The former head of Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, was recently killed by an electric shock as he attempted to repair a substation that had been damaged by a Russian attack.
A company statement said 47-year-old Oleksiy Brecht died while “striving to bring light back to people,” amid a brutal campaign against Ukraine’s energy sector that has left up to a million people shivering in subzero temperatures.
On the day of Brecht’s death, January 21, a German government spokesman declared that Russia was “using the freezing cold as a weapon” and that “these [attacks] are war crimes.” The next day, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski added his voice, saying “deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure are a war crime.”
But the wheels of justice are not moving swiftly.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has made four indictments related to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine's energy sector, which have occurred every winter since it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The first arrest warrants were in March 2024, when charges against Russian Air Force commander Sergei Kobylash and Black Sea naval fleet commander Viktor Sokolov were made public.
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ICC Issues Arrest Warrants For Top Russian Commanders
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the two suspects bear responsibility for missile strikes carried out by the forces under their command against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure,” the ICC said at the time.
In June the same year, former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and army commander Valery Gerasimov were also indicted -- again, among other things, in relation to attacks on energy infrastructure.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicted in 2023 for the war crime of abducting children from occupied areas of Ukraine, has not been charged in relation to his country’s sustained campaign.
Why Hasn't Putin Been Indicted?
"The International Criminal Court doesn't need to reveal all of the things that it's got. It can keep its powder dry in different ways. One is by having sealed warrants,” Steve Crawshaw, author of Prosecuting The Powerful -- War Crimes And The Battle For Justice, told RFE/RL.
"From the court's perspective, it has nothing to lose by holding back. Those who want the great headlines may be saying, 'Why haven't we got this? Why haven't we got that?' From the court's perspective, we just need to move where we are feeling very confident," he added.
Additional charges can be brought later, after a defendant has been brought into custody.
"Each [member] of the leadership can be, in common sense terms, perceived to bear responsibility. So, in a way, what these others, Sergei Kobylash and Valery Gerasimov and others, what is accused against them could arguably be part of what Putin [faces] if and…when Putin were to be in a tribunal," added Crawshaw, who has held senior roles at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Ukraine has launched drone strikes on Russia’s oil industry. But political leaders, rights’ groups, and international lawyers have argued that these attacks are fundamentally different to Russia’s.
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What Do Russia's Burning Refineries Mean For The War In Ukraine?
“Russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure amount to war crimes under international law. Ukraine’s strikes, by contrast, are directed at military-relevant facilities used for generating revenue for Russia’s war machine, while seeking to limit the civilian impact,” a group of international lawyers wrote in November 2025.
They added that there was a “legal and moral asymmetry” and that “Ukraine has not targeted civilian power plants, residential heating infrastructure, nuclear facilities, or gas pipelines.”
Crawshaw said more arrest warrants against Russian officials may follow in 2026, possibly for crimes such as torture or executions of prisoners of war, or starvation of civilians during the attack on Mariupol in 2022.
A spokesman for the ICC prosecutor's office told RFE/RL that it was "working closely on the ground with survivors, impacted communities, and Ukrainian authorities to collect evidence in order to build robust cases."
A Special Tribunal
But there certainly will not be an indictment for aggression, “the original crime” of launching the full-scale invasion that led to all the other alleged war crimes. This is because, for reasons relating to its statutes, the ICC cannot bring this charge against Putin.
It is also a reason why there have been moves to establish a separate Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials began pushing for this in early 2022, gaining European Union support later that year, and overcoming resistance from the ICC. In 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted unanimously to set up the tribunal.
But it is still not up and running.
“There is still no real progress on establishing a Special Tribunal for Russian aggression against Ukraine, against the Ukrainian people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted during a speech at Davos, Switzerland, on January 22.
“We have an agreement, it's true. Many meetings have taken place, but still Europe hasn't reached even the point of having a home for the tribunal with staff and actual work happening inside. What's missing? Time or political will?” he added.
The Council of Europe pointed out that things were now moving. Two days after Zelenskyy’s speech, funding worth 10 million euros ($12 million) was agreed for an “advance team” to “prepare institutional, logistical, and organizational foundations” for the tribunal.
“The signing of the agreement with the EU on the establishment of the advance team is an illustration of the political will that is there to move the project forward,” the Council of Europe’s Media Department told RFE/RL.