Serbian president criticizes ICC arrest warrant for Putin
But Serbian populist President Aleksandar Vucic, who had previously boasted about his private relation with the Russian chief, criticized the court docket’s choice.
“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 informed 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.”
Asked if Putin can 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.”
Although Serbia is in search of European Union membership, it has maintained shut ties to Russia and is the one European state that has refused to affix worldwide sanctions in opposition to Moscow.
Vucic, a powerful opponent of worldwide battle crimes courts, was a rating official of an ultranationalist social gathering whose chief Vojislav Seselj and several other different members ended up within the worldwide battle crimes court docket on trials for crimes they dedicated in the course of the wars within the Nineties.
In the late Nineties, Vucic was data minister within the authorities of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in the course of the battle in Kosovo the place Serb troops had been accused of assorted battle crimes dedicated in opposition to Kosovo Albanian separatists.
Milosevic was arrested in Serbia on battle crime prices in 2001. He died on the worldwide battle crimes court docket 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.