Ukrainian Prosecutor General calls on ICC to investigate Russian attack on Kyiv hospital

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Russian missile attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, he told Reuters on July 11.

Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine on July 8, killing at least 44 people and wounding nearly 200 others. One Russian missile hit Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.

The attack left three people dead, one building destroyed and four others damaged in the hospital complex. In other parts of the capital, 30 people were killed.

“In the interests of international justice, it is worth referring cases such as the deliberate attack on the largest children’s hospital in Kyiv to the ICC,” Kostin told Reuters in The Hague.

If the ICC investigates the hospital attack, it could help identify a pattern of attacks that shows Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Kostin said. Kyiv is ready to provide the court with all evidence and details of its investigation, he added.

A team from the ICC prosecutor’s office visited the site of the attack. While the ICC has not publicly commented on what charges it is investigating, it warned that anyone found responsible for an attack on civilian objects could face criminal prosecution, Reuters wrote.

The Russian military attacked Okhmatdyt with a Kh-101 cruise missile, according to preliminary data provided to the State Security Service (SBU). A law enforcement source told the Kyiv Independent that the missile was fired according to a programmed route.

At the time of the attack, there were over 600 patients and at least as many staff at Okhmatdyt and at the Ukrainian Center for Pediatric Cardiac Surgery located near the hospital.

At the end of June, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of the Russian Security Council, and Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, for war crimes against Ukraine in connection with Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The Hague court also issued arrest warrants in March 2023 against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the forcible transfer of children from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Ground Zero: How a Ukrainian boy with cancer and his mother survived the Russian missile attack on a children’s hospital

At around 10:30 a.m. on July 8, just minutes before a Russian missile hit Kyiv’s largest children’s hospital, four-year-old Dima Dorontsov was waiting for his last dose of chemotherapy in the oncology ward with his mother, Viktoria Zavoloka, by his side. He has spent much of his time