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The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov for alleged international crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The court said overnight that the two were responsible for two war crimes: directing attacks against civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects. They are also accused of committing crimes against humanity.
Russia’s state news agency TASS quoted Russia’s Security Council, the government body currently headed by Shoigu, as calling the ICC’s ruling “invalid.”
“This is meaningless as the jurisdiction of the ICC does not extend to Russia and [the decision] was carried out within the framework of the hybrid war of the West against our country,” the TASS agency quoted.
Ukrainian officials welcomed the announcement. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the decision showed that “no military rank or cabinet door can shield Russian criminals from accountability.”
The country’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said the ICC ruling meant Ukraine was a step closer to getting justice.
“Sooner or later a just punishment will overtake every war criminal!” he said in a statement posted on his Telegram.
Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said Shoigu and Gerasimov bear “individual responsibility”.
“This is an important decision. Everyone will be held responsible for evil,” he said in a statement.
The arrest warrants put Shoigu and Gerasimov on the ICC’s wanted list, although it is uncertain whether they will ever face trial.
The court does not hold trials in absentia and it is unlikely that they will be handed over from Moscow.
The two warrants bring the total number of senior Russian officials wanted for war crimes to four, as the ICC earlier issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.
Located in The Hague, Netherlands, and created by a treaty called the Rome Statute, the ICC operates independently. Most countries – 124 of them – are parties to the treaty, but there are notable exceptions, including the US, Russia and Ukraine.
Under the Rome Statute, each signatory party is required to arrest and surrender anyone facing an ICC arrest warrant.
Defenders of Ukraine “bend but don’t break” in fierce battles
Shoigu, a longtime close ally of Putin, served as the country’s defense minister for 12 years. He was fired by Putin last month, replaced by economist Andrey Belousov.
He led a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that surprised Kiev but was soon repulsed, exposing the weaknesses of Moscow’s corruption-riddled military.
Nevertheless, Shoigu remains a popular politician in Russia. Having spent two decades as emergency minister, he has built an image of an official who provides help when needed.
Meanwhile, Gerasimov has been in charge of Russia’s armed forces for more than a decade. He was one of a small group of people responsible for planning the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was officially appointed commander-in-chief of the campaign in January 2023.
The ICC said the alleged crimes related to “a large number of strikes against multiple power plants and substations” carried out by Russia in Ukraine between October 2022 and at least March 2023.
The three-judge panel that made the decision to issue the arrest warrants on Monday concluded that Shoigu and Gerasimov had ordered strikes on civilian targets, a war crime under international humanitarian law.
The judges also said that while some of the targets could be seen as relevant to Russia’s military campaign at the time, it was clear that hitting them would cause harm to civilians and that the expected harm would be excessive compared to the military advantage of hitting them.
The court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, said in a separate statement on Tuesday that the Russian campaign at the time constituted “a course of conduct involving multiple acts against the civilian population”. As such, he said, the actions of Shoigu and Gerasimov may constitute a crime against humanity.
This designation is reserved for the most serious crimes committed as part of a widespread systemic attack directed against a civilian population.
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