Putin approved a new law to allow the Russian army to intervene abroad

On May 25, Vladimir Putin promulgated a law expanding the prerogatives of the President of the Russian Federation in matters of the engagement of armed forces abroad. This text, adopted by the Duma on May 13 then by the Federation Council on May 20, now allows the president to use the army to protect Russian citizens abroad.

This federal law No. 149-FZ of May 25, 2026 makes two amendments to the federal laws relating to citizenship and defense. Their wording provides for the following provisions:

• “By decision of the President of the Russian Federation and within the limits of their competence established by the legislation of the Russian Federation, the bodies of state power of the Russian Federation shall take the necessary measures to protect nationals of the Russian Federation subject to arrest (or detention), criminal prosecution or any other form of prosecution pursuant to the decisions of foreign courts vested with prerogatives in matters of criminal procedure by other states foreigners without the participation of the Russian Federation, and/or international judicial bodies whose jurisdiction is neither based on an international treaty to which the Russian Federation is a party, nor on a resolution of the United Nations Security Council adopted within the framework of the competences provided for in Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.”
• “The engagement of the armed forces of the Russian Federation in carrying out missions involving the use of weapons outside their usual destination, including for the protection of nationals of the Russian Federation subject to arrest (or detention), criminal proceedings or any other form of prosecution pursuant to court decisions foreigners vested with prerogatives in matters of criminal procedure by other foreign states without participation of the Russian Federation, and/or international judicial bodies whose jurisdiction does not rest on an international treaty to which the Russian Federation is a party, nor on a resolution of the United Nations Security Council adopted within the framework of the competence provided for in Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, is decided by the President of the Russian Federation in accordance with federal laws.

Quel apport juridique réel  ? 

The innovation does not stem from the fact that Russian legislation grants the President of the Russian Federation the right to send troops abroad.

• Since a resolution of the Federation Council dating from 2009, it was authorized to deploy Russian armed forces in four cases: repelling an armed attack against Russian forces stationed abroad; repel an armed attack against another state; protect Russian nationals abroad in the event of armed attack; fight against piracy and ensure navigation security.

The main novelty of this text therefore lies in the aim of potential Russian armed interventions outside the country’s borders: the protection of Russian nationals against criminal prosecutions abroad is considered, in Russian law, as a use of the armed forces “outside their destination”, in other words, as an unusual, atypical, extra-military case. However, the law “On Defense” of 1996 provides that any use of armed forces “outside their destination” is decided by the President of the Russian Federation who must be able, for this purpose, to rely on a basis existing legislation. This is therefore how the function of these two amendments must be understood, at least on a technical level.Â

Un texte ouvert à l’interprétation

The first problem raised by these texts is of a legal nature. As usual, the Russian government takes care to produce a text whose framework seems strict, but which is in reality very loose in its scope of application.

• The text begins by suggesting that Russian nationals likely to be protected by the Russian Federation would be those targeted by a decision of a foreign or international court – such as an arrest warrant – and immediately adds that “any other form of prosecution” » could constitute a reason for engagement of the Russian armed forces.
• Furthermore, the amendments take care to specify that the use of troops will be excluded in cases where Russia participates in the activities of the jurisdiction which rendered the decision concerning them; however, it is difficult to see to which institutions this case would correspond, beyond the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which deal with disputes between states without carrying out criminal proceedings against natural persons.

Vladimir Putin against the International Criminal Court

It is therefore clear that the main target of this text is the International Criminal Court – and potentially, in the near future, the Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, whose status dates from June 2025.

• In fact, the International Criminal Court is indeed the jurisdiction which issued in 2023 the arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin and, secondarily, against the Russian Commissioner for the Rights of the Child, Maria Lvova-Belova, held responsible for two war crimes: illegal deportation and illegal transfer of populations – the species, Ukrainian children torn from the occupied territories.
• A statement by the chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, stressed that these provisions would help protect the rights of Russian citizens according to a model inspired by a similar law adopted by the United States in 2002. It is very presumably from a reference to the American Military Protection Act (American Service-Members’ Protection Act), which aimed to dissuade the International Criminal Court from prosecuting military personnel and civil servants from the United States or allied countries for their responsibility in military interventions abroad. The text in fact authorized the president to take “all necessary measures” to protect said citizens from prosecution before the Hague Tribunal.. 
• The difference with the Russian text is therefore twofold: the use of armed force was not explicitly mentioned there (without this possibility being excluded by the wording of the text) and this text did not target all United States citizens, but only certain targeted categories. As such, the new Russian amendments are both more exclusive in their destination (the use of armed forces) and more universal in their field of application (all Russian nationals).

Three concurrent interpretations

According to a first reading, this text would not be intended so much to provide Russia with new means of military intervention as to influence the geopolitical decisions of other states.

• The official Russian discourse strives to temporize by designating only one concrete case that these legislative pressures would have made it possible to avoid: that of the archaeologist Aleksandr Boutaguine, arrested in Poland at the request of Ukraine on accusations of illegal excavations in Crimea, before eventually being sent back to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange.
• Russian officials thus present this law as a measure not automatically implying the use of military means, but rather as a means of influencing the behavior of foreign states. In other words, Russia considers threats and legal intimidation to be normal methods of conflict prevention.

A second reading, notably retained by Russian juristsrather interprets this text as a basis allowing the legal formalization of practices already implemented by the Russian Federation in the maritime domain, namely the military escort of the ships of its “ghost fleet”.

• In fact, this law could perfectly apply in the event of a boarding of a Russian ship by foreign coast guards followed by detention of their crew.

Finally, an otherwise worrying reading is put forward by the Institute for the Study of War and several representatives of the Russian opposition press.

• According to their interpretation, this law comes at the end of a long series of statements by the Kremlin affirming that foreign countries persecute Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. The Institute for the Study of War notes that this text could perfectly create legal conditions allowing Russia to justify a military intervention abroad under a pretext of this nature, particularly in the Baltic countries, the main target of the Kremlin’s rhetoric..
• The Moscow Times reinserts these amendments in the context of warnings from US, Dutch and German intelligence repeating since last summer that the Kremlin is preparing for war against one or more European countries and warning in particular against the real risk of Russian provocation in the Baltic countries according to a scenario reproducing that of the annexation of Crimea.