Ukraine says Russia is illegally targeting the power grid. Here's what the law says

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Russian missiles and drones have pounded Ukraine’s energy grid in recent weeks, plunging people into frozen darkness in one of the country’s coldest winters on record.

Ukraine has accused Russia of illegally targeting power infrastructure during the war to deny civilians light, heating and running water.

"Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people is more important to Russia than diplomacy,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday, on the eve of a new round of talks about ending the conflict and as temperatures in Kyiv hovered around minus 20 C (minus 3 F).

Russia says its attacks are a legitimate part of its military campaign against its neighbor. Moscow's invasion of Ukraine itself is widely regarded as an illegal act of aggression.

So, are attacks on energy installations allowed during war?

Combatants can legally target a power grid if the attack “directly affects a valid military target” — but they cannot cause excessive civilian casualties, said David Crane, former chief prosecutor at the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone.

In the case of Russia's attacks on Ukraine, “the indiscriminate and widespread targeting does not come close to what is legal,” he said in an emailed response to questions from The Associated Press.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says that parts of energy systems providing essential services to civilians “are in principle civilian objects, and as such are protected against direct attack and reprisals as well as incidental harm.”

Pretrial judges from the International Criminal Court, in fact, issued arrest warrants in 2024 for top Russian military brass and the country’s former defense minister for their alleged involvement in missile strikes targeting electricity infrastructure.

In announcing warrants for former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s chief military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the court said that judges found “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.”

Russia is not a member of the court, rejects its jurisdiction, and refuses to extradite suspects to face justice in the ICC’s courtrooms in The Hague, Netherlands.

The Russian military has repeatedly said that it has targeted energy facilities and other infrastructure that support Ukrainian military industries and armed forces. It has denied targeting residential areas despite daily evidence to the contrary.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Wednesday that “our military is striking the targets that they believe are associated with the military complex of the Kyiv regime, the operation is continuing.”

Kyiv accuses Russia of seeking to wear down Ukrainians’ appetite for the fight by inflicting grinding hardship on civilians forced to live in dark, freezing homes.

Authorities say Russia has tried to cripple Ukraine's electricity network by targeting substations, transformers, turbines and generators at power plants. Ukraine’s largest private power company, DTEK, said that this week's overnight attack was the ninth major assault on the company’s thermal power plants since October.

Ukraine’s energy sector has suffered more than $20 billion in direct war damage, according to a joint estimate by the World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations.