When the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor obtained arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, in March 2023, he must have known that the Court was in for a bumpy ride.
Going straight to the top of the State that holds the world’s largest nuclear arsenal was an audacious move, and in one sense doomed to fail. Even the Court’s most ardent supporters acknowledged that neither the Court nor its backers had the muscle to bring Putin to The Hague for a war crimes trial. But some argued the warrants should be viewed instead as serving broader ends, many only obliquely related to the goal of putting him in the dock. Perhaps at the top was the symbolism of indicting one of the world’s most powerful people and memorializing his unlawful acts for the ages. At a more practical level, proponents hoped that the charges might deter mid- and low-level Russian forces from further atrocities, isolate Putin internationally, encourage a more critical narrative about him domestically, and perhaps even encourage Russians to begin thinking about a post-Putin political horizon. The sum total of these costs to Putin might even, it was hoped, help end the war by softening him up for a settlement more favorable to Ukraine.
But there were potential downsides too, including the possibility the Court would emerge weaker for having swung at Mr. Putin and missed, or the risk that issuing warrants could backfire by provoking Putin to escalate the conflict, impeding peacemaking efforts, or undermining relations between Western champions of the Court and certain countries of the Global South that have sought to avoid friction with Moscow.
It’s probably too early to calculate benefits and costs decisively, but three years in we can at least hazard an interim assessment. The following five queries, looking at what we know of the symbolic and practical implications of the warrants for the ongoing war, draw on the insights of colleagues from the International Crisis Group, where we have been tracking global perspectives on the conflict since shortly after Russia’s all-out invasion in 2022.
Have the Warrants Isolated Putin Internationally?
The warrants have restricted Putin’s travel, but they have not isolated him diplomatically.
The travel restrictions that come with an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant have created costs for Putin. Upon issue, the warrants triggered a requirement for all parties to the ICC Rome Statute to arrest Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he ventures onto their territory. August 2023 brought an early test of the warrants’ impact when South Africa hosted a summit for the BRICS (an eleven-member intergovernmental bloc that includes Russia) in Johannesburg. After much speculation, Pretoria quietly asked Moscow to send someone in Putin’s stead, and the Russians complied. Putin also had his wings clipped in Brazil, where President Lula initially suggested that he could travel to Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, but subsequently (and publicly) changed his mind. When Putin travels, he likely steers clear of the airspace of ICC States parties that he thinks might try to apprehend him.
These restrictions are not the same as a comprehensive travel ban, however. Major Russian trading partners like China, India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not ICC State parties, nor are arms suppliers North Korea and Iran or former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia – all places Putin can visit without fear of arrest. The United States is famously not an ICC party either, and the White House showed no qualms about extending a red carpet welcome to Putin when he visited Anchorage for a presidential summit in August 2025. (More recently President Trump invited Putin to join the incipient “Board of Peace” that Trump will chair.)
Nor have all ICC States parties been guided by their Rome Statute obligations in considering visits by President Putin. Mongolia hosted him in September 2024. Hungary offered to convene peace talks that would include Putin in Budapest, an invitation made after Hungary announced its repudiation of the Rome Statute in April 2025, but well before the repudiation takes effect in April 2026.
As for hopes the warrants would stigmatize Putin and weaken him globally, these have largely fallen flat. Outside the ICC’s core supporters in Europe and some Asian countries, much of the world remains reluctant to shun Moscow, notwithstanding the warrants. For many States from the Global South, whatever sympathies they have for Ukraine do not translate into a willingness to break with, much less support coercive measures against, the Kremlin. Some African States, still grateful to the Soviet Union for supporting Cold War-era liberation movements, have transferred that gratitude to present-day Russia, and some look to Russia as a security provider. Leaders have focused on their own countries’ political and economic interests, which they feel would be ill-served by antagonizing Russia. Some are willing to support periodic United Nations General Assembly resolutions that criticize Russian aggression and call for accountability, but not with reference to the ICC. African States have declined to join sanctions regimes linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Western States have largely stopped pushing them.
