ICC issues arrest warrants against Russian military personnel

The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced this Tuesday (25) arrest warrants against the former Minister of Defense of Russia, Sergei Shoigu, and the country’s Chief of Staff, Valery Gerasimov, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between October 2022 and March 2023, during the invasion of Ukraine.

The ICC Preliminary Questions Chamber approved the arrest warrants, holding high-ranking officials of the Russian regime responsible for war crimes, for “directing attacks on civilian targets and for causing excessive collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects”, as well as for a crime against humanity for “inhumane acts” defined in the Rome Statute.

The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, asked the Chamber to approve these arrest warrants, in which he accuses Shoigu and Gerasimov of being allegedly “responsible at the criminal level” for having committed these criminal acts, ordering their practice or not exercising adequate control on the forces under his command to prevent the commission of these crimes.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the two suspects are responsible for missile attacks carried out by the Russian Armed Forces against Ukrainian electrical infrastructure from at least October 10, 2022 until at least March 9, 2023,” the officials stated. three judges who make up the Preliminary Questions Chamber.

During this period, the Russian Armed Forces carried out “a large number of attacks against numerous power plants and substations in various locations” in Ukraine.

The Chamber also sees “reasonable grounds” to believe that “the alleged attacks were directed against civilian objects, and that, for those installations that could have qualified as military targets at the relevant time, the expected collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects would have been clearly excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage.”

Furthermore, he denounced that “the alleged campaign of attacks constitutes conduct that involves the practice of multiple acts against a civilian population, carried out in accordance with State policy”, which leads to the belief that the suspects “intentionally caused great suffering or serious injuries to the body or mental or physical health, thus being criminally responsible for a crime against humanity.”

Although the content of the orders is issued as “secret” to protect witnesses and safeguard ongoing investigations, the Chamber authorized the public disclosure of the existence of these arrest warrants, as well as the names of the suspects and the crimes with which they are accused.

These two arrest warrants are not the first issued by the ICC in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022. Last March, the arrest of two Russian military personnel, Lieutenant General of the Armed Forces Sergey Kobylash, had already been ordered. and Navy Admiral Viktor Sokolov.

A year earlier, the ICC ordered the arrest of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian minors and their transfer from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. , which is defined as a war crime under the Rome Statute.