Russia requests clarifications from Armenia on ratification of Rome Statute

YEREVAN, September 5. /ARKA/. Russia has requested clarifications from Armenia regarding its decision to ratify the Rome Statute, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said today.

"We will decide on our further steps based on the content of Yerevan's response," Zakharova said.

On September 1, 2023 the Armenian government sent the Rome Statute to the National Assembly for ratification.

The Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Alen Simonyan explained that Armenia wants to ratify the Statute 'to bring to justice those officials who were involved in the war crimes committed against Armenia and Armenians since 2020.'

In late March this year Russia warned Armenia against ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) following the “illegal” arrest warrant issued by it for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Moscow considers absolutely unacceptable official Yerevan’s plans to join the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court against the backdrop of the recent illegal and legally void ‘warrants’ of the ICC against the Russian leadership,” an unnamed source was quoted by Tass news agency as saying..

Armenia signed the Rome Statute in 1998, but has not ratified it after the Constitutional Court in 2004 found that the treaty’s obligations contradicted several provisions of the Constitution in effect at the time.

In late 2022, the Armenian government asked the Constitutional Court to examine the constitutionality of the Rome Statute.

According to the government, the ratification of this document would allow it to initiate legal proceedings against Azerbaijan (for war crimes committed in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia) at the ICC.

On March 24, Armenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s obligations under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) comply with the Basic Law. 

On March 17 of this year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for ‘war crimes’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin  and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who according to an ICC statement ‘bear individual criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February last year.-0-