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Russian Children’s Commissioner Rejects ICC War Crime Allegations as False

Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)
Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)
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Russian Children’s Commissioner Rejects ICC War Crime Allegations as False

Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)
Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)

Russia's commissioner for children's rights, who was accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) alongside President Vladimir Putin of war crimes in Ukraine, said on Tuesday that the ICC's allegations were false and unclear.

The Hague-based ICC on March 17 issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children's rights, for the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.

The ICC said it had information that hundreds of children had been taken from orphanages and children's care homes in areas of Ukraine claimed by Russia. Some of those children, the ICC said, have been given up for adoption in Russia.

Lvova-Belova told a news conference in Moscow that the consent of children's parents was always sought and that the commission always acted in the best interests of the child.

If there were any specific problems with specific families, she said she was ready to help solve them.

"It is unclear to the presidential commissioner for children's rights what the International Criminal Court's allegations specifically consist of and what they are based on," her commission said in a separate statement about its work released before the news conference.

"The use of the formulation 'unlawful deportation of population (children)' in the ICC's official statement causes bewilderment," it said.

It said it had also not received any documents about the case from the ICC, whose jurisdiction Russia does not recognize.

The Commission said Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian regions claimed and partially controlled by Russia, had asked Russia to accept civilians, including orphans and children whose parents were missing.

The Kremlin has said the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes.

Putin allies have cast the ICC, which countries including Russia, China and the United States do not recognize, as a "legal nonentity" that had never done anything significant.

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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.