Crime & Justice

ICC issues arrest warrants for 2 top Russian officers over war in Ukraine

The two officers are accused of ordering or allowing missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities and other civilian targets as well as other crimes against humanity.

A man holds a giant mock boarding pass marked 'Moscow - The Hague' with the name of Vladimir Putin during a protest against the Russian president, on February 24, in Milan. [Gabriel Bouys/AFP]
A man holds a giant mock boarding pass marked 'Moscow - The Hague' with the name of Vladimir Putin during a protest against the Russian president, on February 24, in Milan. [Gabriel Bouys/AFP]

By Kontur and AFP |

THE HAGUE -- The International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 5 issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian officers over the Ukraine war, including strikes targeting Ukrainian power infrastructure.

The ICC identified the suspects as Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash and Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov, an army lieutenant general and a navy admiral.

The two men are accused of war crimes including directing attacks targeting civilians, causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or civilian infrastructure and committing crimes against humanity, the court said.

The court found grounds to believe that the two suspects were responsible for missile strikes on Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least October 10, 2022, until at least March 9, 2023.

Policemen and city workers transfer six partially burnt bodies into body bags as reporters attend in the town of Bucha, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022, as Ukrainian officials say they had recovered more than 400 civilian bodies from the wider Kyiv region, many of which were buried in mass graves. [Genya Savilov/AFP]
Policemen and city workers transfer six partially burnt bodies into body bags as reporters attend in the town of Bucha, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022, as Ukrainian officials say they had recovered more than 400 civilian bodies from the wider Kyiv region, many of which were buried in mass graves. [Genya Savilov/AFP]

Over this time, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against electric power plants and substations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine, the court said.

The two men either carried out the attacks directly or ordered them, or failed "to exercise proper control over the forces under their command," the Hague-based court said.

While the details of the warrants are "secret" to protect witnesses and to safeguard the investigations, the court said it was announcing the existence of the warrants because similar conduct is believed to be ongoing.

"Public awareness ... may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes," the ICC said.

'Justice will be served'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the court's action, saying it sent a message to Russian commanders that "justice will be served" over strikes against civilians and critical infrastructure.

"Every perpetrator of such crimes must know that they will be held accountable," he said.

Kobylash, 58, commands an air unit linked to Russia's nuclear deterrence system, the country's Defense Ministry says on its site.

Sokolov, 61, is commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, according to his official biography.

The Kremlin rejected the ICC's arrest warrants for Kobylash and Sokolov.

"We don't recognize this," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters March 6, noting that Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine is an official member of the ICC, though Kyiv has been working with the court to furnish what it considers evidence of Russian crimes.

'Wars have rules'

"It took us many months of dedicated work of prosecutors, investigators of Ukraine, different Ukrainian agencies, who supplied the office of the prosecutor of the ICC with thousands of evidences and information," Ukrainian prosecutor general Andriy Kostin said March 5.

"I'm really grateful for prosecutor of the ICC Karim Khan and his team," Kostin said in Brussels, where he was attending a meeting of European justice ministers.

The ICC does not have its own police force for enforcing arrest warrants, and relies on its 123 member states to do so if the cited individuals travel to their territory.

"Those responsible for actions that impact innocent civilians or protected objects must know that this conduct is bound by a set of rules reflected in international humanitarian law," Khan said in a statement on the March 5 decision.

"All wars have rules. Those rules bind all without exception."

Putin accused of war crimes

The ICC, created in 2002 to investigate war crimes around the world, last September opened a field office in Kyiv as part of efforts to hold Russian forces accountable for potential war crimes.

That move came after an international office to probe Russia for the war crime of aggression opened in The Hague in March 2023 in what Kyiv called a "historic" first step toward a tribunal for Moscow's leadership.

At that time, the court targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin with an international arrest warrant on war crime accusations over the deportation of Ukrainian children since launching the war in February 2022.

Besides naming Putin, the ICC issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's presidential commissioner for children's rights, on similar charges.

Russian officials responded furiously to the court's arrest warrant for Putin, with Moscow issuing a retaliatory arrest warrant for ICC prosecutor Karim Khan of Britain and other court officials.

The court's action appears to have limited Putin's foreign movements, with the Russian president skipping a BRICS summit last year in South Africa. BRICS is an economic bloc named for members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Do you like this article?

Captcha *