The move caused a lot of outrage in Russia, where Putin's press secretary Dmitriy Peskov rejected the findings. We do not recognize this court, we do not recognize the jurisdiction of this court. This is how we treat this, he said in a Telegram post.
Moscow has denied all of the allegations of war crimes, describing them as a fantasy aimed at discrediting Russia. Russia's embassy in the United States said last month that the country had taken in children forced to flee the fighting.
The court s 123 member states will have to arrest Putin and transfer him to the court's headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands if he crosses their borders, despite the fact that Moscow formally withdrew its signature from the founding statute of the ICC in 2016.
Most governments abide by the international legal principle that heads of state have legal immunity from other courts.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said in an intelligence briefing that the Kremlin was ramping up military conscription to meet war needs and was likely to change age rules and restrictions around who was eligible to serve.
In the daily note posted to Twitter, officials in Russia's Parliament, the Duma, introduced a bill on Monday to change the age bracket of conscription to men between the ages 21 and 30. The age range is 18 to 27 years old, and the new law will take effect in January.
The briefing said that the authorities are highly likely to change the age bracket to bolster troop numbers by making sure that students are eventually forced to serve.
At least hundreds of people have probably been coerced to sign contracts because Russia isn't allowing conscripts from operations in Ukraine.
The briefing said that this will free up a greater proportion of professional soldiers to fight even if conscripts are not deployed into conflict in Ukraine.