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Kyiv ICC office opens as Sevastopol is struck
Summary
A look back at 14 September 2023, when the International Criminal Court opened a field office in Kyiv, a day after claims of strikes on Russian naval targets in Sevastopol.
What did a single day in the war look like when justice and military action ran side by side? On 14 September 2023, the International Criminal Court opened a field office in Kyiv as part of its war crimes investigations in Ukraine. It became the largest ICC office outside its headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands.
A court on the ground
The Kyiv office placed the court's investigative work in Ukraine itself, rather than only at its seat in the Netherlands. The scale mattered: no other ICC field presence outside The Hague was larger.
Strikes the day before
The opening followed a day of military reports. On 13 September 2023, Russia said at least 24 people were injured in Ukrainian missile strikes on Sevastopol and that two boats were damaged. Ukraine claimed to have destroyed the Russian landing ship Minsk, the submarine B-237 and a KC-701-class patrol boat of the Black Sea Fleet.
B-237, named Rostov-na-Donu, is a Project 636.3 diesel-electric attack submarine. It was commissioned on 26 December 2014 and joined Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
On the same day, the head of Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, said Ukraine had launched a drone strike on Enerhodar, near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and that all six drones were destroyed. These were claims made by the parties at the time.
Two tracks of the war
The reports from 13 and 14 September 2023 show two tracks running together: continued strikes involving the Black Sea Fleet and areas near a nuclear plant, and the establishment of a permanent international legal presence in the Ukrainian capital.
