, Moskalyov was sentenced for two comments he made on social media in which he described Russian soldiers as rapists and Russia’s leadership as “terrorists.”
But Moskalyov’s defense team and rights activists have argued his persecution is in fact retribution for a drawing made by his daughter Masha at school in April last year, when she was 12.
In the drawing, a woman and child stand next to a flag reading “Glory to Ukraine” in the path of a rocket shower coming from the direction of a Russian tricolor flag labeled: “No to war.”
According to an interview given by Moskalyov to independent media before his arrest, Masha’s teacher informed the director of the school, who then got the police involved, triggering a chain of interrogations that he claimed involved threats and beatings.
Moskalyov was eventually detained in early March and his daughter, now 13, taken into state care. While Moskalyov was soon released under house arrest, Masha remains in what the authorities call “a social rehabilitation center” and has been denied any communication with the outside world.
The ruling on Tuesday, though not a surprise, has been decried as a further crackdown on those who oppose Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and described by some as a return to the Stalinist practice of targeting the children of “enemies of the state.” А petition calling for Masha’s release has received more than 140,000 signatures.
Speaking to journalists outside the court on Tuesday, Moskalyov’s lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko said he had been unaware of his client’s plan to flee. He said the last time they saw each other was at a court hearing a day earlier.
In another development, Moskalyov’s supporters on Tuesday attempted to visit Masha at the so-called social rehabilitation institution where she is supposedly being held, only to be told that she was not there.
According to comments from the center’s director cited by independent Russian media, Masha was attending a “culinary tournament” out of town, fueling speculation about her actual location.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Britain will be welcomed into an Indo-Pacific trade bloc late Thursday as ministers from the soon-to-be 12-nation trade pact meet in a virtual ceremony across multiple time zones.
Chief negotiators and senior officials from member countries agreed Wednesday that Britain has met the high bar to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), four people familiar with the talks told POLITICO.
Negotiations are “done” and Britain’s accession is “all agreed [and] confirmed,” said a diplomat from one member nation. They were granted anonymity as they were unauthorized to discuss deliberations.
The U.K. will be the first new nation to join the pact since it was set up in 2018. Its existing members are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Canada.
Britain’s accession means it has met the high standards of the deal’s market access requirements and that it will align with the bloc’s sanitary and phytosanitary standards as well as provisions like investor-state dispute settlement. The resolution of a spat between the U.K. and Canada over agricultural market access earlier this month smoothed the way to joining up.
Member states have been “wary” of the “precedent-setting nature” of Britain’s accession, a government official from a member nation said, as China’s application to join is next in the queue. That makes it in the U.K.’s interests to ensure acceding parties provide ambitious market access offers, they added.
Trade ministers from the bloc will meet late Thursday in Britain, or early Friday for some member nations in Asia, “to put the seal on it all,” said the diplomat quoted at the top. The deal will be signed at a later time as the text needs to be legally verified and translated into various languages — including French in Canada. “That takes time,” they said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Officials in Kyiv and Berlin condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Moscow would station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.
The Kremlin “took Belarus as a nuclear hostage,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted on Sunday.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, added that the move was a violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, something that Putin denied in his announcement on Saturday. Podolyak tweeted that Putin “is afraid of losing & all he can do is scare [us] with tactics.”
Putin said on Saturday that Russia would construct a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July. He likened the plans to the U.S. stationing its nuclear weapons in Europe, and said Russia would retain control of the nuclear arms stationed in Belarus.
“The United States has been doing this for decades,” Putin was quoted as saying. “They deployed their tactical nuclear weapons long ago on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe,” he said.
Saturday evening, the German Federal Foreign Office told national media that the decision was akin to a “further attempt at nuclear intimidation.”
“The comparison made by President Putin on the nuclear participation of NATO is misleading and cannot serve to justify the step announced by Russia,” the Foreign Office was quoted as saying.
The Biden administration in the U.S. said it would “monitor the implications” of Putin’s announcement but would not adjust its nuclear weapons strategy.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “We remain committed to the collective defense of the NATO alliance.”
