The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against two Russian military officers for alleged war crimes linked to missile strikes against Ukraine’s electric infrastructure.
They were charged for alleged crimes committed between October 2022 until and March 2023, when Ukraine’s power plants and substations faced a fierce campaign of airstrikes. The Hague-based court issued warrants against Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash, the then commander of Russia’s long-range aviation forces, and commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov, it said in a statement on Tuesday.
The “alleged campaign of strikes qualifies as a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts against a civilian population, pursuant to a state policy,” which qualifies them as a crime against humanity, the ICC said.
The International Criminal Court investigates and tries individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. In March last year, it issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for crimes related to the alleged abduction of children from Ukraine, a move that Moscow dismissed as “outrageous” at the time.
Ukraine’s top prosecutor Andriy Kostin said this is the first arrest warrant in the case made on grounds of crimes against humanity.
With assistance from April Roach.
(Carlos Bongioanni/Stars and Stripes)
