A girl holds a sign reading “Putin see you in The Hague” during a march against the war in Ukraine, in Cologne, Germany, Feb. 28, 2022 (AP photo by Martin Meissner).
Politico: Ukraine sees no way to negotiate peace with Putin after war crimes warrant
Kyiv sees Putin’s abduction of children as part of a genocidal attempt to wipe out its culture and identity.
KYIV — Last week’s international arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia has made it impossible for Kyiv to accept Russia’s president as a potential interlocutor for any peace deal to end the war.
The International Criminal Court issued its warrant on Friday. The crime of children being forcibly taken to Russia is especially sensitive as Ukrainian and Western lawyers identify the deportations as falling within the legal definition of genocide, as part of an attempt to wipe out Ukrainian cultural identity.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office head and representative of Ukrainian negotiations group in Istanbul, promptly tweeted that identifying Putin as “an obvious international criminal directly means there will be no negotiations with the current Russian elite.”
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WNU Editor: The Russia - Ukraine war can only end through diplomacy. But if the Russian leadership is labelled as war criminals by the West, there is no avenue for such diplomacy to take place. Bottom line. There is no off-ramp to end this war.