Finally, even the U.N. Secretariat has occasionally flinched at giving Russia the full cold shoulder. Notwithstanding a formal 2013 policy that forbids contacts between U.N. officials and individuals for whom ICC warrants have been issued “as a general rule,” the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict met with Lvova-Belova in 2023, and the Secretary-General himself met with Putin at a BRICS summit in 2024. Regardless of whether such contacts were merited (a topic discussed here and here), they illustrate the challenges of implementing an isolation strategy against a major power.
In sum, then, the arrest warrants have made it more difficult for Putin to travel – which is a cost and a nuisance for Moscow – but not in a way that adds up to his or Russia’s diplomatic isolation, much less helps to shorten the war.
Have the Warrants Deterred Atrocities?
Some evidence suggests that the ICC warrants have provided a measure of deterrence concerning child abductions. Since 2014, Russia has removed thousands of children from occupied Ukrainian territory to homes and facilities in Russia. Ukraine places the number at nearly 20,000, though Moscow claims that a list it solicited from Kyiv identified “only” 339 child abductees. It also consistently denies that it has kidnapped children, insisting that it is merely relocating them from war zones to areas where they would be out of harm’s way. But these arguments fly in the face of findings by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has documented a network of 210 facilities across Russia where abductees are housed, indoctrinated, and receive military training.
Against this backdrop, some reporting suggests that the ICC warrants have positively influenced Russian behavior. Noting that 1,345 Ukrainian children had been repatriated as of June 1, 2025, Deutsche Welle explained that:
Although Russian authorities do not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and call the deportation allegations trumped-up, they nonetheless responded to the orders issued to Putin and Lvova-Belova. In 2023, Russia ceased the mass transfer of Ukrainian children into foster care, at least publicly. Meanwhile, the Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner has increasingly reported facilitating the return of Ukrainian children home.
There are a number of caveats worth noting, however. First, some commentators suggest that Russia may simply be making greater efforts to conceal its abductions in response to international pressure. Second, some also suggest that casting Russian leadership as war criminals may sometimes make it more difficult for Kyiv and its supporters to engage in the difficult diplomacy required to bring the kids home. Third, whatever useful chill the ICC warrants might have created with respect to child abductions, they have not deterred Russian leaders from continuing to order other actions that appear to cross legal lines — for example, a U.N. Commission of Inquiry concluded in October 2025, two-and-a-half years after the warrants, that Russian attacks intended to drive civilians out of front line areas constitute crimes against humanity and that the forcible deportation of civilians from occupied territory constitute war crimes.
Still, the bottom line appears to be that the ICC warrants – coupled with a broad campaign that has garnered support from religious communities and prominent figures (including first lady Melania Trump) – have had some positive impact concerning child abductions.
Have the Warrants Weakened Putin Politically in Russia or Diminished His Resolve to Win the War in Ukraine?
No. Notwithstanding the Wagner Group uprising in June 2023, Putin’s grip on the Russian state appears to be as strong as ever and he shows no signs of retreating from the war aims he has pursued since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Right now he appears to believe he is headed in the right direction, as Russian troops make meaningful — albeit painful — progress in eastern Ukraine. To the extent Putin were to see a reversal of fortune, it will likely be because he is thwarted by some combination of Ukrainian resolve, clever maneuvering by Kyiv’s allies in Washington, and European statecraft. The warrants are unlikely to be an important, much less decisive, factor.
If anything, reference to the ICC warrants in Russia’s internal discourse tends to come in a way that plays to Putin’s advantages. Russian commentators point to them in accusing the Court’s Western backers of double standards – an accusation bolstered by the furor around the Court’s subsequent Israeli indictments (see below).
Have the Warrants Contributed to an Escalation in the Conflict or Impeded Settlement Negotiations?
Notwithstanding concerns about the escalatory risks that might be associated with the warrants (including some discussed in contributions to this Symposium) there does not appear to be hard evidence that the warrants have led Russia to escalate, or impeded efforts to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. The most worrying scenario – that the warrants would heighten Putin’s sense of existential threat and propel him toward extreme measures – has not materialized in any observable way. Although the risk of escalation must be carefully managed as long as the war continues, it does not appear that Russia views the warrants as a threat to Putin’s power or the State’s ability to defend itself. These are the triggers that nuclear experts tend to focus on as they have long been linked in Russian nuclear doctrine to scenarios for nuclear use. Should an ICC State party apprehend Putin or any Russian official during a foreign visit in implementation of the warrants, that State would surely come under enormous Russian pressure, but Moscow seems to be working hard to avoid that scenario.
