Arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and Admiral Viktor Sokolov of the Russian Armed Forces have been dismissed by Russia. Both officers are allegedly responsible for war crimes committed in Ukraine. The arrest warrants, issued by a three-judge bench at the ICC, accuse the Russian commanders of directing attacks at civilian objects, causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects, and for crimes against humanity of inhumane acts prescribed under the Rome Statute.
In response to the ICC’s arrest warrants, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, stated that Russia “does not recognize the arrest warrants” as it does not subscribe to the Rome Statute. He further added that “this is not the first decision; we also know that there are also various closed processes going on there, which are kept a secret.”
Despite Russia’s dismissal of the arrest warrants, some organizations, including Amnesty International, and other members of the international community, have voiced their support for the ICC’s move to pin individual responsibility to Russian top officials over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International expressed that:
“By issuing arrest warrants for Kobylash and Sokolov, the ICC has demonstrated that it will pursue cases to the top of the chain of command. As Russia conducts missile strikes that continue to decimate Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure, the ICC has served notice that those alleged to have committed war crimes will be brought to justice, no matter their rank.”
The ICC prosecutor, in this case, had filed the arrest warrants claiming that the evidence collected and analysed by his office created reasonable grounds to believe that the two commanders bear individual criminal responsibility for the alleged crimes. The evidence presented included attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine, including strikes against power plants and substations.