The Russian government on Tuesday repudiated Ukraine’s accusations of war crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed that it had received a complaint on the matter from the Kiev regime.
“We categorically deny this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a daily news conference.
In addition, the government representative stressed that Russia is not a State Party to the ICC, whose chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced the day before that he would ask for the opening of an investigation into war crimes against humanity “committed by either party.” throughout the territory of Ukraine”.
The procedure, if authorized, will assess possible crimes committed on the Crimean peninsula and also in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Khan, in addition, said that the investigations will also include the crimes that are being denounced throughout the “expansion of the conflict in the last days”, in reference to the Russian invasion of the territory of Ukraine.
“I have already tasked my team to explore every opportunity to preserve evidence,” the ICC attorney general said in a statement.
Like Russia, Ukraine is not one of the States Parties to the war crimes court, but even so, Kiev submitted two requests, in November 2013 and in February 2014, which were accepted by the ICC.
On Monday (28), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court of the UN, confirmed that it had received a complaint from Ukraine against Russia, which includes accusations of genocide.
This Tuesday, Peskov assured that Russian forces do not attack civilian targets in the neighboring country, seeking only to hit military infrastructure.
The UN Human Rights Office recorded, until the most recent balance, 102 deaths and 304 injuries among civilians since the beginning of the war. The Ukrainian government points, however, to 352 fatalities among non-military and those involved in the conflict.
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