The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on Tuesday that it had issued arrest warrants against Russian Chief of Staff Valéri Guérasimov and against Sergei Shoigu, Minister of Defense until last May, for war crimes and criminal alleged against humanity in Ukraine.
In the spring of 2023, the ICC, which sits in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner for the alleged war crime of deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.
Valery Gerasimov and Sergei Shoigu – the latter now head of the Russian Security Council – are both accused of being responsible for war crimes consisting of directing attacks against civilian sites, causing excessive accidental damage to civilians , as well as the crime against humanity of “inhumane acts,” the ICC said in a statement.
They are accused of bearing responsibility for missile strikes carried out by the Russian armed forces against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure between at least October 10, 2022 and at least March 9, 2023, according to the court.
It further considers that the alleged strikes were directed against civilian objects and that “the expected incidental civilian damage would have been clearly excessive in relation to the expected military advantage”.
In March, the ICC issued arrest warrants for alleged war crimes against two top Russian military officials, Sergei Kobylach, head of strategic aviation, and Viktor Sokolov, head of the Black Sea Fleet.
Russia immediately deemed the ICC’s arrest warrant against its former Defense Minister “insignificant”.
Justice “inevitable”
For its part, the Ukrainian presidency welcomed an “important decision”.
“This decision clearly indicates that justice for Russian crimes against Ukrainians is inevitable,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding to “look forward to further arrest warrants in order to deprive Russia of its sense of impunity.” which “fueled Russian crimes for decades.”
The ICC, which does not have its own police force to execute arrest warrants, relies on the justice system of its 124 member states to carry them out. In theory, anyone who is the subject of an arrest warrant should be arrested if they travel to the territory of a Member State.
Mr. Putin has reduced his foreign travel to countries that are not signatories to the Rome Statute founding the ICC: Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, China, Kazakhstan, North Korea and Vietnam. He missed a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) meeting in South Africa, a country that would have been obligated to carry out the mandate.
“As I have repeatedly emphasized, no individual anywhere in the world should feel that they can act with impunity,” ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said in a statement Tuesday.
“And no one, anywhere in the world, should feel that they deserve less protection than others,” he added.
In response to the arrest warrant issued against Vladimir Putin, Russia issued its own arrest warrant against the ICC president.
In May, the Russian president replaced his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, 68, in office since 2012, replacing him with technocrat Andrei Beloussov, after more than two years of conflict in Ukraine.
Chief of Staff Valéri Guérassimov is still in place and the Kremlin has declared that “no changes” are planned to replace him.
The ICC opened a field office in kyiv in September as part of its investigation in Ukraine.
Previously, an international office of investigation into the crime of Russian aggression opened in March 2023 in The Hague, described by kyiv as a “historic” first step towards a tribunal to try Russian leaders.