Cav's Place

I definitely didn’t expect The International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin before, or without, Russia’s defeat, so this was quite a nice surprise despite not really meaning much when Russia doesn’t recognize the ICC and Putin isn’t likely to travel to any of the states that signed the Rome Statute… With the possible exception of Tajikistan, but even that was quite unlikely in the foreseeable future. Plus that arresting heads of state is a complicated matter and even countries that should be required to enforce such a warrant may find ways to avoid doing so if they wish it.
Then again, maybe the knowledge that it’s quite meaningless in practical terms is just why the warrant was issued. After all, the other options would be either that international institutions finally grew some balls or that they know something about imminent, very positive developments that the rest of the world is yet to learn, and while I’d like to be proven wrong by another pleasant surprise of a far greater magnitude, both of these scenarios seem highly unlikely. So I’ll just take it for what it is at the moment, a largely symbolic gesture, but nevertheless a slight improvement.