LONDON — The Worldwide Felony Courtroom accused the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, of battle crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest on Friday, a extremely symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a 12 months in the past.

The courtroom cited Mr. Putin’s accountability for the kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian youngsters, hundreds of whom have been despatched to Russia for the reason that invasion. It additionally issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for kids’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the general public face of the Kremlin-sponsored program that transfers the youngsters out of Ukraine.

There’s little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime quickly. The Worldwide Felony Courtroom can’t attempt defendants in absentia and Russia, which isn’t a celebration to the courtroom, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”

But the courtroom’s transfer carried indeniable ethical weight, placing Mr. Putin in the identical ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian chief imprisoned for abuses in the course of the Balkans battle; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World Battle II.

“There are affordable grounds to imagine that Mr. Putin bears particular person legal accountability,” mentioned the courtroom, which was created twenty years in the past to research battle crimes, genocide and crimes towards humanity.

Each Russians, the courtroom mentioned, bore “accountability for the battle crime of illegal deportation of inhabitants and that of illegal switch of inhabitants from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

As a sensible matter, the warrant may prohibit Mr. Putin’s travels, since he may face arrest in any of the 123 international locations which have signed on to the Worldwide Felony Courtroom — an inventory that features nearly all European international locations and a number of other in Africa and Latin America, however not China or the US.

Human proper activists and Ukrainian officers hailed the warrants as proof that Mr. Putin and his lieutenants may now not act with impunity in Ukraine. For Mr. Putin, who already operates with a good circle of advisers within the Kremlin, it makes the world a smaller place, at the same time as he plans to welcome President Xi Jinping of China, maybe his strongest ally, to Moscow subsequent week.

The warrants additionally shine a light-weight on one of the harrowing, poignant subplots of Russia’s brutal battle: the forcible switch of Ukrainian youngsters and youngsters to Russia or Russian-controlled elements of Ukraine. Many are orphans, however Ukrainian officers say that others had been separated from their mother and father or authorized guardians. Russia has acknowledged transferring 2,000 youngsters; Ukrainian officers say they’ve confirmed 16,000 instances.

“It will be unimaginable to hold out such a legal operation with out the order of the highest chief of the terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mentioned in a video assertion, during which he welcomed Mr. Putin’s arrest warrant as the start of “historic accountability.”

Stephen Rapp, a former ambassador at massive who headed the Workplace of World Felony Justice within the State Division, mentioned in an e-mail that “this makes Putin a pariah.”

“If he travels he dangers arrest,” he continued. “This by no means goes away.”

Furthermore, he mentioned, Russia can’t have worldwide sanctions lifted with out complying with the courtroom’s warrants. Mr. Rapp mentioned he believed Mr. Putin would finally find yourself in The Hague, the place different accused battle criminals had been tried — some, like Mr. Milosevic, below advert hoc tribunals of the I.C.C. “In any other case,” Mr. Rapp mentioned, Mr. Putin “dies with this hanging over his head.”

Nonetheless, the general public nature of the warrants, and the slender scope of the crimes, raised questions amongst authorized consultants, who famous that the courtroom had been below intense strain to behave towards Mr. Putin.

Russian troops have killed tens of hundreds of harmless civilians, and ravaged civilian infrastructure, in artillery strikes on Ukrainian cites. This week, The New York Instances reported that the courtroom supposed to open two instances tied to the Russian invasion, in accordance with officers with data of the plans; the second was anticipated to deal with Russia’s assaults on infrastructure.

“We don’t know what the total software was,” mentioned Philippe Sands, an skilled on worldwide legislation who’s the director of the Heart on Worldwide Courts and Tribunals at College Faculty London. “We don’t know whether or not the prosecutor wished an arrest warrant for different crimes.”

Concentrating on Mr. Putin is an audacious transfer by the courtroom, which may have begun with midlevel officers and labored its means as much as the president, Mr. Sands mentioned. “Little doubt there might be many questions on why this explicit crime and why the choice to make this public now,” he added.

In contrast to in American courts, the place suspects are generally indicted earlier than being arrested, the prosecutor on the Worldwide Felony Courtroom, Karim Khan, offered proof earlier than a seven-judge chamber exhibiting affordable grounds to imagine that the suspects bore accountability for battle crimes. The arrest warrants put them on discover of what they might almost certainly be charged with if tried.

