Did the President of Ukraine get detained in The Hague instead of the Russian President? No, that's not true: Neither the president of Russia nor the president of Ukraine was detained in The Hague. On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he has yet to be arrested.
On May 5, 2023, this false claim appeared in a video (archived here) posted on the TikTok account @novostnoi_you. The claim opened (as translated by Lead Stories staff):
Instead of Putin, Zelenskyy was detained in The Hague.
"We all want to see another Vladimir here in The Hague, someone who deserves to be punished for his criminal actions".
After these words, he [Zelenskyy] was arrested.The video of the detention appeared on our backup channel.
Link in bio.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed May 10 16:23:10 2023 UTC)
This video appeared the day after the Ukrainian president's official visit to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. On May 4, Zelenskyy delivered a speech at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Zelenskyy said exactly the following:
Of course, we all want to see a different Vladimir here, in The Hague. The one who deserves to be sentenced for his criminal actions right here, in the capital of international law.
In March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official on war crimes charges. The court accused the Russian president of being criminally responsible for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children.
The chances of Putin being arrested in the near future are very slim since the Russian president rarely leaves Russia. As for the detention of President Zelenskyy by the ICC, the matter is not even being considered. This is a false claim made by a user to get views. The video has over 700,000 views and more than 400 shares at the time of this writing and has also appeared here.
