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Russia has hit back after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, which accuses him of war crimes for his alleged involvement in child abductions from Ukraine.

The ICC said the president is allegedly responsible for the “unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of children from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.

It also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights, on similar allegations.

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War crimes include torture, mutilation, corporal punishment, hostage taking and acts of terrorism. The category also covers violations of human dignity such as rape and forced prostitution, looting and execution without trial.

Crimes against humanity are acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, such as murder, deportation, torture and rape.

So what do we know about Ms Lvova-Belova and other fugitives who are facing ICC arrest warrants?

Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova during their meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence, outside Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
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Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova pictured meeting last month

Lvova-Belova was appointed by Putin as his children’s rights commissioner in October 2021.

British and Ukrainian officials have accused Lvova-Belova of the forcible deportation and adoption of children from Ukraine during the Russian invasion which began in February 2022.

Lvova-Belova has been sanctioned by the US, Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia.

She claims to be the “saviour” of Ukrainian children caught up in Russia’s so-called “special military operation” but her passionate rhetoric allegedly conceals a sinister plan to deport Ukrainian kids from territories occupied by Russian invading forces.

A recent US report said Russia has held at least 6,000 Ukrainian children in sites in Russian-held Crimea and Russia whose primary purpose appears to be political re-education.

Last month on television, Lvova-Belova thanked Putin for being able to “adopt” a 15-year-old boy from Mariupol, the southeastern Ukrainian city that was destroyed and occupied by Russian forces.

A column of Russian armoured vehicles seen on their way to the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali in August 2008
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A column of Russian armoured vehicles seen on their way to the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali in August 2008

Lvova-Belova was already the mother and guardian of 22 mostly adopted children, according to reports.

She is also a member of the governing body of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, the largest party in the Russian parliament.

Mikhail Mayramovich Mindzaev

The Russian allegedly committed war crimes during the August 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia that has very close ties with Moscow.

The war cost hundreds of lives on both sides and forcibly displaced tens of thousands of civilians.

Human Rights Watch found that after Georgian forces withdrew from South Ossetia on 10 August, the Russian-backed South Ossetian forces deliberately destroyed ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia that had been administered by the Georgian government.

It said the forces looted, beat, threatened, and unlawfully detained numerous ethnic Georgian civilians, and killed several, on the basis of the residents’ ethnicity and political affiliations.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mindzaev in June 2022. It said the ex-Russian police officer was the minister of internal affairs of the de facto South Ossetian administration from 2005 until 2008.

He was charged with war crimes of unlawful confinement, torture and inhuman treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, hostage taking, and unlawful transfer of civilians.

These were allegedly committed between 8 and 27 August 2008 during the conflict. He is still at large.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi

Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, arrives for the charity gala 'Cinema for Peace' in Berlin, Germany, 11 February 2008. The annual charity event takes place in the course of the 58th Berlinale. Photo by: Jens Kalaene/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is a Libyan political figure and second son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

In 2011, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Saif on two counts of crimes against humanity, which were murder and persecution, allegedly committed in Libya that year.

He was captured by a militia group in 2011 in Libya, as he tried to flee for Niger, but was released from prison in 2017 and is still at large.

In 2021, he registered to run for president, but the election authority rejected his bid.

Joseph Kony

FILE - In this July 31, 2006 file photo, Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, speaks during a meeting with a delegation of 160 officials and lawmakers from northern Uganda and representatives of non-governmental organizations in Congo near the Sudan border. The African Union said Friday, March 23, 2012 it will send 5,000 soldiers to join the hunt for war criminal Joseph Kony, a new mission that comes amid a wildly popular Internet campaign targeting the leader of the Lord's Resista

An arrest warrant was issued in July 2005 for the Ugandan rebel who was allegedly commander-in-chief of militia group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

His decades-old war kept much of north Uganda trapped in a nightmare of violence, hunger and fear of night-time raids by the LRA.

