LONDON — The Worldwide Legal Courtroom accused the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, of warfare crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest on Friday, a extremely symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a 12 months in the past.

The court docket cited Mr. Putin’s accountability for the kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian youngsters, hundreds of whom have been despatched to Russia because the invasion. It additionally issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for kids’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the general public face of the Kremlin-sponsored program that transfers the kids out of Ukraine.

There may be little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime quickly. The Worldwide Legal Courtroom can’t attempt defendants in absentia and Russia, which isn’t a celebration to the court docket, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”

But the court docket’s transfer carried indeniable ethical weight, placing Mr. Putin in the identical ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian chief imprisoned for abuses throughout the Balkans warfare; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World Warfare II.

“There are cheap grounds to imagine that Mr. Putin bears particular person legal accountability,” mentioned the court docket, which was created 20 years in the past to analyze warfare crimes, genocide and crimes in opposition to humanity.

Each Russians, the court docket mentioned, bore “accountability for the warfare crime of illegal deportation of inhabitants and that of illegal switch of inhabitants from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

As a sensible matter, the warrant might limit Mr. Putin’s travels, since he might face arrest in any of the 123 nations which have signed on to the Worldwide Legal Courtroom — a listing that features just about all European nations and a number of other in Africa and Latin America, however not China or the US.

Human proper activists and Ukrainian officers hailed the warrants as proof that Mr. Putin and his lieutenants might now not act with impunity in Ukraine. For Mr. Putin, who already operates with a decent circle of advisers within the Kremlin, it makes the world a smaller place, whilst he plans to welcome President Xi Jinping of China, maybe his strongest ally, to Moscow subsequent week.

The warrants additionally shine a lightweight on some of the harrowing, poignant subplots of Russia’s brutal warfare: the forcible switch of Ukrainian youngsters and youngsters to Russia or Russian-controlled components of Ukraine. Many are orphans, however Ukrainian officers say that others have been separated from their dad and mom or authorized guardians. Russia has acknowledged transferring 2,000 youngsters; Ukrainian officers say they’ve confirmed 16,000 circumstances.

“It might be unattainable to hold out such a legal operation with out the order of the highest chief of the terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mentioned in a video assertion, during which he welcomed Mr. Putin’s arrest warrant as the start of “historic accountability.”

Stephen Rapp, a former ambassador at giant who headed the Workplace of World Legal Justice within the State Division, mentioned in an e mail that “this makes Putin a pariah.”

“If he travels he dangers arrest,” he continued. “This by no means goes away.”

Furthermore, he mentioned, Russia can’t have worldwide sanctions lifted with out complying with the court docket’s warrants. Mr. Rapp mentioned he believed Mr. Putin would finally find yourself in The Hague, the place different accused warfare criminals have been tried — some, like Mr. Milosevic, underneath advert hoc tribunals of the I.C.C. “In any other case,” Mr. Rapp mentioned, Mr. Putin “dies with this hanging over his head.”

Nonetheless, the general public nature of the warrants, and the slender scope of the crimes, raised questions amongst authorized specialists, who famous that the court docket had been underneath intense stress to behave in opposition to Mr. Putin.

Russian troops have killed tens of hundreds of harmless civilians, and ravaged civilian infrastructure, in artillery strikes on Ukrainian cites. This week, The New York Occasions reported that the court docket supposed to open two circumstances tied to the Russian invasion, in accordance with officers with information of the plans; the second was anticipated to deal with Russia’s assaults on infrastructure.

“We don’t know what the complete software was,” mentioned Philippe Sands, an professional on worldwide legislation who’s the director of the Heart on Worldwide Courts and Tribunals at College School London. “We don’t know whether or not the prosecutor wished an arrest warrant for different crimes.”

Focusing on Mr. Putin is an audacious transfer by the court docket, which might have begun with midlevel officers and labored its approach as much as the president, Mr. Sands mentioned. “Little doubt there might be many questions on why this explicit crime and why the choice to make this public now,” he added.

In contrast to in American courts, the place suspects are generally indicted earlier than being arrested, the prosecutor on the Worldwide Legal Courtroom, Karim Khan, introduced proof earlier than a panel of judges displaying cheap grounds to imagine that the suspects bore accountability for warfare crimes. The arrest warrants put them on discover of what they might more than likely be charged with if tried.

