The Butcher

Russian war criminal Surovikin must face punishment for his crimes

According to official Kremlin statements, the Russian Federation continues to conduct a so-called "special military operation" in Ukraine.

However, Moscow's actual battlefield and rear-guard strategy demonstrates otherwise: terror against the civilian population is not an incidental byproduct of hostilities, but a deliberately chosen strategy.

The embodiment of this doctrine of mass destruction is Army General Sergey Surovikin: despite a long trail of war crimes stretching from the Middle East to Eastern Europe, the architect of Russian campaigns targeting critical infrastructure remains conspicuously absent from official indictments by key international judicial bodies.

The Syrian proving ground: testing the scorched-earth strategy

Surovikin's reputation as a commander who does not hesitate to inflict mass civilian casualties was forged during his campaigns in Syria.

Commanding the Russian grouping from April to December 2017, and again from January to April 2019, he earned the monikers "Syrian Butcher" and "General Armageddon."

The general's Syrian campaign was marked by systematic violations of international humanitarian law: throughout 2017, the repeated use of cluster and incendiary munitions by the Russian Armed Forces was documented, including ZAB incendiary submunitions in the Saraqib area in April of that year, resulting in indiscriminate civilian casualties and fires in residential areas.

The issue of accountability for chemical attacks warrants separate assessment: on April 4, 2017, Syrian government forces launched a sarin attack on Khan Shaykhun, killing at least 90 people, including children.

While direct responsibility for using chemical weapons rests with the Syrian regime, this crime took place during Surovikin's first deployment, while he commanded the Russian military contingent supporting Bashar al-Assad's forces.

The evidentiary record regarding direct Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure is even more comprehensive.

On November 13, 2017, Russian aircraft dropped unguided bombs on a central marketplace in Atareb, killing 84 people, including five children and six women. During an offensive in Idlib province in September 2017, six hospitals and five civil defense centers were destroyed or damaged, killing over 150 civilians and severely crippling access to medical care.

Human Rights Watch's report "Targeting Life in Idlib," published on October 15, 2020, meticulously documented 46 Russian and Syrian strikes between March 2019 and March 2020 on sites where no lawful military targets were identified: these strikes claimed at least 224 civilian lives, damaged 12 medical facilities and 10 schools, and forced the displacement of roughly 1.4 million people.

Human rights advocates explicitly named Sergey Surovikin as one of the commanders who should be investigated for command responsibility regarding these war crimes.

Exporting terror: Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian targets

Upon assuming command of the Joint Group of Russian Forces in Ukraine (from October 8, 2022, to January 11, 2023), Surovikin scaled up his Syrian playbook.

The massive aerial campaign targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, launched on October 10, 2022, was an attempt to break Ukraine's capacity to sustain the war effort and exert unbearable pressure on society.

According to assessments by the Institute for the Study of War, this strategy suffered a military defeat, bringing nothing but hardship to the civilian population.

Just two days after his appointment, Surovikin unleashed terror: strikes on Kyiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Zhytomyr struck residential neighborhoods, transit hubs, and power infrastructure.

In the capital alone, 11 people were killed and 89 injured that day as missiles hit university buildings, a public park, and a pedestrian bridge. By early December 2022, strikes on the energy grid and related bombardments had killed at least 77 civilians and injured 272, leading a UN international commission to confirm that the systematic nature of these attacks warrants evaluation as potential crimes against humanity.

Specific tragedies from the outset of the full-scale invasion underscore the indiscriminate nature of Surovikin's command strategy:

• On November 23, 2022, a Russian missile struck residential apartment buildings in Vyshhorod, killing 7 people and injuring 35, including six children.
• That same night, a missile destroyed a maternity ward in Vilniansk, taking the life of a two-day-old infant.
• On December 16, 2022, a strike on a three-story residential building in Kryvyi Rih killed 4 people, including a child.

Russia's strategy continues to escalatingly evolve

As noted in our study on the phenomenon of Daylight Terror, strikes against rear cities are intended to paralyze economic life. According to a report by The Telegraph, the Russian president ordered Surovikin to destroy bridges in Kyiv.

These transit arteries serve vital humanitarian functions, enabling emergency services and the delivery of essential supplies. Deliberately targeting precision weapons at such infrastructure to demoralize society constitutes a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Enlisting a general with this profile signals the Kremlin's willingness to resort to the most ruthless methods of warfare.

Legal anomaly: sanctioned without an ICC arrest warrant

Despite an extensive body of evidence, Sergey Surovikin is still absent from the list of Russian generals wanted under International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants.

This situation appears paradoxical given the ICC's existing legal assessment of the Russian campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure: in 2024, the Court issued arrest warrants for Lieutenant General Sergey Kobylash and Admiral Viktor Sokolov (erroneously named Vokolov in some sources), and later for Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov for directing attacks at civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm.

Nevertheless, Surovikin's culpability has been recognized through international sanction mechanisms. The EU included him in its sanctions list in 2022 specifically for the large-scale air strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure under his command.

Similar measures were taken by the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, and Japan.

Documented facts of mass strikes on civilian targets in Syria and Ukraine, alongside evidence of direct orders to destroy Kyiv's critical infrastructure, provide more than sufficient grounds for the ICC to issue an arrest warrant.

Including Sergey Surovikin among those indicted by the ICC is an imperative step to ensure international justice upholds accountability and puts an end to impunity for using terror as a primary instrument of Russian foreign policy.