Armenia Ratifies Membership In International Criminal Court
For Moscow, this is another rift in relations between Russia and Armenia
The Armenian Parliament ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) with 60 votes in favor and 22 against. The ratification came just days after Azerbaijan’s lightning-fast military victory that ended Armenian separatism in Nagorno-Karabakh. Yerevan accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to prevent Azerbaijan from invading separatist Armenian territory.
The ratification of Armenia’s accession to the ICC caused a very negative reaction from Moscow, Yerevan’s traditional ally. For the Kremlin, the vote in Armenia’s parliament represents an “extremely hostile” gesture towards Russia that will certainly increase tensions between the two countries. Last spring, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and Russian minors’ rights official Maria Lvova-Belova, accused by the ICC, at Ukraine’s request, of “illegally transferring hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia.”
The head of the Armenian parliamentary commission on international justice, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, rejected the Kremlin’s accusations, since joining the ICC “will primarily create additional guarantees for Armenia against Azerbaijan.”
Meanwhile, the number of Armenians, who left the territory of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh after the attack by Azerbaijan, exceeded 100 thousand people. Thus, almost all ethnic Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh left this separatist enclave on the territory of Azerbaijan, where about 120 thousand residents were registered before the Azerbaijani military operation.