Child soldiers and their commanders, many barely in their teens, carried out attacks on unarmed villagers, allegedly under Kony’s orders.

Several attempts to capture him by UN and Ugandan forces over the years have failed and he remains on the run.

He is accused of 12 counts of crimes against humanity, which included murder, enslavement, sexual enslavement, rape, and inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering.

The ICC also accused Kony of 21 counts of war crimes, including murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, pillaging, inducing rape, and forced enlistment of children – these were allegedly committed after 1 July 2002.

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Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet – and that he and Barack Obama ‘probably’ like each other

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Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet - and that he and Barack Obama 'probably' like each other

Donald Trump says a meeting is being set up between himself and Vladimir Putin – and that he and Barack Obama “probably” like each other.

Republican US president-elect Mr Trump spoke to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday, saying Russian president Mr Putin “wants to meet, and we are setting it up”.

“He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Mr Trump said.

Ukraine war latest updates

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday there was a “mutual desire” to set up a meeting – but added no details had been confirmed yet and that there may be progress once Mr Trump is inaugurated on 20 January.

“Moscow has repeatedly declared its openness to contacts with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Mr Peskov added.

“What is required is a mutual desire and political will to conduct dialogue and resolve existing problems through dialogue. We see that Mr Trump also declares his readiness to resolve problems through dialogue. We welcome this. There are still no specifics, we proceed from the mutual readiness for the meeting.”

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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP
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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP

Trump on Obama: ‘We just got along’

Mr Trump also made some lighter remarks regarding a viral exchange between himself and former Democrat President Barack Obama at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday.

The pair sat together for the late president’s service in Washington DC on Thursday, and could be seen speaking for several minutes as the remaining mourners filed in before it began.

Mr Obama was seen nodding as his successor spoke before breaking into a grin.

Asked about the exchange, Mr Trump said: “I didn’t realise how friendly it looked.

“I said, ‘boy, they look like two people that like each other’. And we probably do.

“We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”

The amicable exchange comes after years of criticising each other in the public eye; it was Mr Trump who spread the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory about Mr Obama in 2011, falsely asserting that he was not born in the United States.

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Insults continued for years, with Mr Obama famously dedicating much of his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in 2016 to jokes at his political rival’s expense.

Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the Obamas, saying the former president was “ineffective” and “terrible” and calling former first lady Michelle Obama “nasty” as recently as October last year.

On Kamala Harris’s campaign trail last year, Mr Obama said Mr Trump was a “78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago”, while the former first lady said that “the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious.”

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‘The future is in our hands’ scientists say, as 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5C global warming threshold

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'The future is in our hands' scientists say, as 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5C global warming threshold

Last year was the warmest on record, the first to breach a symbolic threshold, and brought with it deadly impacts like flooding and drought, scientists have said.

Two new datasets found 2024 was the first calendar year when average global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – before humans started burning fossil fuels at scale.

The record heat has not only has real-world implications, as it contributed to deadly flooding in Spain and vicious drought in places like Zambia in southern Africa.

It is also highly symbolic.

Countries agreed in the landmark Paris Agreement to limit warming ideally to 1.5C, because after that the impacts would be much more dangerous.

The news arrives as California battles “hell on earth” wildfires, suspected to have been exacerbated by climate change.

And it comes as experts warn support for the Paris goals is “more fragile than ever” – with Donald Trump and the Argentinian president poised to row back on climate action.

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What caused 2024 record heat – and is it here to stay?

Friends of the Earth called today’s findings from both the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change service and the Met Office “deeply disturbing”.

The “primary driver” of heat in the last two years was climate change from human activity, but the temporary El Nino weather phenomenon also contributed, they said.

The breach in 2024 does not mean the world has forever passed 1.5C of warming – as that would only be declared after several years of doing so, and warming may slightly ease this year as El Nino has faded.

But the world is “teetering on the edge” of doing so, Copernicus said.

Prof Piers Forster, chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, called it a “foretaste of life at 1.5C”.

