The Second Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for another two officials of russia’s higher military and political leadership.

The warrants pertain to the following individuals:

• army general Sergei Shoigu, former minister of defence of russia, who currently holds the position of secretary of the security council of the aggressor state;
• army general Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the russian armed forces and first deputy minister of defence of russia.

This decision of the International Tribunal was made, among other things, on the basis of the evidence collected by the investigators of the Security Service of Ukraine.

The investigation established that both suspects were involved in war crimes against the civilian population of Ukraine.

It has been documented that at least from 10 October 2022 to 9 March 2023, Shoigu and Gerasimov had regularly ordered massive missile strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities.

At that time, the invaders targeted Ukrainian energy generating enterprises and power plants in various regions of our country.

Dozens of Ukrainian civilians were killed and injured as a result of those attacks, and hundreds of civilian facilities were cut off from electricity during the cold season.

These include schools, kindergartens, hospitals and residential buildings.

Such actions by Shoigu and Gerasimov are classified by the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

According to the investigation, the enemy used cruise missiles, including Kalibr and Kh-101, to carry out the air strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities.

The aggressor’s main attacks were on energy sector enterprises in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

In March this year, based on the SSU’s investigation, the ICC issued arrest warrants for two other russian officials involved in the strikes on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

These officials are:

• commander of the long-range aviation of the russian aerospace forces, lieutenant general Sergei Kobylash;
• commander of the Black Sea fleet of the russian navy, vice admiral Viktor Sokolov.

They carried out the orders of Shoigu and Gerasimov to launch missiles at Ukrainian energy facilities.

The investigations were conducted in cooperation with the Office of the Prosecutor General.