Russia dismisses ICC warrants as meaningless provocation

MOSCOW: Moscow on Wednesday dismissed the issuance of International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants against two top Russian commanders as a spurious provocation that had no legal significance for Russia.

The ICC said on Tuesday it had issued arrest warrants for Sergei Kobylash and Viktor Sokolov for missile strikes against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that as Russia was not a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Moscow did not recognise the warrants.

“We are not parties to the statute - we do not recognize this,” Peskov told reporters when asked about the ICC warrants.

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said the arrest warrants aimed only to discredit Russia.

“The latest spurious emissions from this organ do not have any force for us and are legally insignificant,” Zakharova told reporters.

In March last year, the ICC issued warrants for the arrest of President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova on war crimes charges related to the abduction of Ukrainian children.

The Kremlin dismissed those warrants as outrageous at the time. Russia denies war crimes in Ukraine.

Ukraine has accused Russia of widespread war crimes. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said last year that Russia had taken inadequate measures to protect civilians and that there were indications of war crimes.

Russia says Ukraine has committed war crimes during the conflict, which Moscow dates from 2014, including the indiscriminate shelling of areas of eastern Ukraine.

Kyiv denies it has committed war crimes and says it is the victim of an aggressive war of occupation by Russia.

Russian officials say the ICC warrants have no real-world impact.

The ICC on Tuesday said the attacks on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm and damage that would have been clearly excessive to any expected military advantage.

Exact details of specific incidents and possible victims have been kept secret to protect witnesses and safeguard the ongoing investigations, the statement added.

The Geneva conventions and additional protocols shaped by international courts say that parties involved in a military conflict must distinguish between “civilian objects and military objectives” and that attacks on civilian objects are forbidden.

The ICC prosecutors want the charges to label the strikes not only as war crimes but also as crimes against humanity because they say they were part of a state policy of widespread attacks on the civilian population.