If Mr. Putin and Ms. Lvova-Belova have been taken into custody and introduced earlier than the court docket in The Hague, they might have a pretrial listening to at which prosecutors would current proof that they might contend was adequate for the case to go to trial.

The catch is that if a suspect managed to evade seize, she or he would by no means get a listening to to “affirm” the costs, mentioned Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of worldwide legislation at Yale Regulation Faculty and a former prime lawyer on the State Division. In consequence, Mr. Koh mentioned, “this can be as a lot as we get” for Mr. Putin.

Nonetheless, Mr. Koh mentioned he believed the court docket’s motion was a “internet plus,” as a result of it might discourage China from giving Russia weapons and ship a deterrent message to others within the Russian paperwork about collaborating in warfare crimes like abducting the kids. It might additionally ease resistance contained in the Pentagon to sharing proof with the court docket.

Russian officers have been withering of their response to the arrest warrants. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Overseas Ministry, mentioned the announcement had “no which means for our nation, together with from a authorized perspective.”

“Russia isn’t cooperating with this physique,” she added, calling any efforts by the I.C.C. to make arrests “legally null and void for us.”

The restrictions of the court docket are well-known. Though it will probably indict sitting heads of state, it has no energy to arrest them or deliver them to trial, as a substitute counting on different leaders and governments to behave as its sheriffs. This has been most vividly illustrated by the case of Mr. al-Bashir, the deposed Sudanese chief, who has not been arrested in different nations the place he has traveled.

Though the court docket is backed by many democratic nations, together with shut American allies like Britain, the US has lengthy saved its distance, involved that the tribunal might sometime attempt to prosecute Individuals.

A low level got here in 2017, when the chief prosecutor for the court docket tried to analyze the torture of detainees accused of terrorism throughout the George W. Bush administration. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the court docket’s personnel, and the secretary of state on the time, Mike Pompeo, denounced it as corrupt.

Relations thawed in 2021, when the Biden administration revoked Mr. Trump’s sanctions, and a newly appointed prosecutor, Mr. Khan, dropped the investigation.

President Biden mentioned on Friday that he thought the arrest warrant was “justified.” Whereas he famous that the I.C.C. isn’t acknowledged by the US, he mentioned the warrant “makes a really robust level.”

The story of Ukraine’s kidnapped youngsters has been much less shrouded in secrecy than different abuses throughout the warfare, partly as a result of Russian officers have sought to painting it as a humanitarian effort to deal with the warfare’s youngest victims.

But a New York Occasions investigation printed in October, which recognized a number of Ukrainian youngsters who had been taken, described a wrenching technique of coercion, deception and drive. Upon arrival in Russia, the kids have been usually positioned in properties to grow to be Russian residents and subjected to re-education efforts.

On Thursday, a United Nations fee of inquiry mentioned Russia’s switch of kids and different civilians from Ukraine to Russia may quantity to a warfare crime, observing that not one of the circumstances it investigated have been justified underneath worldwide legislation. Ukraine has reported the switch of 16,226 youngsters to Russia, however the fee mentioned it had not been capable of confirm the quantity.

Mr. Khan, the chief prosecutor, has mentioned the unlawful transfers of kids have been a precedence for his investigators. “Kids can’t be handled because the spoils of warfare,” he mentioned after visiting a youngsters’s dwelling in southern Ukraine this month that he mentioned had been emptied on account of deportations.

In Ukraine, officers expressed satisfaction that Mr. Putin had been branded as a warfare legal. Some voiced confidence that the authorized vise on the Russian chief would solely develop tighter. There are calls to arrange a particular tribunal that might attempt Mr. Putin and his lieutenants on the crime of aggression.

“That is only the start,” mentioned Mr. Zelensky’s chief of workers, Andriy Yermak.

Reporting was contributed by Charlie Savage and Michael D. Shear from Washington, Marlise Simons from Morocco, Emma Bubola from Rome, Carlotta Gall from Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Marc Santora from Kyiv, Valerie Hopkins from Berlin and Anushka Patil from New York.