Russia used Belarus as a staging ground to send troops into Ukraine for Putin’s invasion. And Moscow and Minsk have maintained close military ties as the Kremlin continues its war on Ukraine.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday called for the “immediate cessation” of the war in Ukraine during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Erdoğan also “thanked President Putin for his positive stance regarding the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative” and added that the two countries “could take further steps” when it comes to economic cooperation, the Turkish presidency’s communications directorate said in a statement on Saturday.
The Black Sea grain deal, which allowed the export of foodstuffs from Ukraine to resume after Moscow’s unlawful invasion of the country blocked several ports, was extended last weekend. The grain agreement was originally signed last summer by Kyiv and Moscow under the auspices of the United Nations.
The Kremlin said in a statement following the Putin-Erdoğan phone call that the two leaders also discussed the situation in Syria.
They emphasized “the need to continue the process of normalizing relations between Turkey and Syria” and “Russia’s constructive role as a mediator,” according to the statement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
PARIS — France is bracing for fresh chaos Tuesday with a day of protests planned against Emmanuel Macron’s detested pensions reform, and trade unions calling for a general strike.
Protests last Thursday descended into turmoil with clashes between police and protesters, and scenes of violence across the country. In the wake of the unrest, which resulted in more than 450 arrests, the French president was forced to cancel a state visit by King Charles III amid security concerns.
Public transport, universities, schools and public services are expected to be disrupted again Tuesday. The impact of the industrial action is being felt across all sectors and areas of public life. A rolling strike of waste collectors in Paris has meant that trash is still piled high in parts of the French capital, and a strike at refineries has led to fuel shortages at some petrol pumps.
Despite widespread unrest, the French president pledged last week that he would not backtrack on the pensions reform which raises the age of retirement to 64 from 62, saying it was “necessary” for the country to balance the books of its generous pensions scheme.
The French government sparked outrage when it invoked article 49.3 of the French constitution to pass its pensions reform, in a controversial move that bypassed a vote in parliament it was expected to lose. The government narrowly survived two motions of no confidence in the National Assembly after the controversial move.
Tuesday’s protest could be an indicator of whether Macron’s inflexibility whips up more discontent on the street or whether the protest movement is starting to subside. French police have been accused of using heavy-handed tactics and it is likely that students and pupils will join protests in greater numbers. On Saturday, a man was left in a critical condition after clashes with police at a French water reservoir project.
Stalemate over pensions reform
Ahead of the protests on Tuesday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called for talks with trade unions and announced she would no longer use article 49.3 except when it comes to budgetary measures.
“Obviously there are tensions over the reform, we need to listen,” she told AFP on Sunday. “[We need] to calm the country and give the French some answers promptly.”
A demonstration of Totalenergies striking employees outside the Gronfreville-l’Orcher refinery | Lou Benoist/AFP via Getty Images
However, talks between the government and trade unions over the pensions reforms are at a standstill. Macron has said he is open to discussing a range of issues including working conditions, pay and work-related strain, but not the pensions reform. Trade unions say they would agree to talks only if the government agreed to re-examine the legal age of retirement.
With no clear way out and in the wake of a string of violent incidents over the last weeks, there are fears within the trade unions that France may be facing a socio-political crisis similar to the Yellow Jackets movement that rocked the country in 2018-2019.
Trade union leader Laurent Berger warned Monday that France was in “a total state of tension.”
“There is a common will [with the government] to find an exit for this protest movement and not descend into a madness that might take hold of the country, with violence and resentment,” he warned in an interview with French channel France 2.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The Hungarian parliament ratified Finland’s NATO membership on Monday, putting Helsinki one step closer to joining the alliance but leaving Sweden waiting in the wings.
Members of Hungary’s parliament voted by a margin of 182 to 6 in favor of Finnish accession.
Helsinki now only needs the Turkish parliament’s approval — expected soon — to become a NATO member.
Hungary’s move comes after repeated delays and political U-turns.
