Global Courant
The Hague the Netherlands — Russia on Thursday urged judges at the United Nations Supreme Court to dismiss a case brought by Ukraine against Moscow over its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the arming of rebels in eastern Ukraine before the large-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022.
“We appear before you today to show that Ukraine’s application should be rejected because it has no legal basis whatsoever. Nor does it have any factual evidence to support it,” Russian ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin told the judges of the International Court of Justice.
Shulgin also used the hearing to accuse Ukraine of responsibility for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Ukraine accused Russia of blowing up the facility, which was controlled by Moscow forces, while Russia said Ukraine bombed it.
“The Kiev regime not only launched massive artillery attacks on the dam on the night of June 6, but also deliberately forced the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir to a critical level by opening the valves of the hydroelectric power station,” Shulgin said.
Lawyers for Ukraine said at the opening of hearings in the case Tuesday that Russia funded a “campaign of intimidation and terror” by rebels in eastern Ukraine from 2014 and sought to replace Crimea’s multi-ethnic community with “discriminatory Russian nationalism”. “.
Ukraine filed the case in 2017, asking the world court to order Moscow to pay reparations for attacks and crimes, such as the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by a Russian missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed rebels on July 17, 2014. killing all 298 passengers and crew.
The Ukrainian government claims that Russia has violated two treaties: the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Responding to the terrorist financing allegation, Michael Swainston, a British lawyer representing Russia, said Ukraine’s legal team has not determined that actions by pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine could be considered terrorism.
“It is imperative to distinguish between terrorists who deliberately target civilians and soldiers who foresee that civilians will be killed as collateral damage while hitting a military target,” Swainston said. “The former is a war crime, while the latter represents lawful conduct. And of course soldiers make mistakes too.”
He also disputed that the downing of MH17 could be considered an act of terrorism and sought to undermine the findings of a Dutch court that last year convicted two Russians and a pro-Moscow Ukrainian of multiple counts of murder for their role in the downing of the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Lumburg flees.
The court in The Hague ruled after months of hearings and years of international investigation that the Boeing 777 had been shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile system brought to Ukraine from a Russian military base and later returned to the base.
“There was no Russian Buk. No Buk came from Russia. There was no crew for a Buk from Russia,” Swainston said, calling the evidence on which the Dutch court relied in its verdicts “unsourced digital nonsense.”
Another member of the Russian legal team, Kirill Udovichenko, told the court that it was “undisputed” that the conflict in Ukraine “resulted in the loss of civilian life. However, none of these tragic events create plausible grounds for terrorism or terrorism.” financing” as defined in the treaty.
After hearings that conclude next week, judges will take months to reach a decision in the case. The court’s rulings are final and legally binding.
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