MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia instructed his government on Wednesday to withdraw from the treaty that created the International Criminal Court, while his government assailed the tribunal as “ineffective and one-sided.”

The action was largely symbolic, because Russia — like the United States — has not ratified the treaty and is not under the court’s jurisdiction. But it was another setback for the fairly young court, which handles cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity and is an emblem of the international order that is being shaken by populist revolts across the West.

“Essentially, this is just a gratuitous slap in the face, not a body blow,” said Kate Cronin-Furman, a human rights lawyer and political scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School, who predicted that the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States would lead to more harm for the court.

Burundi, Gambia and South Africa moved recently to withdraw from the court, calling it biased because all the people it had convicted so far had been Africans or because, in the case of South Africa, it disagreed with the court’s mandate to prosecute any individual, including a head of state.