alt Hacker NewsThe entire point is to make it into (more of) a legal decision rather than a political one. That's the famed Rule of Law - a Schelling point that multiple parties with diverging interest can work towards to cooperate. It's not arrest Putin/Netanyahu/etc because "they're bad and we don't like them", but rather because they have done specific actions A, B, and C that we've written down to be considered crimes.
Well I think you hit upon an excellent point and one that I'm rather close to, which is legalization. Adopting a uniform procedure to deal with various cases and accord defendants some recourse is admirable. That doesn't make it law, but legalizing those types of proceedings is still valuable. I think Nuremberg rested on shaky grounds as a court, but it was still preferable to either summary execution or disclaiming any punishment on the accused.
Likewise I think where I'm uncertain with Putin is that while he's undoubtedly a nefarious guy and we have written down rules and norms he has broken, those norms do not apply to the Russian world. We claim they apply, but we could only make them apply through force of arms which runs opposite to the rule of law. That is rather the rule of "might makes right."