During the night of March 7, Russian forces carried out a concerted bombing campaign against Ukraine’s energy facilities. The acts were widely condemned by the international community, including U.S. President Donald Trump, who wrote on social media that he was “strongly considering large scale sanctions” based on the attack and urged both parties to the negotiating table. At the same time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is a legitimate target because it is “linked with Ukraine’s military industrial complex and weapons production.”
Trump was right to call out Russia’s attack and threaten sanctions, for several reasons. First, in diplomatic terms it created at least a slight veneer of even-handedness after his dressing down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House last week, as well as his seeming alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin in what is clearly a war of aggression in which Putin has committed the majority of war crimes. But second, international law demands calling out this particular conduct as worthy of reproach, because contrary to what Peskov claimed, a country’s energy infrastructure does not become a legitimate military target just because it supports both civilian and military uses.
International humanitarian law draws a clear distinction between civilian objects such as schools and hospitals, and military objectives that are meant to make an “effective contribution to military action.” While the law is ambiguous in situations where a civilian object is being used in such a way as to make a direct military contribution to war, even then targeting of that object is subject to the principle of proportionality, by which harm to civilians must be weighed against military necessity. Moreover, targeting civilian objects for the purpose of terrorizing civilians is a war crime.