Russia adds Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy to wanted list

Russian quality agencies connected Saturday reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been added to a Kremlin wanted list.

Though the Russian Interior Ministry provided nary details astir the charges leveled against Zelenskyy, it said that a lawsuit had been opened against him "under an nonfiction of the transgression code."

The determination is seen arsenic mostly symbolic, since Zelenskyy is not connected Russian soil.

Russia justified its penetration of Ukraine connected the grounds that Kyiv was supposedly repressing the country's Russian-speaking citizens, with Russian President Vladimir Putin urging Kyiv's subject to overthrown Zelenskyy successful a nationalist code the time aft Moscow launched its "special subject operation" connected February 24, 2022.

Last year, Zelenskyy said that astatine slightest "five oregon six" attempts to assassinate him had been foiled since that time.

Ukraine's overseas ministry dismissed the reports of Zelenskyy's inclusion arsenic grounds of "the desperation of the Russian authorities instrumentality and propaganda."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy present joins Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas connected the Kremlin's wanted listImage: Andrew Kravchenko/AP/picture alliance

Zelenskyy joins Estonian PM Kallas connected monolithic database

The Ukrainian president joins tens of thousands of alleged criminals connected the online database.

The database besides includes different high-ranking politicians, specified as Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, whom the Kremlin accused of "desecrating the humanities memory" of the Baltic country implicit the removal of Soviet-era monuments from nationalist spaces.

Kallas called them, "symbols of repressions and Soviet occupation," that had "become a root of expanding societal tensions."

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) successful The Hague — which Russia does not admit — issued an international apprehension warrant for Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for their relation successful the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children during the war. 

Russia claims that it was forced to "evacuate" the children for their ain protection.

js/lo (AFP, dpa)