Hungarian officials spent months telling counterparts they had no objections and their parliament was simply busy with other business.
Budapest then changed its narrative last month, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who has an iron grip over his ruling Fidesz party — arguing the point that some of his legislators had qualms regarding criticism of the state of Hungarian democracy.
Finland and Sweden have been at the forefront of safeguarding democratic standards in Hungary, speaking out on the matter long before many of their counterparts.
But earlier this month — just as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he will support Finland’s NATO membership — the Fidesz position flipped again, with its parliamentary group chair then announcing support for Helsinki’s bid.
Turkey’s parliament is expected to ratify Finnish membership soon. But it is keeping Sweden in limbo, as Turkish officials say they want to see the country implement new anti-terror policies before giving Ankara’s green light.
Following in Turkey’s footsteps, Hungary is now also delaying a decision on Sweden indefinitely — prompting criticism from Orbán’s critics.
Attila Ara-Kovács, a member of the European Parliament from Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition, said that Orbán’s moves are part of a strategy to fuel anti-Western attitudes at home.
The government’s aim is “further inciting anti-Western and anti-NATO sentiment within Hungary, especially among Orbán’s fanatical supporters — and besides, of course, to serve Russian interests,” he said.
“This has its consequences,” Ara-Kovács said, adding that “support for the EU and NATO in the country is significantly and constantly decreasing.”
A recent Eurobarometer poll found that 39 percent of Hungarians view the EU positively. A NATO report, published last week, shows that 77 percent of Hungarians would vote to stay in the alliance — compared to 89 percent in Poland and 84 percent in Romania.
But Hungarian officials are adding the spin that they do support Sweden’s NATO membership.
The Swedish government “constantly questioning the state of Hungarian democracy” is “insulting our voters, MPs and the country as a whole,” said Balázs Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister’s political director (no relation to the prime minister).
It is “up to the Swedes to make sure that Hungarian MPs’ concerns are addressed,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Our goal,” he added, “is to support Sweden’s NATO accession with a parliamentary majority as broad as possible.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Doubts are growing about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut against relentless Russian assaults, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is digging in and insists his top commanders are united in keeping up an attritional defense that has dragged on for months.
Fighting around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbas dramatically escalated late last year, with Zelenskyy slamming the Russians for hurling men — many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group — forward to almost certain death in “meat waves.” Now the bloodiest battle of the war, Bakhmut offers a vision of conflict close to World War I, with flooded trenches and landscapes blasted by artillery fire.
In the past weeks, as Ukrainian forces have been almost encircled in a salient, lacking shells and facing spiking casualties, there has been increased speculation both in Ukraine and abroad that the time has come to pull back to another defensive line — a retrenchment that would not be widely seen as a massive military setback, although Russia would claim a symbolic victory.
In an address on Wednesday night, however, Zelenskyy explained he remained in favor of slogging it out in Bakhmut.
“There was a clear position of the entire general staff: Reinforce this sector and inflict maximum possible damage upon the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video address after meeting with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy and other senior generals to discuss a battle that’s prompting mounting anxiety among Ukraine’s allies and is drawing criticism from some Western military analysts.
“All members expressed a common position regarding the further holding and defense of the city,” Zelenskyy said.
This is the second time in as many weeks that Ukraine’s president has cited the backing of his top commanders. Ten days ago, Zelenskyy’s office issued a statement also emphasizing that Zaluzhnyy and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, agreed with his decision to hold fast at Bakhmut.
The long-running logic of the Ukrainian armed forces has been that Russia has suffered disproportionately high casualties, allowing Kyiv’s forces to grind down the invaders, ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive expected shortly, in the spring.
City of glass, brick and debris
Criticism has been growing among some in the Ukrainian ranks — and among Western allies — about continuing with the almost nine-month-long battle. The disquiet was muted at first and expressed behind the scenes, but is now spilling into the open.
On social media some Ukrainian soldiers have been expressing bitterness at their plight, although they say they will do their duty and hold on as ordered. “Bakhmut is a city of glass, bricks and debris, which crackle underfoot like the fates of people who fought here,” tweeted one.
