France hasn’t said if it will arrest Putin on an ICC order

France is under a lot of pressure because of how it feels about an international arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister. On Thursday, France wouldn’t say if it would be willing to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin on the same grounds.

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest orders for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, his former defense chief, and a military leader of Hamas. They are all accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza battle.

All EU member states, including France, have signed the ICC’s founding treaty. However, France said on Wednesday that it thought Netanyahu was immune to ICC acts because Israel had not signed the court’s rules.

Putin is also wanted by the ICC because he is accused of war crimes for illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, even though Russia is not a party to the ICC’s founding treaty.

Christophe Lemoine, a spokeswoman for the French foreign ministry, said on Thursday that France’s formal position on the arrest warrants for Putin and Netanyahu was pretty much the same.

“We’ve probably been less precise when commenting on Putin’s case compared to the present one but, in any case, our position is the same,” Lemoine said.

It was asked if this meant that France would not arrest Putin if he came to France. He replied, “There is no impunity for Vladimir Putin or anyone else who has broken the law.” They should be held accountable for what they did, and we’ve always said we’ll follow all parts of international law.

But he said that the subject of immunity, which he said was written into the ICC’s rules, was “complex” and that different states had different opinions on it.