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THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL Court has issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian military officials for alleged war crimes committed during the war in Ukraine.
The warrants, which were issued yesterday but made public today, concern the Russian military’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and former defence minister Sergei Shoigu.
“As I have repeatedly emphasised, no individual, anywhere in the world, should feel they can act with impunity,” said ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who pressed the charges.
“And no person, anywhere in the world, should feel they are deserving of less protection than others.”
In a statement issued today, the ICC said the two individuals are each allegedly responsible for the war crimes of directing attacks at civilian objects and of causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects.
They are also allegedly responsible for the crime against humanity of inhumane acts.
The Hague court also said: “There are reasonable grounds to believe they bear individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes.”
Specifically, a pre-trial chamber at the ICC found there are reasonable grounds to believe Russia carried out missile strikes against Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023.
“During this time-frame, a large number of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the ICC statement said.
There are also reasonable grounds to believe that the two military leaders “intentionally caused great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health, thus bearing criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of other inhumane acts,” the court said.
The pre-trial chamber “considered that public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes”, and therefore made the warrants public rather than issue them in secret, which is sometimes done in order to protect witnesses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed today’s announcement in a post on X.
“These barbaric missile and drone strikes continue to kill people and inflict damage across Ukraine,” he said.
“Every criminal involved in the planning and execution of these strikes must know that justice will be served. And we do hope to see them behind bars.”
He said the court’s decision is “a clear indication that justice for Russian crimes against Ukrainians is inevitable”.
“It clearly demonstrates that no military rank or cabinet door can shield Russian criminals from accountability.”
He said Ukraine looked forward to more arrest warrants “in order to deprive Russia of its sense of impunity”, which he said has “fueled Russian crimes for decades”.
Russia has dismissed the warrants as “insignificant”.
The country’s security council said: “It’s all hot air since the ICC’s jurisdiction does not cover Russia” and the decision was taken “as part of the West’s hybrid war against our country.”
Responding to the warrants, Amnesty International said:
“These ICC warrants mark another crucial step towards justice. Their issuance helps rebuild trust in international law and the institutions that uphold it.
“It gives hope to victims of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine that those responsible will be held accountable, no matter how high ranking.”
The ICC has already issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged crimes committed in the prosecution of the invasion of Ukraine.
The court does not have any means of enforcing its warrants and instead relies on signatories to the court, who are obliged to arrest those accused if they enter their territory.
This has curtailed Putin’s travel options since the warrant against him was issued in March 2023.
For example, he sent his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to South Africa for a meeting of the BRICS countries last year, rather than going himself and risking arrest.
He has recently travelled to Vietnam and North Korea, neither of whom recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC.
With reporting from AFP
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