FILE – This mix of footage displays Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, in Moscow on Might 9, 2025, and President Donald Trump in Washington on Aug. 1. The 2 are in talks to fulfill to speak about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (AP Picture/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, Mark Schiefelbein, Document)
Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool. Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP
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Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool. Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP
President Trump mentioned his assembly with Russian President Vladimir Putin to speak about an finish to the conflict in Ukraine is about to occur “very in a while” at a date and placement that Trump mentioned he would announce “a bit bit later” on Friday.
When — and, maximum severely, the place — those talks may occur remains to be unclear. However discovering impartial territory for those negotiations is also tough as Putin faces the specter of arrest from the World Felony Courtroom (ICC).
In 2023, the ICC within the Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin on conflict crime fees. This now limits the choices for the place Trump and Putin can meet because the Russian president faces imaginable arrest in any of the greater than 120 ICC member nations.
A common view of the outside of the World Felony Courtroom in The Hague, Netherlands, March 12, 2025.
Omar Havana/AP/AP
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Omar Havana/AP/AP
What’s the ICC and why can it factor arrest warrants?
According to the will for an everlasting world courtroom addressing crimes dedicated all the way through conflict, the World Felony Courtroom (ICC), which is primarily based in The Hague, Netherlands, formally started running in July 2002.
Since 1999, 125 nations have signed onto the Rome Statute, setting up the world courtroom. Neither the U.S. or Russia are member states. Ukraine changed into a member in 2024.
The ICC has authority to pursue legal fees, however simplest at the maximum severe crimes: genocide, crimes in opposition to humanity, conflict crimes and the crime of aggression.
The courtroom does not have its personal police power or enforcement frame, so it will depend on nations’ cooperation to make arrests, switch arrested folks to ICC detention in The Hague and to put in force sentences.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin two years in the past over alleged conflict crimes tied to allegations Russia has forcibly kidnapped Ukrainian youngsters to Russia. The ICC additionally issued a warrant on the time for Putin’s commissioner for youngsters’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
Russian officers have not denied the arriving of Ukrainian youngsters within the nation, however have characterised their arrival as a part of a humanitarian program for deserted, war-traumatized orphans.
Putin is not the one sitting head of state to stand such severe fees from the ICC. Ultimate November, the world courtroom issued arrest warrants for Israeli High Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity within the Gaza Strip. The courtroom additionally issued warrants for Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former protection minister, Muhammad Deif, Hamas’ army leader whom Israel says it killed in August, in addition to different Hamas officers.
Israel contested the allegations in opposition to Netanyahu and Gallant.
‘Russians do not care concerning the ICC’
Critics and executive leaders have time and again wondered the facility and authority of the ICC.
“Russians do not care concerning the ICC,” mentioned Nina Khrushcheva, a global affairs professor for The New Faculty in New York, particularly as a result of the belief that the U.S. has been hypocritical in terms of the courtroom.
When the ICC filed arrest warrants in opposition to Netanyahu, then-President Joe Biden launched a observation that mentioned, “The ICC issuance of arrest warrants in opposition to Israeli leaders is outrageous. Let me be transparent as soon as once more: regardless of the ICC would possibly indicate, there is not any equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will be able to at all times stand with Israel in opposition to threats to its safety.”
But if the ICC issued a warrant in opposition to Putin, the reaction from the U.S. was once extra supportive of the world frame. On the time, White Space Nationwide Safety Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson informed NPR, “There is not any doubt that Russia is committing conflict crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, and now we have been transparent that the ones accountable should be held responsible. The ICC prosecutor is an unbiased actor and makes his personal prosecutorial selections in accordance with the proof prior to him. We give a boost to responsibility for perpetrators of conflict crimes.”
Khrushcheva mentioned, “So for Putin, it is but some other affirmation for him that the West is reasonably hypocritical, and so he does not be aware of it.”
Again in September, Putin traveled to Mongolia, an ICC member since 2002. The go back and forth went easily, and Putin was once by no means taken into custody.
The view of the courtroom is that, as a member state, Mongolia had a duty to honor the ICC’s arrest warrant, consistent with David Bosco, professor at Indiana College, who spoke to NPR’s All Issues Thought to be ultimate yr.
However, Bosco mentioned, “Mongolia may be positioned proper between Russia and China — two nations that it has huge financial linkages with. And neither of the ones nations is a member of the ICC. Neither of them are pleasant to the ICC. And Mongolia obviously made up our minds that its financial and diplomatic pursuits outweighed its prison tasks as a courtroom member.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s particular envoy Steve Witkoff, proper, shake palms all the way through their assembly on the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025.
Gavriil Grigorov/AP/Pool Sputnik Kremlin
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Gavriil Grigorov/AP/Pool Sputnik Kremlin
What are the leaders’ choices?
Whilst mavens and analysts have lengthy mentioned the possibility of an arrest of Putin is terribly narrow, it is not going that the Russian chief would take the risk and grasp any such important assembly on unfriendly flooring, Khrushcheva mentioned.
So this nonetheless most probably regulations out lots of the 125 nations indexed as ICC individuals. This leaves technically about 70 countries nonetheless to be had, however fewer nonetheless are pleasant to each Russia and the U.S.
Khrushcheva says the Center East appears to be like to be probably the most promising for either side to fulfill, given each Russia and the U.S. have excellent members of the family with a number of nations there.
“Both the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia … Turkey are all doable choices,” she mentioned.
That is made even much more likely because of the truth prior talks between Russia and Ukraine had been up to now held in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Many countries within the Center East have “raised their standing relatively somewhat,” as a result of they have got held those impartial grounds for negotiation, Khrushcheva mentioned.
And the Center East has performed an increasingly more giant function in web hosting high-stakes world negotiations. The small, rich Arab Gulf nation of Qatar, additionally a U.S. best friend, served as the house for subtle negotiations between Israel and Hamas, for the reason that conflict in Gaza started in October 2023. Egypt additionally performed a the most important function in mediating that battle.
