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As he blitzed Ukraine's cities, cathedrals and citizens with Moscow's missiles and kamikaze drones, Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin pined to take a summertime jaunt to the seaside paradise Rio de Janeiro.
Although Russia's commander-in-chief flies exclusively aboard his specially appointed Ilyushin Il-96 jet, usually with fighter escorts, he was apprehensive he might not catch the return flight from the Brazilian resort.
Putin wanted to join a Rio summit with leaders of emerging BRICS economies, but there was a catch: he might be arrested and extradited to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes.
The International Criminal Court has already issued a warrant for Putin's arrest and Brazil, as a member of the court, has an international obligation to detain anyone wanted by the ICC who steps onto Brazilian territory.
Kremlin commissars pressured Brazil's president to guarantee Putin would not be detained, by command of the ICC, during the July gathering.
But President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wavered, then ultimately declined to extend a shield of immunity, says Peter Dickinson, a pre-eminent scholar at the Atlantic Council, one of Washington's foremost internationalist think tanks.
The ICC has charged Putin with ordering the abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, who have also been brainwashed with pro-Russia propaganda after being whisked away, across Ukraine's borders, Dickinson tells me in an interview.
These mass kidnappings are likely to be ruled a form of genocide prohibited under the UN's Genocide Convention, says Dickinson, who oversees the Atlantic Council's publication UkraineAlert -- chronicles of the Ukraine war and the global powers contending to protect or destroy the embattled democracy.
Although Vladimir Putin projects the image of an all-powerful ruler who heads an expanding empire -- at least to his captive audience inside Russia -- his movements across the world stage have become increasingly shackled since he despatched his tanks and troops to take over liberal, pro-European Ukraine in 2022.
As his cruise missiles began bombarding modern Ukrainian medical centers and ancient World Heritage cultural outposts, the European Union, Britain, Switzerland, Canada and the United States swiftly closed off their airspace to all Russian-registered aircraft.
These days, the ban on Putin's travel to ICC states stretches across 125 countries: 19 in the Asia-Pacific, 28 in Latin America and the Caribbean; 33 in Africa; and 45 in Europe.
The Kremlin's fury at these exclusion zones erupted two years ago, on the eve of another BRICS summit, this time in South Africa, Dickinson says.
Determined to crash the conclave, Putin's lieutenants threatened South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that any move to detain Putin during the gathering would be treated as an act of war, he adds.
This bombshell revelation only came to light because President Ramaphosa sketched out the threats in what he believed would be permanently sealed testimony to the High Court in Pretoria.
"Russia has made it clear that arresting its sitting president would be a declaration of war," the South African head of state declared in an affidavit. "It would be inconsistent with our Constitution to risk engaging in war with Russia."
Despite Ramaphosa's protest, the court released his statement, allowing the world to catch a fleeting glimpse of Putin's weaponized diplomacy toward even friendly or neutral nations.
As this intercontinental clash sent shock waves around the world, the Russian leadership abandoned Putin's quest to storm the summit.
The Kremlin's courtiers likely de-escalated Putin's later demands to join the Brazilian BRICS bash, Dickinson tells me. "I doubt they'd have been quite as blunt as they were with the South Africans in 2023."
"They learned that making blood-curdling threats tends to result in negative publicity while making Russia look weak."
When unveiling the demand for Putin's arrest for war crimes, the leaders of the International Criminal Court stated they initially considered keeping the international warrant "secret in order to protect victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation."
But "mindful that the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of further commission of crimes," they explained, it was in "the interests of justice ... to publicly disclose the existence of the warrants, the name of the suspects, the crimes for which the warrants are issued."
Since then, the Netherlands-based court has also sketched out war crimes accusations against former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, along with air force and navy commanders, who have co-led mass attacks on civilians across Ukraine.
The ICC warrant for Putin, who aims to recreate the Russian Soviet Union -- just as Adolf Hitler sought to regenerate and expand imperial Germany, Dickinson says, "is a constant reminder that he faces war crimes charges for the invasion of Ukraine."
And just as Hitler razed synagogues and chapels -- and opened fire on clergy and congregants -- across Europe, Putin has stepped up his missile strikes on houses of worship, their acolytes and their followers throughout Ukraine, despite the war crimes charges hanging over his head like a colossal Sword of Damocles.
On Palm Sunday -- one of the most venerated days in the Christian calendar -- the Kremlin targeted church-goers across the Ukrainian city Sumy with ballistic missiles and cluster bombs that blew up the holiday.
Three weeks ago, Moscow struck again, this time with squadrons of armed drones that hit the thousand-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv—a World Heritage wonder with golden domes and irreplaceable icons.
UNESCO scholars say the Saint Sophia site "represents a masterpiece of human creative genius in both its architectural conception and its remarkable decoration."
The cathedral "is a unique monument of architecture and monumental art of the early 11th century," they add, "having the biggest preserved collection of mosaics and frescoes of that period."
Father Ihor Makar, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, told Vatican News—the pope’s official news platform—that Russia has launched lethal drone attacks in Ukraine across the holiest days of the year.
Father Makar said while he was driving to a mass to celebrate the Epiphany this year, with a group of seminary students, his car was specifically targeted by Russian drone pilots, with a blast that ripped through the vehicle.
"The explosion caused by the strike shattered the car windows, piercing the doors and wheels," Vatican News reported. The priest survived, but had to be rushed to the hospital to have shrapnel from the bomb removed from his body.
"Living here is really dangerous," Father Makar said, but added his supreme goal as a priest remains protecting his embattled parishioners.
There is little doubt that all these assaults on treasured religious sanctuaries and their worshippers will spark more war crimes charges against Moscow's military and political rulers.
Yet so far, Putin remains defiant, escalating his aerial bombardments of Ukrainian cultural and spiritual havens despite the recriminations of the International Criminal Court.
Yet in a sense, Putin is already imprisoned.
Between the bans on Russian flights through European and North American airspace and his susceptibility to being handcuffed and extradited by more than half the world's nations -- those that have joined the ICC -- Putin's world, and his freedom of movement, are shrinking.
"Putin is very careful where he goes these days," says scholar Peter Dickinson, who was initially stationed in Ukraine two decades ago as an officer of the British Council.
Unless they provide iron-clad shields of immunity from arrest, Dickinson says, the Kremlin commander “does not travel to countries that are members of the ICC.”
“He also does not appear keen to embark on long journeys that could put him at risk of any unscheduled stops in ICC member countries,” he adds.
Any aircraft emergency that forced Putin’s Ilyushin Il-96 to land in Brussels or London; Rome or Paris; Stockholm; Tokyo or Sydney; could see him bundled off to a connecting flight to The Hague - a one-way trip that could see him forever estranged from Moscow and the halls of power in the Kremlin.
And once in the dock at the International Criminal Court, its prosecutors could swiftly add a new roll of war crimes charges against Putin stemming from Russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s centuries-old cathedrals and their painted and sculpted icons.
"The Rome Statute [establishing the ICC] confers upon the Court jurisdiction over crimes against or affecting cultural heritage, complementing international law governing the protection of cultural heritage and associated human rights," say ICC jurists.
Like the judges of the pathbreaking International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg, they add, their modern-day counterparts at the ICC regard religious sites as "specially protected buildings" whose intentional destruction amounts to a war crime.