Ukraine: A War Against Civilians
Ukrainian investigators and international lawyers are demanding new arrest warrants over Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
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For weeks, Kyiv resident Yana Tanchak has been obsessed with trying to keep her family warm. In late January, after another Russian strike on the Ukrainian capital, the heating in the apartment she shared with her husband Bohdan and their 20-month-old daughter Solomiia failed.
“Because of the severe frost in Kyiv, the entire building’s water system has frozen solid,” Tanchak told IWPR. “It’s a very serious problem. There is no one to carry out repairs right now. We don’t know what will happen to the utilities.”
Hoping to find some respite, the family moved in with Yana’s parents in another part of the city. But after a February 3 Russian strike, the heating in that apartment went out too.
“We’re covering ourselves with blankets and turning on space heaters whenever the power is on,” Yana said, adding, “The kindergarten where we used to take our child has no heating either.”
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has classified Russia’s systematic destruction of Ukraine’s energy system as a crime against humanity under Article 442-1 of the country’s criminal code.
“This is the systematic creation of living conditions aimed at destroying part of the population,” the SBU stated on January 15. “Since the beginning of this year’s heating season, the SBU has documented 256 Russian air attacks on our state’s energy facilities and heat supply systems. Specifically, from the beginning of October 2025 to the present, the occupiers have deliberately attacked 11 hydroelectric power plants and 45 of our state’s largest combined heat and power plants. Additionally, 49 precision air strikes were carried out against thermal power plants and 151 against electrical substations in various regions of Ukraine.”
Ukrainian investigators note that the majority of Russia’s attacks this winter have targeted heat and power generation facilities in Kyiv city and the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Chernihiv regions. These strikes have led to widespread power and heating outages and have disrupted water supplies to the homes of millions of Ukrainian civilians.
Since 2022, the Russian army has systematically struck Ukraine’s energy facilities. Following each attack, Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors document the aftermath and launch investigations under Article 438 of the criminal code of Ukraine, which covers violations of the laws and customs of war. Hundreds of such criminal proceedings have been opened into these attacks on energy infrastructure.
For instance, on July 30, 2024, Russian Colonel Oleg Skitsky, commander of the 121st Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Russian Air Force, was charged in absentia with planning and executing missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian and energy infrastructure.
The notice of suspicion alone lists nine instances where missile-carrying aircrafts under his command conducted strikes on energy facilities. According to the document, “Skitsky was tasked with ensuring that the forces and assets of the 121st Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment under his command delivered systematic and large-scale missile strikes against populated areas throughout Ukraine, particularly targeting critical civilian infrastructure such as Ukraine’s energy facilities (power substations, hydroelectric power plants and others), which are vital for the survival of the civilian population.”
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over persistent attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure that should be investigated as genocide.
“A deliberate, systematic campaign targeting Ukraine’s energy, heating and water infrastructure in the midst of winter cannot be classified as anything but an intentional attempt to physically destroy Ukrainians as a national group,” Budrys wrote in a letter to ICC prosecutors on January 30.
The ICC confirmed it had received the submission but declined to provide further comment.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence has regularly acknowledged conducting strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, maintaining that they are legitimate military targets.
The ICC holds a different view, having already issued arrest warrants for similar attacks on March 5, 2024, for Sergey Kobylash, who at the time commanded Russia’s Long-Range Aviation, and Viktor Sokolov, then-commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity for missile strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure that caused excessive harm to Ukrainian civilians.
The ICC also issued arrest warrants on June 24, 2024, for former Russian Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov concerning missile strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the alleged strikes were directed against civilian objects and for those installations that may have qualified as military objectives at the relevant time, the expected incidental civilian harm and damage would have been clearly excessive to the anticipated military advantage,” the court stated.
Ukrainian human rights defenders are also preparing their own submissions to the ICC and UN institutions.
Kateryna Rashevska, an expert on international justice and legal analysis with the Regional Centre for Human Rights (RCHR), told IWPR that her organisation was documenting the significant harmful impact on children’s education and health as a consequence of Russia’s deliberate winter strikes on energy infrastructure
RCHR research in 20 regions of Ukraine and the city of Kyiv had revealed a dismal picture, she continued.
“Over 60 per cent of children and adolescents in this survey reported a clinically significant deterioration in their health, ranging from the common cold to complications of chronic diseases, such as asthma, or inflammation of various lymph nodes and different types of dermatitis caused by the cold temperature,” Rashevska said. “Conditions such as cold urticaria were also reported and children experienced flare-ups of psoriasis.”
The RCHR classifies Russia’s actions as war crimes and crimes against humanity and will call on the ICC to issue new arrest warrants for Russia’s current Minister of Defence, Andrei Belousov, and the commander of the Aerospace Forces, Viktor Afzalov.
“We also have a very ambitious goal,” Rashevska continued. “We believe that the unlawful deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children – the crimes cited in the 2023 ICC arrest warrant for Putin – do not reflect the full scale of the unlawful acts for which he bears personal responsibility. As the supreme commander-in-chief of Russia’s armed forces, he was also involved in the decision-making regarding these attacks. We are demanding that the charges on his arrest warrant be expanded.”
Wayne Jordash, the president of Global Rights Compliance (GRC), stressed that any legal qualification must be grounded in evidence.
“As a lawyer and prosecutor, I examine the facts first and only then determine the legal classification,” he told IWPR. “There is no doubt that crimes are being committed — civilians and civilian infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. The key question is whether the nature and scale of these acts amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, or whether the specific intent required for genocide — the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Ukrainian national group — can be established. When a persecutory campaign aimed at subjugating a population and extinguishing its identity continues to escalate, it can cross the line into genocide.”
Jordash argued that Ukraine may be witnessing one of the broadest ranges of crimes against humanity seen in modern conflicts.
“I have worked on conflicts in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, and there is no doubt in my mind that the crimes being committed in Ukraine represent an extraordinarily wide spectrum of persecution,” he said. “We are talking about murder, unlawful detention, torture, sexual violence, various forms of physical harm, and the deliberate targeting of schools, hospitals and civilian infrastructure. These are crimes against humanity — and crimes against humanity are often just as grave as genocide, if not worse. It is unwise to suggest that if something is not legally classified as genocide, it is somehow less serious. When you reach this level of systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity, you are dealing with the most serious crimes under international law.”
