Lithuania asks ICC to investigate russian attacks on Ukrainian energy sector in winter as crime of genocide

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate russia's systematic attacks on Ukraine's energy, heat and water infrastructure in the dead of winter as a crime of genocide, and to consider issuing new arrest warrants for officials of the aggressor state of russia responsible for the alleged attacks.

This was reported by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry.

"A deliberate, systematic campaign directed against Ukraine's energy, heat and water infrastructure in the dead of winter cannot be classified otherwise than as a deliberate attempt to physically destroy Ukrainians as a national group," Budrys wrote in a letter to ICC prosecutors.

According to the minister, Lithuania believes that these actions by russia in Ukraine can be compared to the crime of genocide and should be investigated as such.

In the letter, Budrys asks ICC prosecutors to consider issuing new arrest warrants for russian officials responsible for the ongoing attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure and expanding the scope of existing arrest warrants to include new international crimes and the crime of genocide.

As a reminder, in March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for russian president vladimir putin. A warrant was also issued for the Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, who kidnapped a child from Donbas.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, as of the morning of January 29, 613 apartment buildings in Kyiv were left without heat.

Meanwhile, due to severe frost and the possibility of russian shelling, an emergency preparedness regime was launched in Lviv.

On January 28, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the aggressor country of russia was preparing to strike again at Ukraine. At the same time, on January 29, Oleksii Honcharenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada, president of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons in PACE, stated that there is allegedly an agreement between Ukraine and the aggressor country of russia to introduce an energy truce, but there is no date for its start.