As it follows from a press release dated March 5 from the International Criminal Court (ICC), this body issued arrest warrants for the commander of Russian long-range aviation, Sergei Kobylash, and the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Viktor Sokolov. The warrant was issued “in the context of the situation in Ukraine” for war crimes committed by the defendants from at least October 10, 2022 to March 9, 2023. The essence of the atrocities is characterized by the ICC as war crimes: targeting civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects, as well as crimes against humanity in the form of inhumane acts.
The ICC is advised that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the defendants are individually criminally responsible for the above-mentioned crimes, for ordering the commission of the crimes and for failing to exercise adequate control over the forces under their command. As it follows from the ICC press release, it is about responsibility for missile strikes carried out by forces subordinate to the defendants on the Ukrainian electrical power infrastructure during the specified period.
The ICC stated that the alleged attacks were directed against civilian objects, and “for those objects which at the relevant time could qualify as military objectives”, the expected collateral damage to the civilian population would be clearly excessive compared with the “expected military advantage”. It is a crime against humanity, the ICC added, that the campaign of strikes is described as “conduct involving the multiple commission of acts against a civilian population, pursuant to a state policy” of the aggressor. The contents of the warrants have been declared secret by the ICC to protect witnesses and ensure the security of the investigation, in addition to the information made public, as the Court believes that in this part “public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes”.
Let us recall that from 2022 to the fall of 2023, our Association has repeatedly described the missile strikes carried out by the aggressor’s Black Sea fleet on civilian targets; this information, collected and processed by Professor Boris Babin and by a number of other experts, was transmitted to all authorized international structures and to the maritime administrations of more than a hundred countries; they are also at the disposal of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office.
As Professor Babin has now noted on this occasion, “after the ICC issued arrest warrants for the former (not quite former) commander of the aggressor Black Sea Fleet, Vladimir Sokolov and the “aviator” Sergei Kobylash, it will be very interesting whether the Kremlin will leave them alive”. The expert added that “now the Russian Black Sea Fleet has entered a new page in its “glorious” history: it not only turned out to be quite “alternatively gifted” in measuring losses and “results”, but is also a structure that is officially suspected by the international community as an instrument of committing military crimes”.
Babin added that “the most tragicomic thing is that Sokolov, as all aggressor-controlled “anonymous sources” then stated, was dismissed from the post of commander after the destruction of the “Caesar Kunikov” large landing ship in February. But now the Kremlin is suddenly very inconvenient politically to represent Sokolov as a “former “commander”; because, oddly enough, until the possible “broken blood clot”, the ICC order retained Sokolov’s current position”.
