Vladimir Putin can safely head to Hungary, South Africa’s a maybe, but much of the rest of the world may be out: An arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court is threatening to not just shrink the Russian leader’s world, but also divide everyone else’s, undermining efforts to isolate the Kremlin over its actions in Ukraine.
This week, two of the countries who remain relatively friendly with the Kremlin were the first to signal a split over a crucial question facing countries around the globe: Would you arrest Putin if he set foot on your soil?
On the day that Ukraine signed an agreement to establish an ICC office in the country, allowing the international body to more closely investigate allegations of war crimes that Russia has consistently denied, the two countries — both members of the court — indicated they may not comply with the arrest warrant.
Though both Hungary and South Africa are signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the court in 1998, neither country could commit in recent days to executing the arrest warrant if Putin crossed their borders. Their public reticence comes after Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged all members of the court to fulfill their obligations — and after Moscow warned that doing so would amount to a declaration of war.
Gergely Gulyás, who serves as Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, claimed that Budapest had not worked the international court into its legal system. While Hungary “had not formed a stance” on the arrest warrant, he believed it moved “things toward further escalation and not toward peace.”
“We can refer to the Hungarian law and, based on that, we cannot arrest the Russian president,” he said, according to Reuters, “as the ICC’s statute has not been promulgated in Hungary.”
South Africa, meanwhile, said it was aware of its legal obligation to the ICC, but its leaders said it still planned to invite Putin to Johannesburg for an August summit…
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