Dr Gabriel Pollen, Zambia’s national coordinator for disasters, said “no area of life and the economy is untouched” by the country’s worst drought in more than 100 years.

Six million people face starvation, critical hydropower has plummeted, blackouts are frequent, industry is “decimated”, and growth has halved, he said.

Paris goal ‘not obsolete’

Scientists were at pains to point out it is not too late to curb worse climate change, urging leaders to maintain and step up climate action.

Professor Forster said temporarily breaching 1.5C “does not mean the goal is obsolete”, but that we should “double down” on slashing greenhouse gas emissions and on adapting to a hotter world.

The Met Office said “every fraction of a degree” still makes a difference to the severity of extreme weather.

Firefighters battle the Palisades fire as it burns during a windstorm on the west side of Los Angeles.
Pic: Reuters
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The California fires were whipped up by strong, dry winds and likely worsened by climate change. Pic: Reuters

Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo added: “The future is in our hands: swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate”.

Climate action is ‘economic opportunity’

Copernicus found that global temperatures in 2024 averaged 15.10°C, the hottest in records going back to 1850, making it 1.60°C above the pre-industrial level during 1850-1900.

The Met Office’s data found 2024 was 1.53C above pre-industrial levels.

The figures are global averages, which smooth out extremes from around the world into one number. That is why it still might have felt cold in some parts of the world last year.

Greenpeace campaigner Philip Evans said as “the world’s most powerful climate denier” Donald Trump returns to the White House, others must “take up the mantle of global climate leadership”.

The UK’s climate minister Kerry McCarthy said the UK has been working with other countries to cut global emissions, as well as greening the economy at home.

“Not only is this crucial for our planet, it is the economic opportunity of the 21st century… tackling the climate crisis while creating new jobs, delivering energy security and attracting new investment into the UK.”

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Picture shows baby girl moments after birth on packed migrant dinghy heading for Canary Islands

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Picture shows baby girl moments after birth on packed migrant dinghy heading for Canary Islands

Photographs have captured the moments after a baby girl was born on a packed migrant dinghy heading for the Canary Islands.

The small boat was carrying 60 people and had embarked from Tan-Tan – a Moroccan province 135 nautical miles (250km) away.

One image shows the baby lying on her mother’s lap as other passengers help the pair.

The boat’s passengers – a total of 60 people, including 14 women and four children – were rescued by a Spanish coastguard ship.

Coastguard captain Domingo Trujillo said: “The baby was crying, which indicated to us that it was alive and there were no problems, and we asked the woman’s permission to undress her and clean her.

“The umbilical cord had already been cut by one of her fellow passengers. The only thing we did was to check the child, give her to her mother and wrap them up for the trip.”

Pic: Salvmento Maritimo/Reuters

Spanish coast guards wearing white suits work on a rescue operation as they tow a rubber boat carrying migrants, including a newborn baby, off the island off the Canary Island of Lanzarote, in Spain, in this handout picture obtained on January 8, 2025. SALVAMENTO MARITIMO/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT
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Coastguards rescued all 60 people aboard the boat. Pic: Salvmento Maritimo/Reuters


The mother and baby were taken for medical checks and treated with antibiotics, medical authorities said.

Dr Maria Sabalich, an emergency coordinator of the Molina Orosa University Hospital in Lanzarote, said: “They are still in the hospital, but they are doing well.”

When they are discharged from hospital, the pair will be moved to a humanitarian centre for migrants, a government official said.

They will then most likely be relocated to a reception centre for mothers and children on another of the Canary Islands, they added.

Thousands of migrants board boats attempting to make the perilous journey from the African coast to the Spanish Canaries each year.

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In 2024, a total of 9,757 people died on the route, according to Spanish migration charity Walking Borders.

Mr Trujillo said: “Almost every night we leave at dawn and arrive back late.

“This case is very positive, because it was with a newborn, but in all the services we do, even if we are tired, we know we are helping people in distress.”

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