A lieutenant on Facebook noted: “There is a catastrophic shortage of shells.” He said the Russians were well dug in and it was taking five to seven rounds to hit an enemy position. He complained of equipment challenges, saying “Improvements — improvements have already been promised, because everyone who has a mouth makes promises.” But he cautioned his remarks shouldn’t be taken as a plea for a retreat. “WE WILL FULFILL OUR DUTY UNTIL THE END, WHATEVER IT IS!” he concluded ruefully.
Iryna Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine’s 93rd brigade, also gave a flavor of the risks medics are facing in the town. “Those people who go back and forth to Bakhmut on business are taking an incredible risk. Everything is difficult,” she tweeted.
A Ukrainian serviceman gives food and water to a local elderly woman in the town of Bakhmut | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
The key strategic question is whether Zelenskyy is being obdurate and whether the fight has become more a test of wills than a tactically necessary engagement that will bleed out Russian forces before Ukraine’s big counter-strike.
“Traveling around the front you hear a lot of grumblings where folks aren’t sure whether the reason they’re holding Bakhmut is because it’s politically important” as opposed to tactically significant, according to Michael Kofman, an American military analyst and director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Kofman, who traveled to Bakhmut to observe the ferocious battle first-hand, said in the War on the Rocks podcast that while the battle paid dividends for the Ukrainians a few months ago, allowing it to maintain a high kill ratio, there are now diminishing returns from continuing to engage.
“Happening in the fight now is that the attrition exchange rate is favorable to Ukraine but it’s not nearly as favorable as it was before. The casualties on the Ukrainian side are rather significant and require a substantial amount of replacements on a regular basis,” he said.
The Ukrainians have acknowledged they have also been suffering significant casualties at Bakhmut, which Russia is coming ever closer to encircling. They claim, though, the Russians are losing seven soldiers for each Ukrainian life lost, while NATO military officials put the kill ratio at more like five to one. But Kofman and other military analysts are skeptical, saying both sides are now suffering roughly the same rate of casualties.
“I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it’s doing in Bakhmut,” tweeted Illia Ponomarenko, the Kyiv Independent’s defense reporter.
Shifting position
Last week, Zelenskyy received support for his decision to remain engaged at Bakhmut from retired U.S. generals David Petraeus and Mark Hertling on the grounds that the battle was causing a much higher Russian casualty rate. “I think at this moment using Bakhmut to allow the Russians to impale themselves on it is the right course of action, given the extraordinary casualties that the Russians are taking,” retired general and former CIA director Petraeus told POLITICO.
But in the last couple of weeks the situation has shifted, said Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine officer and now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the kill ratio is no longer a valid reason to remain engaged. “Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces,” he tweeted. Lee says Ukrainian casualties have risen since Russian forces, comprising Wagner mercenaries as well as crack Russian airborne troops, pushed into the north of the town at the end of February.
The Russians have been determined to record a victory at Bakhmut, which is just six miles southwest of the salt-mining town of Soledar, which was overrun two months ago after the Wagner Group sacrificed thousands of its untrained fighters there too.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has hinted several times that he sees no tactical military reason to defend Bakhmut, saying the eastern Ukrainian town was of more symbolic than operational importance, and its fall wouldn’t mean Moscow had regained the initiative in the war.
Ukrainian generals have pushed back at such remarks, saying there’s a tactical reason to defend the town. Zaluzhnyy said on his Telegram channel: “It is key in the stability of the defense of the entire front.”
Volodymyr Zelensky and Sanna Marin attend a memorial service for Dmytro Kotsiubailo, a Ukrainian serviceman killed in Bakhmut | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Midweek, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have been urging the Ukrainians since the end of January to withdraw from Bakhmut, fearing the depletion of their own troops could impact Kyiv’s planned spring offensive. Ukrainian officials say there’s no risk of an impact on the offensive as the troops scheduled to be deployed are not fighting at Bakhmut.
