The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced this Tuesday arrest warrants against the former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimovfor war crimes and crimes against humanity between October 2022 and March 2023 during the invasion of Ukraine.
According to the criteria of
The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber approved the arrest warrants, holding both senior officials of the Russian Government responsible for war crimes for “directing attacks at civilian targets and for causing excessive collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects”, as well as a crime against humanity for “inhuman acts” defined in the Rome Statute.
A man walks past a destroyed residential building in the city of Toretsk, near the front line in Donetsk, Ukraine, on June 15, 2024, amid the Russian invasion.
Photo:
The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, asked the Chamber to approve these arrest warrants, in which he accuses Shoigu and Gerasimov of being alleged “criminally responsible” for having committed these criminal acts, ordering their commission and/or or failing to exercise adequate control over the forces under his command to prevent the commission of those crimes.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the two suspects are responsible for the missile attacks carried out by the Russian armed forces against the Ukrainian electrical infrastructure from at least October 10, 2022 to at least March 9, 2023,” pointed out the three judges that make up the Preliminary Matters Chamber.
During this period, Russian armed forces carried out “a large number of attacks against numerous electrical power plants and substations in multiple locations” in Ukraine.
The Chamber also sees “reasonable grounds” to believe that “the alleged attacks were directed against civilian objects, and that for those facilities that could have qualified as military objectives at the relevant time, the expected collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects would have clearly been excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage.”
Karim Khan, ICC prosecutor.
Photo:
Furthermore, it denounced that “the alleged campaign of attacks constitutes a course of conduct that involves the multiple commission of acts against a civilian population, carried out in accordance with state policy,” which leads to believe that the suspects “intentionally caused a great suffering or serious injuries to the body or mental or physical health, thus being criminally responsible for the crime against humanity.”
Although the content of the warrants is issued as “secret” to protect witnesses and safeguard ongoing investigations, The Chamber did authorize the public disclosure of the existence of these arrest warrants, as well as the names of the suspects and the crimes of which they are accused.
The orders issued by the ICC during the war in Ukraine
These two arrest warrants are not the first that the ICC has issued in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022. Last March, the arrest of two Russian soldiers, Lieutenant General of the Russian Armed Forces Sergey Kobylash, and Admiral of the Russian Navy, Viktor Sokolov, was ordered arrested.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.
Photo:
A year earlier, the ICC ordered the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian politician Maria Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian minors and their transfer from occupied areas in Ukraine. to Russia, a war crime under the Rome Statute.
#ICC #orders #arrest #Defense #Minister #Sergei #Shoigu #Chief #Russian #General #Staff #Valery #Gerasimov