President of Armenia approves ratification of Rome Statute
President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturian signed the law adopted by Parliament ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Recall, the Armenian opposition boycotted the voting: in particular, the secretary of the Armenia bloc Artsvik Minasyan said that the ratification contradicts the Constitution of Armenia. At the same time, the country’s Constitutional Court stated the opposite.
The ratification of the Rome Statute of the ICC was opposed in Russia — where the decision of Armenia, against the backdrop of issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova, was called «unacceptable.»
The ICC ordered the arrest of Putin and Lvova-Belova in March 2023 on suspicion of illegal transfer of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories.
«After September 2020, when it became clear that certain systems were not working, we began to look for opportunities that would improve our security. This is what the Rome Statute has become for us. But the decision to begin the procedure for ratifying the Rome Statute in Armenia was made before the ICC decision against the Russian President,» Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said earlier.
