Ukraine urges ICC to investigate strike on Kyiv children’s hospital as crime against humanity

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Louise Thomas

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Ukraine’s top prosecutor has urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Russia over a missile strike on a children’s hospital that killed or wounded dozens of doctors and civilians.

Prosecutor general Andriy Kostin, who was in The Hague where the ICC is based, for meetings with legal officials, said the strike was worth “lifting” to the court in part because Kyiv seeks to demonstrate the systematic nature of Russia’s attack on civilians.

“For the sake of international justice, cases like the intentional attack on the biggest child hospital in Kyiv (are) worth lifting to the ICC,” he said.

At least 44 people were killed and around 200 wounded by the Russian strikes on Monday in what one United Nations aid worker described as “one of the worst attacks” they had seen since February 2022, when the full-scale invasion began.

The attacks hit cities across the country, killing 10 in Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, but three quarters of the fatalities came from the capital.

The strike on Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in central Kyiv killed two adults and injured around 90 people, according to the city’s military administration, while another 31 died in six other districts of the city.

Ukraine’s health ministry said the children’s toxicology ward was “completely destroyed” and another dozen departments were damaged, forcing hundreds of patients in need of urgent care to relocate for further treatment.  A part of the country’s only oncology and haematology laboratory was also damaged.

In a written response to questions from The Independent, they added that they were aware of several “cases of injuries to children who were operated on by splinters of glass broken by an explosion”.

The ICC does not publicly comment on what it is investigating but confirmed that one of its teams had visited the site of the hospital strike, and it has warned that anyone deemed responsible for attacking civilian sites could be prosecuted. They have issued six arrest warrants for alleged Russian crimes in Ukraine already, including one against president Vladimir Putin.

Mr Kostin said an investigation could help establish a pattern of attacks that show Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

Last month, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russia’s chief security advisor Sergei Shoigu and armed forces chief Valery Gerasimov in relation to alleged attacks on civilians.

Moscow denies attacking the hospital and has blamed Ukrainian anti-missile fire for the destruction at the clinic, which is one of Europe’s largest and treats patients with serious conditions such as cancer and kidney disease.

But a UN rights mission has said there is a “high likelihood” the hospital took a direct hit from a Russian missile, and Ukraine’s security service said it had unequivocal evidence the medical facility was hit by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile.

Mr Kostin said the decision to prosecute lies with the ICC’s prosecutor alone, adding that Ukraine was ready to share any physical evidence or details of its investigation with the court.

“It’s important to show that Russia itself, at the moment, is a criminal state,” he said.