ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan explains the decision on the arrest warrant for Putin

The Chief Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said that there are sufficient grounds to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova are criminally responsible for the forced deportation of hundreds of Ukrainian children.

Source. This was reported by CNN with reference to Karim Khan's statement on Friday.

Reportedly, at the time when the Ukrainian children were taken out of their country, they were under the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Khan said in a statement.

According to the U.S. and several European governments, the Putin administration has implemented a scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, often to a network of dozens of camps where minors are politically indoctrinated.

"Many of these children, we allege, have since been placed for adoption in the Russian Federation," Khan said, adding that changes in Russian law through presidential decrees issued by Putin have made it easier for children to be adopted into Russian families.

"These actions, among other things, demonstrate an intention to permanently remove these children from their own country," Khan said.

He called for accountability and the return of the children to their families in Ukraine, adding in a statement that "we cannot allow children to be treated as if they were spoils of war."

Khan said that Ukraine is "a crime scene that encompasses a complex and wide range of possible international crimes."

The prosecutor explained that although this was the first step in prosecuting war crimes, he continues to pursue other lines of investigation.

Background. As reported, a UN commission recognized Russia's deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories as a war crime.