International Court rejects most of Ukraine's case against

Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw.

In the same judgment, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Russia had violated an anti-discrimination treaty by failing to provide adequate support for Ukrainian language teaching in Crimea after annexing the peninsula in 2014.

These decisions pose some legal hurdles for Kyiv. The court rejected Ukraine's request for compensation, and only ordered Russia to comply with the agreement.

Ukrainian representative Anton Korynevych emphasized that this ruling is of great importance to Kyiv because it has determined that Russia violated international law.

“This is the first time Russia has been officially and legally recognized as an international violator.”

Ukraine filed a lawsuit with the ICJ, or International Court of Justice, in 2017, accusing Russia of violating the anti-terrorism treaty by funding a number of pro-Russian separatist organizations in Ukraine.

The court's judges said Moscow had breached a UN anti-terrorism treaty by failing to investigate legitimate allegations that funds had been sent from Russia to Ukraine and may have been sent to finance terrorist activities.

The 16-judge panel ordered Russia to investigate legitimate allegations of funding terrorism but rejected Ukraine's request to order Russia to pay damages.

The court refused to sentence the charges surrounding the downing of flight MH17, stating that the terrorism financing offences only applied to financial investments and cash, and not to the provision of weapons or training as alleged by Ukraine.

Ukraine has accused Russia of supplying the missile system used in the downing of flight MH17, but has not made allegations of financial support surrounding the incident.

In a court hearing in The Hague in June 2023, Russia rejected Ukraine's accusations that its government had funded and controlled pro-Russian separatist organizations in the east, calling the allegations fictitious and "blatant lies".

In the seven-year-old case, Kyiv accuses Russia of arming and funding pro-Russian forces, including the rebels who shot down MH17 in July 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

In November 2022, a Dutch court sentenced two Russians and a Ukrainian in absentia to life in prison for their involvement in the case.

In Crimea, Ukraine asserted that Russia had attempted to eradicate the indigenous culture of the Tatars and Ukrainians. The court dismissed the Tatars’ accusations but found that Russia had not provided sufficient support for Ukrainian language teaching.

Court judgments are final and not subject to appeal, but the court has no means of enforcing them.

On Friday, the International Court will hear a case in which Ukraine accuses Moscow of abusing the 1948 Genocide Convention to justify its extraordinary military operation on February 24, 2022.

Nguyen Quang Minh (according to Reuters)

Source: https://www.nguoiduatin.vn/toa-an-quoc-te-bac-bo-phan-lon-cao-buoc-trong-vu-an-cua-ukraine-nham-v-a648325.html