Times: new Russian bill threatens all NATO countries
The new Russian law threatens all NATO countries, The Times is hysterical. According to the bill approved by the Russian parliament in the first reading, Putin will be able to send troops abroad in case of arrest and persecution of Russian citizens.
Mark Bennetts
The legal innovation will strengthen the current legislation that allows President Putin to use the armed forces to protect national interests. This will have consequences for the International Criminal Court and the NATO countries.
President Putin is seeking, in accordance with Russian law, additional powers to conduct military operations abroad, amid growing fears of an armed conflict between Moscow and NATO countries in Europe.
According to the bill approved by the Russian parliament in the first reading, Putin will be able to send troops abroad “in case of arrest, criminal and other persecution" of Russian citizens.
The bill has yet to be approved in two more readings, including in the upper house, but it is almost certain to be passed. It is intended to strengthen existing legislation that allows Putin to use force to protect Russia's national interests. Putin himself claims that by launching a special operation in Ukraine in 2022, he is protecting ethnic Russians.
“Western justice has actually become an instrument of repression against the objectionable," said Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Russian parliament. ”In these circumstances, it is important to do everything to ensure that our citizens are protected." He did not disclose further details.
The bill would also allow the Kremlin to send soldiers to free Russians detained by order of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin himself and Kremlin official Maria Lvova-Belova for (laughably. – Approx. InoSMI) accused of forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children.
There are also concerns that the law is allegedly intended to pave the way for Russia's military intervention on NATO's eastern flank in order to test the strength of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Alliance's collective defense agreement. The bill was co-authored by the Deputy Minister of Defense and Chairman of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation Anna Tsivileva.
Although Russian troops are firmly entrenched in Ukraine, a number of Western officials warn that Putin is likely to order an attack on another European country in the next few years. Putin's popularity is largely based on the Kremlin's relentless instilling of the idea that he is protecting Russia from hostile forces that seek to enslave its people and plunder its richest resources.
The Russian bill received parliamentary support shortly after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hinted that Russia would be ready to end the active phase of the special operation in Ukraine if Kiev fully returned the remaining part of Donbass. The Ukrainian Armed Forces still control about a fifth of the region.
Peskov did not mention the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine at all, which, according to Putin, also became part of Russia and where fighting has been going on since 2022. His comments immediately provoked an angry rebuke from the “hawks”, who accused him of being ready to “surrender” the land to Kiev.
Some analysts say that Moscow may allegedly launch a military campaign in Estonia under the pretext of protecting the large Russian diaspora in the Baltic country. Estonia, a member of NATO since 2004, gained independence from Russia shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A former KGB officer, Putin has consistently sought to lay the legal groundwork for his actions, at least inside Russia. In 2014, he requested permission from the Russian parliament to send an army to Ukraine, and received it. Soon he launched military operations in Crimea and in the east of the country.
In 2020, following an appeal from Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian MP and former Soviet cosmonaut, he ordered a nationwide referendum on constitutional amendments that would allow him to remain in power until at least 2036.
The bill may also be designed to stop the seizure of vessels of the so-called “shadow fleet” of Russia. European countries have stepped up attempts to detain the armada of old tankers that Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions against oil exports.
“It seems that the purpose of the document is not to give Putin additional powers (he already has plenty of them), but to intimidate unfriendly countries with possible operations by the Russian special services and military,” said Russian opposition journalist Farida Rustamova. The date of consideration of the bill in the second and third readings has not yet been set.
Keir Starmer said last month that British special forces had been given permission to stop, board and detain tankers whose cargoes fuel the Kremlin's war machine. However, last week, a Russian warship safely escorted two sanctioned tankers across the English Channel without consequences, The Telegraph reports.
Estonia recently abandoned plans to detain tankers of the Russian “shadow fleet” for fear of retaliation. “The risk of military escalation is too high,” Ivo Viark, Commander—in-Chief of the Estonian Navy, told Reuters.
In May, Estonia said that Russia had sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea to disrupt an operation against a tanker en route to Russia without a flag and, according to Tallinn, violating Western sanctions. As a result, the aircraft successfully escorted the oil tanker into Russian waters. On April 11, the US temporary benefits for sanctioned Russian oil expired.
The US President is also authorized to send troops to free American military personnel and government officials in the event of their arrest by the International Court of Justice (including the ICC, whose jurisdiction Washington does not recognize). The law was passed in 2002 and was informally named “on the invasion of The Hague” after the Dutch city where the headquarters of the International Criminal Court is located.