In terms of impeding peace efforts, there is little concrete evidence of this either, though it may be too soon to tell. An early draft of the peace plan developed by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner included broad language that would have effectively amnestied all officials on both sides of the conflict for actions taken during the war. At least some commentators saw this provision as problematic. The origins of that language are not clear, however (some sources suggest that Ukrainian officials concerned about corruption probes added it), and discussions of a potential peace deal have in any case focused on other matters including territorial concessions by Ukraine and post-conflict security guarantees. Whether Putin might press for an amnesty in an end-game negotiation, and how the parties would propose to make that binding on the ICC, remain questions for the future.
What is the Symbolic Importance of the Warrants?
It depends who you ask. Ukrainians and some of their backers appear to see the Court’s warrants as important recognition of their struggle against an immoral and unlawful attack on their sovereignty and human rights. From this perspective, the warrants may not offer specific justice for the victims, but at least take a step in that direction, and also add to the historical record of the injustices that Ukrainians have suffered in this war. Doing so affords a measure of dignity and support to Ukrainians in the midst of a brutal conflict, but any connection to shortening or ending the war would be highly attenuated.
Meantime, in the Global South, many see the warrants as evidence that the ICC’s Western backers throw their weight behind the Court only when geopolitically convenient. Consider that, after the Russian warrants became public in 2023, the Court received robust support not only from traditional European proponents but also – in unprecedented ways – from the United States. Senator Lindsey Graham, normally a detractor, gave his support to the Court’s efforts. And the Biden administration reversed a longstanding policy of non-support for ICC actions against States (like Russia) that have not joined the Rome Statute so that it could help the prosecution.
Yet, this surge of comity evaporated in 2024 when the prosecutor announced he was seeking warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges related to the conflict in Gaza. U.S. politicians on both sides of the political map criticized the Court and called for sanctions. Once in office, the Trump administration upped the ante by slapping several waves of sanctions on judges and prosecutors. It has since threatened even harsher measures unless the Court rescinds charges against Israeli officials and formally ends an investigation into U.S. actions in Afghanistan – and amends the Rome Statute to immunize President Trump. The Court’s staunchest European backers, up to their ears in sensitive negotiations with the White House about Greenland, trade, Ukraine and European security, have failed to apply meaningful counter-pressure on the United States. Some States have made clear that they are not with the Court when it comes to the Israeli warrants: German leadership has suggested that Netanyahu should be able to visit Germany without fear of arrest, warrants or no.
This spectacle, reeking of selective justice and double standards, diminishes the Court’s stature among at least some Global South countries. As one colleague summed up the situation, “in Africa few take the ICC seriously these days. The U.S. sanctions and the muted European response have dealt the Court’s credibility a considerable blow.” The problem may be exacerbated by the half-in-half-out approach to the ICC every non-Trump administration since George W. Bush’s second term has taken, in which the U.S. supports the Court when it agrees with what it is doing, and assails it when it doesn’t. The U.S. may believe that its status as a non-State party gives it license to put its support on an on-off switch, but to many others it looks like Washington treating the Court as an instrument of U.S. policy, rather than as an institution for advancing the international rule of law.
Summing Up
The fairest assessment of how and whether the ICC’s warrants shaped the conflict in Ukraine thus far is that early positive and negative scenarios about the Russia warrants included some hyperbole in both directions. Although the warrants have cramped Putin’s mobility, they have not isolated him, weakened him politically, softened his battlefield resolve or deterred Russian attacks on civilians. But neither have they driven escalation, seemed to present an insurmountable obstacle to peace, or become a major bone of contention between Western and Global South countries. This assessment suggests that if and when the Court and its backers find themselves again facing choices similar to those they confronted in early 2023, they should carefully interrogate claims that seem either highly aspirational or catastrophic. They may also want to consider that narrowly framed goals relating to the conduct of armed conflict appear to have had greater success in the present context.
