The International Criminal Court said on Tuesday that it had issued arrest warrants for two top Russian security officials over strikes against civilian targets, delivering a stinging, if largely symbolic, condemnation of the Kremlin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
The Hague-based court accused Russia’s most senior military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, and a senior member of the country’s Security Council, Sergei K. Shoigu, of directing a campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s power plants in the winter of 2022.
“The expected incidental civilian harm and damage would have been clearly excessive to the anticipated military advantage,” the court said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to the strikes. It issued the warrants on Monday.
Russia’s Security Council denounced the warrants, calling them “pathetic” examples of “the West’s hybrid war against our country,” according to comments provided to the Moscow-based Interfax news agency.
Ukrainians applauded the court’s actions even if few expected to see the Russian military commanders in the dock at The Hague anytime soon. Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, called the decision “another significant step toward ensuring full accountability of the aggressor.”
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said it demonstrated that those “responsible for evil” would face consequences.
General Gerasimov and Mr. Shoigu, who until recently served as Russia’s defense minister, are longtime loyalists of President Vladimir V. Putin and are considered to be the architects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Their ambitious plans to take Ukraine’s capital in several days at the start of the war failed spectacularly at the cost of at least tens of thousands of Russian soldiers’ lives, bogging down the two nations in a war of attrition.
The failure of the initial thrust has led the Russian military to attempt to subdue Ukraine by strangling its economy, a campaign that included systematic attacks against energy infrastructure during the coldest months of the year.
Despite Russia’s faltering initial performance in the war, Mr. Putin kept General Gerasimov and Mr. Shoigu at the forefront of the war effort for the first two years of the invasion.
General Gerasimov, who serves as the head of the Russian equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was promoted to lead Russia’s forces in Ukraine in January of 2023, a position that he occupies to this day.
Mr. Shoigu, however, was eventually fired in a government reshuffle that Mr. Putin carried out last month after winning a rubber stamp re-election.
Several protégés of Mr. Shoigu were detained on corruption-related charges or lost their jobs in a subsequent purge of the Defense Ministry, a campaign widely seen as the Kremlin’s indirect condemnation of Mr. Shoigu’s performance in the war.
Mr. Shoigu had served as Russia’s defense minister for 12 years, becoming one of Mr. Putin’s longest-serving ministers. After losing his post, he was given a lower-profile job at the Security Council, the country’s defense advisory body.
General Gerasimov and Mr. Shoigu are the latest Russian officials to be charged by the court. Last year, it issued arrest warrants for Mr. Putin and Russia’s children rights’ ombudswoman, saying they bore individual criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia has said that it does not recognize the arrest warrants, or court’s jurisdiction, and that it denies war crimes. This makes it highly unlikely that Mr. Shoigu and Gen. Gerasimov will be taken into custody in the foreseeable future.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Marc Santora contributed reporting.
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