If Mr. Putin and Ms. Lvova-Belova had been taken into custody and introduced earlier than the courtroom in The Hague, they might have a pretrial listening to at which prosecutors would current proof that they might contend was ample for the case to go to trial.

The catch is that if a suspect managed to evade seize, she or he would by no means get a listening to to “affirm” the fees, mentioned Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of worldwide legislation at Yale Regulation Faculty and a former prime lawyer on the State Division. In consequence, Mr. Koh mentioned, “this can be as a lot as we get” for Mr. Putin.

Nonetheless, Mr. Koh mentioned he believed the courtroom’s motion was a “web plus,” as a result of it may discourage China from giving Russia weapons and ship a deterrent message to others within the Russian paperwork about participating in battle crimes like abducting the youngsters. It may additionally ease resistance contained in the Pentagon to sharing proof with the courtroom.

Russian officers had been withering of their response to the arrest warrants. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Overseas Ministry, mentioned the announcement had “no which means for our nation, together with from a authorized standpoint.”

“Russia just isn’t cooperating with this physique,” she added, calling any efforts by the I.C.C. to make arrests “legally null and void for us.”

The restrictions of the courtroom are well-known. Though it might probably indict sitting heads of state, it has no energy to arrest them or carry them to trial, as an alternative counting on different leaders and governments to behave as its sheriffs. This has been most vividly illustrated by the case of Mr. al-Bashir, the deposed Sudanese chief, who has been not been arrested in different international locations the place he has traveled.

Though the courtroom is backed by many democratic international locations, together with shut American allies like Britain, the US has lengthy stored its distance, involved that the tribunal may sometime attempt to prosecute People.

A low level got here in 2017, when the chief prosecutor for the courtroom tried to research the torture of detainees accused of terrorism in the course of the George W. Bush administration. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the courtroom’s personnel, and the secretary of state on the time, Mike Pompeo, denounced it as corrupt.

Relations thawed in 2021, when the Biden administration revoked Mr. Trump’s sanctions, and a newly appointed prosecutor, Mr. Khan, dropped the investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Nationwide Safety Council, Adrienne Watson, mentioned the US supported efforts to carry battle criminals to justice, noting that the prosecutor for the I.C.C. was unbiased and made selections primarily based on proof.

The story of Ukraine’s kidnapped youngsters has been much less shrouded in secrecy than different abuses in the course of the battle, partly as a result of Russian officers have sought to painting it as a humanitarian effort to maintain the battle’s youngest victims.

But a New York Instances investigation printed in October, which recognized a number of Ukrainian youngsters who had been taken, described a wrenching means of coercion, deception and pressure. Upon arrival in Russia, the youngsters had been typically positioned in properties to grow to be Russian residents and subjected to re-education efforts.

On Thursday, a United Nations fee of inquiry mentioned Russia’s switch of youngsters and different civilians from Ukraine to Russia may quantity to a battle crime, observing that not one of the instances it investigated had been justified below worldwide legislation. Ukraine has reported the switch of 16,226 youngsters to Russia, however the fee mentioned it had not been capable of confirm the quantity.

Mr. Khan, the chief prosecutor, has mentioned the unlawful transfers of youngsters had been a precedence for his investigators. “Youngsters can’t be handled because the spoils of battle,” he mentioned after visiting a youngsters’s residence in southern Ukraine this month that he mentioned had been emptied on account of deportations.

In Ukraine, officers expressed satisfaction that Mr. Putin had been branded as a battle legal. Some voiced confidence that the authorized vise on the Russian chief would solely develop tighter. There are calls to arrange a particular tribunal that might attempt Mr. Putin and his lieutenants on the crime of aggression.

“That is just the start,” mentioned Mr. Zelensky’s chief of employees, Andriy Yermak.

Reporting was contributed by Charlie Savage from Washington, Marlise Simons from Morocco, Emma Bubola from Rome, Carlotta Gall from Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Marc Santora from Kyiv, Valerie Hopkins from Berlin and Anushka Patil from New York.