Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin accused an unnamed Russian Air Force commander of ordering a devastating air strike on a children's hospital in Kyiv in July, during a September 10 visit to the scene of the tragedy alongside the International Criminal Court's (ICC) visiting top prosecutor.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan told journalists near the heavily damaged Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital that a Kh-101 cruise missile appeared to have been identified as the projectile in the attack.
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But Khan stopped short of assigning culpability for the bombing, which killed dozens of people and shocked the international community despite two years of scenes of suffering and death from Russia's grinding 2-year-old invasion.
Khan is in Ukraine to bolster his intergovernmental court's pursuit of justice for alleged Russian war crimes that have produced international warrants for senior Russian leaders all the way up to President Vladimir Putin.
Kostin hinted at the identity of the Russian commander that Kyiv believes ordered the bombardment that struck Okhmatdyt only by saying the ICC had already issued an international arrest warrant for the suspect.
The ICC agreed in March to Khan's request for warrants over unspecified energy and other attacks against Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash, whom it identified as "a lieutenant general in the Russian armed forces who at the relevant time was commander of the long-range aviation of the Aerospace Force," and Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov, "an admiral in the Russian Navy, who at the relevant time was commander of the Black Sea Fleet."
"We are continuing the investigation to find other people responsible for the strike on Okhmatdyt," Kostin said on September 10.
Kostin added that the Kh-101 cruise missile that struck Okhmatdyt had been fired from a Russian bomber.
Khan has homed in on possible war crimes since early in the full-scale invasion, announcing an investigation in March 2022 of potential crimes spanning back beyond Russia's covert invasion of Ukraine in early 2014.
He and other ICC officials have made multiple visits to Ukraine since February 2022.
In February 2023, Khan launched criminal warrants for Putin and Russia's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia from occupied areas of Ukraine.
The ICC has since issued the Kobylash and Sokolov warrants for actions that it said constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Russia has denied targeting civilians despite near-constant attacks on Ukrainian population centers.
Moscow is not a party to the 1998 Rome Statute that established the ICC and has accused the court of being a "puppet body" serving narrow Western interests.
Ukraine is also not among the 120-plus Rome Statute signatories, but Kyiv has accepted ICC jurisdiction in past cases on its territory.
SEE ALSO: Explainer: Putin's Mongolia Visit Shows Limits Of International Criminal CourtOther targets of ICC warrants include Israel's leadership and current and former leaders of Hamas, the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist organization whose incursion from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on October 7 killed at least 1,200 people, many of them civilians, sparking a yearlong Israeli military response that has devastated Gaza and its residents, and threatened a broader conflict.
In addition to pursuing senior Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes, Khan has sought warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yaov Gallant over the Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip where 2 million Palestinians resided.
Armenia became the 124th state party to the Rome Statute in February, months after archfoe Azerbaijan's lightning offensive forced the capitulation of ethnic Armenian forces who had controlled the internationally recognized Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh for decades.
The Azerbaijani takeover prompted some 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee the region and elicited accusations in Yerevan of war crimes.