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The World Prison Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and eminent general personnel Valery Gerasimov for alleged global crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The court said on Tuesday that the pair were allegedly responsible for two war crimes: directing attacks on civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects. He is also accused of committing crimes against humanity.
In the same year, Europe’s Court of Justice found Russia guilty of systemic human rights violations in the Crimea annexation since February 2014, marking a victory for Kiev in its first interstate hearing brought against Moscow over the peninsula. Which can pave the way for this. More such examples.
Following the ICC announcement, Russian situation information agency TASS quoted Russia’s Security Council, a federal government body headed by Shoigu, as calling the court’s decision “invalid and void”.
“It is meaningless, because the ICC’s jurisdiction does not extend to Russia, and (the decision) was taken within the framework of the West’s hybrid war against our country,” Tass quoted Frame as saying.
Ukrainian officials welcomed the ICC’s announcement on Tuesday. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the verdict showed that “no military rank or cabinet door can shield Russian criminals from accountability.” The country’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said the ICC’s decision means Ukraine is one step closer to justice.
“Sooner or later, every war criminal will receive just punishment!” he mentioned in a comment posted on his Telegram.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said that Shoigu and Gerasimov were being held “personally responsible”.
“This is an important decision. Everyone will be held responsible for evil,” he said in a comment.
The arrest warrants have put Shoigu and Gerasimov on the ICC’s wanted record, even though it is uncertain whether they will ever be prosecuted.
The court no longer conducts trials in absentia and it is unlikely that they will be passed through Moscow.
Both warrants bring the total number of Russian officials wanted for war crimes to four as the ICC previously issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to send Ukrainian children to Russia .
Based in The Hague, Netherlands and created through a treaty called the Rome Statute, the ICC operates independently. The largest number of countries – 124 of them – are parties to the treaty, although there are some notable exceptions, including the US, Russia and Ukraine.
Under the Rome Statue, any country that is a signatory is obliged to arrest and release anyone dealing with an ICC arrest warrant.
In a separate case on Tuesday, the ECU Human Rights Court ruled unanimously that Russia has violated 11 articles of the ECU human rights convention in Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow after its illegal invasion of the peninsula 10 years ago.
According to court information, they included violations of the rights to date, liberty, security and fair trial, and inhuman or degrading treatment.
The court also found that Russia violated three protocols of the ECU convention: protection of property, right to education and freedom of movement. The Russian Dominion Jurisdiction should safely return prisoners who were taken from Crimea to Russia.
By 2014, Russia was found guilty of one of the largest violations.
Margarita Sokorenko, commissioner of Ukraine’s Justice Ministry’s ECU Human Rights Court, said the ruling “essentially cancels Russia’s decades-old claims that human rights are respected in Crimea.”
Russia has previously denied allegations of human rights violations in Crimea, and was expelled from the Council of Europe in March 2022 following a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In response, Moscow exempted itself from the jurisdiction of the ECU court, and set March 15, 2022 as the upcoming cut-off point, in which it claimed not to trust any judgments made against Russia. Will be done.
Shoigu, one of the Russian nationals wanted by the ICC, is Putin’s longtime best friend who served as Russia’s defense minister for 12 years. He was fired by Putin at the end of the year, replaced by economist Andrey Belousov.
He led a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which miraculously stopped Kiev, but was soon repulsed, exposing the weaknesses of Moscow’s corruption-ridden military. Nonetheless, Shoigu remains a popular baby-kisser in Russia. Having spent twenty years as an extremist minister, he has developed an image of a dignified figure who brings backup when needed.
Gerasimov, meanwhile, has been at the helm of Russia’s militia for more than a decade. He was one of a small team in the country responsible for planning a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was officially appointed as the full commander of the expedition in January 2023.
The ICC said the alleged crimes relate to “a large number of attacks against various power plants and sub-stations” that were carried out by Russia across Ukraine between October 2022 and at least March 2023.
The three-judge panel that ruled on Monday to issue the arrest warrants concluded that Shoigu and Gerasimov ordered measures against civilian targets, a war crime under world humanitarian rules.
The judges also said that although that speed could have hit one of the key targets associated with Russia’s military operation, it was clear that engaging them would cause harm to civilians and that the expected damage would be much greater than that. The army benefited by killing them.
Court prosecutor Karim Khan said in a sobering comment on Tuesday that the Russian campaign at that pace represented “a course of conduct involving multiple commissions of acts against a civilian population.” In such a situation, he said, the activities of Shoigu and Gerasimov could be against the law against humanity.
This designation is reserved for the most serious crimes committed as part of a general, systemic attack directed at civilians.
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