Hello and welcome to the Battleground Ukraine's big interview with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Today we're talking to two criminal justice specialists and

Haig-based journalists, Janet Anderson and Stephanie Vandenberg of Reuters. And we're talking to

them about the decision by the International Criminal Court to charge Vladimir Putin with war crimes.

Together they host an excellent weekly podcast on international justice

called Asymmetrical Haircuts. I wonder where they got that name from. Well, this is what

they told us. Well, Janet and Steph, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for coming on. It's been a big week in

terms of news from the International Criminal Court. And before we get onto that news and the

specific charges against Putin and Maria Lavova, Bolova, can you explain when and why the

ICC was set up and what are the precedents for indicting a head of state?

The ICC is a treaty-based court, which means that states have to agree to join up to it. And by doing

that, they say, yes, we'll do our own prosecutions in what the ICC does, which is war crimes,

crimes against humanity, genocide and a little bit of aggression.

But generally, if they can't do it, then the ICC takes over.

It's only been going for 20 years or so.

It's celebrated its 20th anniversary last year.

So it's not a really long, long established court like some of the others

in the Hague. It's mainly focused on African situations because a lot of countries in Africa

have said we aren't able to do our own prosecutions. Can you help us with that? But it has started. Now we've got a new

prosecutor who came in fairly recently. It's started to expand the bit. And you asked about precedence

for heads of state. There are three sitting heads of state who had the ICC issue and

arrest warrant against them. The way it works at the ICC is that you don't see an indictment. So the charges are listed

...