ICC Issues Arrest Order Against Two Generals, Kremlin: We Don't Recognize It

Dmitry Peskov. (Wikimedia Commons/have a dream

JAKARTA - Russia will act in accordance with its position as an unrelated party in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), after the court based in The Hague, the Netherlands issued an arrest warrant for two of its senior generals.

The two generals in question are the Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces Long-Range Aviation Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and the Commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet Admiral Viktor Sokolov.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was not a party to the statute, so it would not recognize any decisions issued by the ICC.

"We don't participate in the Statute, we don't admit it. So, we treat such a decision properly," Peskov said, quoted from TASS March 6.

"This is not the first decision (by the ICC on Russia)," Peskov said, noting "various closed processes (which are not transparent) are ongoing" at the ICC.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said the arrest warrant was only aimed at discrediting Russia.

"The latest fake emissions from these organs have no power for us and are legally insignificant," Zakharova told reporters.

As previously reported, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for two Russian generals, saying there was a plausible reason to believe the two were responsible for "the missile attacks carried out by troops under their command of Ukraine's electric infrastructure from October 10, 2022 to at least March 9, 2023.

"All wars have rules. The rules tie everyone without exception", said ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan.

The ICC on Tuesday said the attack on Ukraine's power grid caused losses and damage to civilians that clearly exceeded the expected military gains.

Prosecutor Khan visited Ukraine in March last year to investigate a campaign of Russian missile and drone attacks against power plants and other infrastructure, killing hundreds of civilians and causing millions of people to lose electricity or water.

Geneva Conventions and additional protocols set up by international courts state that parties involved in military conflict must differentiate between civilian objects and military targets and that attacks on civilian objects are prohibited.

Prosecutors of the ICC also want the indictment to call the attack not only a war crime, but also a crime against humanity because they say the attack is part of a state policy that carried out widespread attacks on civilians.

This is the second arrest warrant for Russian officials on war in Ukraine. In March last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Presidents Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova on charges of war crimes related to the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Moscow denies war crimes in Ukraine and has rejected a warrant to arrest previous ICC war crimes as part of a biased Western campaign to discredit Russia.

Russian officials said the warrant had little impact on the real world because Moscow was not a member of the court and neither did other major countries, such as the United States and China.