Ukraine is claiming about $67 billion in lost assets.
KYIV – From Paris to Strasbourg, and Stockholm to London, Ukraine is amassing lawsuits and other legal claims against Russia while stepping up diplomatic efforts to further ostracize its belligerent neighbor.
Earlier this month, Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko said Kyiv is preparing cases against about 20 Russian officials and generals at The Hague’s International Criminal Court for annexing Crimea and waging war in eastern Ukraine that has entered its third year and killed nearly 10,000 people.
Speaking to the Financial Times in a story published on September 12, Mr. Lutsenko said the “fate of Slobodan Milosevic” awaits the Russians – a reference to the former Yugoslav president who stood trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes at The Hague before dying in his prison cell in 2006.
This week Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Ukraine will seek justice at an international court after a Russian guard boat violated Ukrainian territorial waters in the Black Sea. Citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Mr. Klimkin said the lawsuit “contains such fundamental issues as the use of maritime space, infringements on environmental safety and also cultural heritage facilities.”
And Russia’s September 18 State Duma elections should not be recognized, stated President Petro Poroshenko this week, because voting will take place on the illegally annexed Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
“Ukraine is obliged to do everything to hang Russia on the hook for the illegitimate elections to the State Duma,” said Taras Berezovets, the CEO of the Fund for National Strategies policy center. “The legal claims are like multiple mosquito bites on Russia designed to create judicial turmoil… the Ukrainian government is right to declare the entire Russian legislative election illegitimate because it directly violates the 1949 Geneva Convention.”
Kyiv is also trying to keep Russia out of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading human rights body that oversees the European Court of Human Rights. Moscow was stripped of voting and participation rights at the assembly’s governing bodies in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea.
After several Russian lawmakers said that a delegation may return to the assembly following this month’s Duma elections, Mr. Klimkin said Ukraine may boycott the human rights body.
“We will consider various options, to the point of non-participation in the PACE. Of course, I cannot tell this to Ukrainian MPs, this would be their sovereign decision, but I will advise them to take very radical steps,” Klimkin said on September 13, cited by UNIAN news agency.
Sanctions expanded
Also this month, the U.S. and European Union expanded sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian entities and individuals over the annexation of Crimea and the ongoing war in the Donbas. The Council of the European Union extended asset freezes and travel bans on people and entities said to be “responsible for undermining the territorial integrity or sovereignty of Ukraine” until March 15, 2017. The measures followed the U.S. move to add 37 new people and entities to its list in order to cover Russia’s attempt to circumvent existing sanctions and included seven firms involved in the construction of the Kerch Bridge between Russia and Crimea.
Meanwhile, on September 5, Ukraine added 259 people and 46 firms to its sanctions list on Russia and extended sanctions against 388 individuals and 105 entities, according to First Deputy Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv.
The Kremlin has felt the restrictive measures, which include losing access to Western capital markets and which are compounded by its undiversified economy, which relies on the sale of oil whose global prices have dipped below budget forecasts. Russia’s economy thus has plunged nearly $1 trillion since 2013 to $1.33 trillion last year, representing a 40-percent decline. Output this year is slated to fall an additional 1.8 percent with the poverty rate rising to 14.2 percent, according to the World Bank.
In turn, Moscow has retaliated.
Arrest warrants have been put out for key Ukrainian officials, such as the Ukrainian defense and internal affairs ministers, as well as others, including billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky who was the governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and prevented the spread of pro-Russian separatism into his Donbas-neighboring region.
Russia also embargoed a slew of Ukrainian goods as well as those originating from the EU and put many Americans on travel-ban lists.
Evidence of Russia’s hand
Part of Mr. Lutsenko’s evidence of Russia orchestrating the mass uprisings across southeastern Ukraine that preceded the armed insurrection in the Donbas stems from phone recordings of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Sergey Glazyev, a native of Zaporizhia.
In August, Mr. Lutsenko’s office released intercepts that allegedly show the former Russian nationalist party leader giving orders to so-called activists to cause unrest in Crimea and southeastern Ukraine as a pretext for Russian military intervention, according to the September 12 Financial Times report.
When the Euro-Maidan Revolution toppled disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in late February 2014, pro-Kremlin rallies were held in Crimea and across Ukraine’s southeast: in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Mykolayiv and Odesa regions.
The phone intercepts run contrary to the Kremlin’s narrative that the rallies were spontaneous and grassroots-based.
The Financial Times reported: “In one call, Mr. Glazyev tells a person in southeast Ukraine: ‘I have a direct order from the leadership to stir up the people in Ukraine… So you need to take people to the streets… The people must gather in the square and… ask Russia to help them’ against the new Kyiv government.”
In another conversation, Mr. Glazyev laments not seeing an impact in Zaporizhia, where he thought he could count on 1,500 presumably paid protesters to stir up trouble. His comments came in a conversation with Konstantin Zatulin, a senior Russian official responsible for relations with former Soviet republics.
It was at this time in February-March that Mr. Putin often referred to southeast Ukraine as “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia.”
Possession of key government buildings in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk changed hands between the Kremlin-backed separatists and Ukrainian governments. In Odesa, nearly 50 people died in May 2014 when pro-Kyiv protesters clashed with the Moscow-commandeered separatists, the majority of whom perished in the city’s Trade Union building.
Eventually, Mr. Putin’s covert invasion remained limited to Crimea, which was annexed in March 2014, and chunks of Luhansk and Donetsk. As a result, 7 percent of Ukraine’s territory – approximately the size of Belgium – has been occupied by Russia and its proxies.
Mr. Glazyev has called the recordings “nonsense.” Mr. Putin first denied sending armed troops to Crimea equipped with unmarked modern gear and weapons only to later admit that he gave the orders. The Kremlin still denies direct involvement in the Donbas war, although NATO and the U.S. say Russia plays a “command and control” role and constantly provides weapons and training there.
If genuine, the recordings prove that “the social conflict that preceded the use of guns [in the Donbas] was secretly orchestrated, guided and financed from Moscow,” German political scientist Andreas Umland has said in recent Facebook posts and in essays for various Western think tanks.
Claims of $67 billion
Monetarily, Ukraine is claiming about $67 billion from Russia in various jurisdictions in Europe, according to Bloomberg Markets estimates. Russia, in turn, is claiming some $33 billion.
The disputes on the Ukrainian side are for lost assets, including banking, property, state-owned enterprises and damage caused by the war to infrastructure and buildings.
State-owned oil and gas giant Naftohaz Ukrainy is seeking $11.7 billion in compensation in the bilateral 2009 natural gas contract with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom. State-owned Oschadbank wants $1 billion for its assets that were lost in Crimea.
The High Court in London will in January 2017 start to hear a $3 billion case involving a Eurobond that Mr. Yanukovych’s regime sold to Russia in 2013. Moscow refused to have it restructured, along with private Euro bondholders claiming that it is a sovereign debt. When the bond matured, Russia initiated litigation.
Hundreds of individuals from Ukraine have filed cases with the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, France. Private companies, such as Mr. Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank – Ukraine’s largest private lender – have also lodged cases against Russia for lost assets.