Medvedev suggests Russia strike ICC with hypersonic missile

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested bombing the International Criminal Court in the Hague with a hypersonic missile launched from a Russian ship on his Telegram account on Monday.

The suggestion comes in retaliation to the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes committed by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine since February of last year.

Medvedev wrote a long message criticizing the warrant and said that "the main defect of the system of international public law is its inefficiency." 

Why does Medvedev see the ICC as inefficient?

He added that countries don't respect decisions and acts made in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council because they are unjust. 

"An equal has no power over an equal," he wrote.

According to Medvedev, a country can only be internationally judged under the condition that it is so weakened it has "lost its sovereignty and decided to recognize the [International Criminal] Court over itself or when the country has "lost the war and capitulated."

Medvedev also pointed to US activity in Afghanistan and Iraq saying that the only reason the US wasn't prosecuted for its actions in these wars was that "the court was completely overwhelmed and could not do anything."

He ended his message warning that Russia could bomb the court and saying that they should be scared.

"So citizens of the court, carefully look into the sky," he closed. 

The ICC issued its arrest warrant for Putin on Friday in a move that Moscow called meaningless. Many accusations of war crimes have been made against Russia in the last year, all of which the country has denied.

On Saturday, Putin visited Russian-occupied Mariupol which was devastated by Russia in the war. The move was seen as an act of defiance against the arrest warrant.