Did Vladimir Putin Once Praise Hague Court That Now Seeks to Arrest Him?

The International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for the Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to send shockwaves around the world, with multiple signatory nations signaling the possibility of his detainment should he travel to their jurisdiction.

The court, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, alleged on March 16 that Putin had committed war crimes in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, citing the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children in its arrest warrant.

The decision drew a major backlash from Putin's allies at home and abroad, with China insisting that Putin has "jurisdictional immunity" and Russian state TV hosts vowing to strike any nation that tries to arrest the president—even threatening nuclear escalation.

Russia has also insisted that the court has no jurisdiction on its territory because Moscow, along with Washington and a number of other nations, is not a signatory to the Rome statute.

In the midst of this debate, an old video has re-emerged on social media, purporting to show a fragment of Putin's address to the international court at the Hague in 2005, with multiple users highlighting the apparent hypocrisy of the Russian leader.

Newsweek Misinformation Watch has established that the clip is indeed real, showing part of the speech Putin gave during an official state visit to the Hague in November 2005, as mentioned in Russian and international media reports and official Kremlin records from that year.

However, while some of those sharing the clip addressed the distinction between various international judicial bodies, others failed to do so.

"Listen to what Putin says about the ICC back in 2005," one Twitter user wrote.

"In 2005, Putin highly praised the court in The Hague and called it very important. And in 2023, this court convicted Putin of crimes worse than Hitler did..." wrote another user.

"2005. Putin speaking in the Hague: 'And in the end, your work contributes to international justice' Can't wait to see him in the Hague again, but in another role," wrote Anton Geraschenko, a Ukrainian political commentator and advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

"Putin's speech at the ICC in The Hague on November 2, 2005," a Reddit post stated on March 21, 2023.

As others including the BBC Monitoring correspondent Francis Scarr made clear, the speech was taking place at the headquarters of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), not the International Criminal Court (ICC), the body that issued Putin's arrest warrant.

While the two international bodies are both located in the Hague and act across multiple jurisdictions, they are distinct in that the ICJ is a civil court that hears disputes between countries, while the ICC is a criminal court that prosecutes individuals.

In his Russian-language speech, Putin references the "International court," which some misinterpreted to mean the ICC; but "Mezhdunarodnyi sud" is the standard Russian-language denomination of the ICJ, which is also known unofficially as the "World Court."

By contrast, the ICC is specifically called "Mezhdunarodnyi ugolovnyi sud," or the "MUS."

During his address, Putin spoke about the court's "important role" in maintaining international order and state borders that were agreed in 1946 (by contrast, the ICC was founded decades later, in 2002).

"The International Court [of Justice] makes a huge contribution to the prevention of international conflicts and the peaceful resolution of disputes," Putin said at the time.

"This became possible thanks to the independence of the court, its special status and the unique composition of its judges.

"Russia stands for strengthening the role of the International Court of Justice. And actively supported the inclusion of provisions in the final document of the 2005 Summit reaffirming the obligations of Member States to resolve their disputes by peaceful means, including through the International Court of Justice."

Though the compounding of two international courts in the social media posts is somewhat misleading, the broader allegations of hypocrisy arguably hold some weight, as Russia has since also flouted the very conventions and laws that Putin praised earlier.

On 16 March 2022, weeks after Putin launched what he called a "special military operation" in Ukraine, the case was brought to—and was fast-tracked by—the ICJ.

In bringing the case, Ukraine argued that Russia had wrongfully claimed a genocide was taking place in Ukraine to justify its invasion.

"An important implication of the ICJ ruling is that there is 'no rule in international law automatically giving one state a right to invade another state to stop a genocide'. Condoning such justification for war would pose a terrible danger," the ICJ stated in its preliminary decision in Ukraine v Russia (2022).

However, Russia outright rejected the court's jurisdiction and ignored its calls on Moscow to suspend its military operations immediately.

Russia rescinded its Rome statute signature back in 2016 after the ICC began investigating potential war crimes committed during its invasion of South Ossetia in 2008.

It also only partially recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICJ, which operates under a U.N. mandate but does not automatically have jurisdiction over every state and every issue.

Instead, the prospects of enforcement rest largely upon whether the parties involved have given consent through general declarations, which Russia has not done—despite the desire to "strengthen" the court's role expressed by Putin in 2005.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry's press office via email for comment.