Ukraine's leader presses for war accountability at The Hague

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid a surprise visit to the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal and pressed for Russia's leader to be prosecuted.

Zelenskyy's visit on Thursday came less than two months after the International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants tied to Russia's war in Ukraine.

The Hague, Netherlands-based ICC charged Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, with war crimes for taking children to Russia from occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Of course, we all want to see a different Vladimir here in The Hague,” Zelenskyy said.

Pre-trial judges said in mid-March there were "reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children."

'Destroy the villainy'

Russia is not subject to the court's jurisdiction, however, and the ICC lacks the law enforcement capacity to enforce its arrest warrants. Putin and Lvova-Belova won't likely visit any of the court's 123 member nations that are obliged to arrest them.

"It is primarily the creators (aka puppet masters) and handlers of the Kyiv regime in Washington, London and NATO in general who are to be held accountable for Kyiv’s terrorist actions," Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova fired back on Thursday.

But in a speech to Dutch lawmakers, Zelenskyy said he's confident Putin will face trial once Ukraine repels Russia's expanded, illegal invasion since Feb. 24, 2022.

"Ukrainians are united by the desire to win. But it is not only our desire to win back what belongs to us," Zelenskyy said. "And we definitely don't want to grab someone else's. We want to destroy the villainy with which the terrorist state came."