That’s prompted some Ukrainian troops to complain that Kyiv is sacrificing ill-trained reservists at Bakhmut, using them as expendable in much the same way the Russians have been doing with Wagner conscripts. A commander of the 46th brigade — with the call sign Kupol — told the newspaper that inexperienced draftees are being used to plug the losses. He has now been removed from his post, infuriating his soldiers, who have praised him.
Kofman worries that the Ukrainians are not playing to their military strengths at Bakhmut. Located in a punch bowl, the town is not easy to defend, he noted. “Ukraine is a dynamic military” and is good when it is able “to conduct a mobile defense.” He added: “Fixed entrenches, trying to concentrate units there, putting people one after another into positions that have been hit by artillery before doesn’t really play to a lot of Ukraine’s advantages.”
“They’ve mounted a tenacious defense. I don’t think the battle is nearly as favorable as it’s somewhat publicly portrayed but more importantly, I think they somewhat run the risk of encirclement there,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the forced transfer of children to Russia after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainians accuse Russia of attempting genocide against them and seeking to destroy their identity — partly through deporting children to Russia.
Putin is “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children)” and that of “unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” the Hague-based court said in a statement Friday.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for these crimes, the statement read.
The Russian president, the court argued, failed “to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts” and who were “under his effective authority and control.”
Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the president, was also hit by the ICC warrant for her role in the deportations.
This is the first time the ICC has issued warrants in relation to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began last February. It comes ahead of a visit to Russia next week by Chinese President Xi Jinping and will severely limit Putin’s own potential range of diplomatic visits.
Moscow has previously said it did not recognize the court’s authority.
In response, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said: “The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. No need to explain WHERE this paper should be used … ” concluding with a toilet paper emoji.
In spite of numerous reports that Russian forces had committed war crimes in Ukraine — including a recent U.N. investigation which said that Russia’s forced deportation of Ukrainian children amounted to a war crime — the Kremlin has denied it committed any crimes.
In a statement, Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, welcomed the announcement, saying the warrant sent “a clear message that giving orders to commit or tolerating serious crimes against civilians may lead to a prison cell.”
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
A provocative Vladimir Putin made a surprise weekend visit to Russian-occupied Mariupol, one of the symbols of Ukrainian resistance.
Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, is located in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast and this is the Russian president’s first trip in the region since the start of his war against Ukraine in February 2022.
Mariupol fell to Russia last May, after the Kremlin failed to seize Kyiv. The battle for Mariupol was one of the war’s longest and bloodiest, as Moscow’s troops carried out some of their most notorious strikes. The Russian assaults included an attack on a maternity ward, which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said was a war crime, and the bombing of a theater that was clearly marked as housing children.
It is the closest to the front lines Putin has been since the yearlong war began. The move is likely to be seen as particularly provoking to Ukrainians. The trip to Mariupol came after Putin travelled to Crimea on Saturday in an unannounced visit to mark the ninth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin’s visits come just after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader and top Russian official Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia.
So far during Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin has largely remained inside the Kremlin, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a number of trips to the battlefield to boost the morale of Kyiv’s troops.
Putin flew by helicopter to Mariupol, Russian new agencies reported, citing the Kremlin. Then he travelled around several parts of the city, driving a car and making stops to talk to residents.
The Kremlin said Putin also examined the coastline of Mariupol, visiting a yacht club and theater building. In the Nevsky district of Mariupol, Putin visited a family in their home. The new residential neighborhood has been built by Russian military with the first people moving in last September, according to media reports.
Residents have been “actively” returning, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, who accompanied Putin, was cited as saying by Russian agencies. “The downtown has been badly damaged,” Khusnullin was reported as saying. “We want to finish [reconstruction] of the center by the end of the year, at least the facade part. The center is very beautiful.”
There were no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the visit.
The Kremlin has not commented yet on the ICC arrest warrant. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said: “The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. No need to explain WHERE this paper should be used … ” concluding with a toilet paper emoji.
Moscow has previously said it did not recognize the court’s authority.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
