The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s former Defense minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the country’s most senior army general, on Tuesday for alleged war crimes committed during the Russia-Ukraine armed conflict, the ICC announced in a press release.
Since the war began in February 2022, eight arrest warrants have been issued for high ranking Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, who is accused of unlawfully deporting and transferring Ukrainian children to Russia.
Shoigu has been a longtime friend and supporter of Putin, and he played an important role in the conflict. He was dismissed from his position as Defense minister last month and named secretary of Russia’s influential Security Council, marking the most dramatic shift in Putin’s military leadership since the beginning of the armed conflict.
The court’s issuance of the warrants was applauded in Kyiv, but dismissed as legally meaningless by Moscow.
“The decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court concerning Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu is null and void. It is hot air, as the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Russia, and it was taken as part of the West’s hybrid war against our country,” the Russian Security Council stated, according to TASS.
Shoigu and Gerasimov are accused of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for directing assaults on civilians and non-military targets in Ukraine.
Judges established “reasonable grounds to believe that the two suspects bear responsibility for missile strikes carried out by the Russian armed forces against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure” between October 10, 2022, and at least March 9, 2023, according to a news statement from the ICC.
“Every criminal involved in the planning and execution of these strikes must know that justice will be served,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
However, the ICC lacks an enforcement mechanism and relies on member nations to conduct arrests, so it is uncertain if any of the Russian suspects will ever face justice.
Russia has a policy of not extraditing its citizens, and the ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes court, has no protocols in place to enable in absentia prosecutions.