Russian Security Council Vice President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday accused the United States of bribing the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in a coordinated attack by Moscow against the international organization. court, reports EFE, the answer Agerpres.

“As far as I remember, this year’s budget of the special court increased by 24 million euros. This can be interpreted as you like, but in fact it is like bribing the American authorities,” Medvedev said during a speech at the International Legal Forum in St. Petersburg.

The former president of Russia, a lawyer by education, noted that the “bribe” was aimed at promoting “anti-Russian causes related to the conflict in Ukraine.”

The arrest warrant is “of course demonstrative and absurd, even painful. But, unfortunately, it has certain consequences,” he said.

Medvedev said that the international legal system began to fall apart after the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in 1993.

“It was from that period that faith in international justice was seriously undermined and began to disappear,” he said.

The Russian official stated that international institutions have been replaced by bodies that correspond to the will of a number of countries, alluding to the USA, therefore he emphasized that it makes no sense for Russia to remain a member of such organizations. Russia is not a member of the ISS.

“If the international conventions are not applied, and the decisions of the tribunals recognized by the countries are not followed, then the artillery comes into action and the hypersonic missiles fly,” he added.

According to Medvedev, what will be the consequences of an arrest warrant issued in Putin’s name

“What is a warrant for the arrest of a foreign leader? This is a casus belli, which can be followed by war if this happens,” said the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, quoted by the Kremlin’s Russian publication “Moscow Komsomolets”.

He noted that this decision was made by some “difficult to understand people” who act under the “dictation of the United States”.

“They must understand their responsibility to the entire world community for such decisions,” said Medvedev, who positioned himself as more of a liberal politician during his tenure as president between 2008 and 2012, compared to Vladimir Putin.

In the same vein, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday accused the ICC of being an “obedient tool” in the hands of Anglo-Saxon countries and that it has never contributed to the resolution of conflicts, but rather to their aggravation.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner Maria Oleksiivna Lvova-Belova on suspicion of illegal deportation of children and illegal transfer of people from the occupied territory of Ukraine to Russia.

For this reason, Putin can no longer travel abroad freely, as 123 countries have signed the Rome Statute and another 30 have signed it but not ratified it.

Read also:

• Will Putin end up in handcuffs? What does the decision of the International Criminal Court mean – explanation of a lawyer

• What does the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan say about the case in which Putin is accused of war crimes