“Russia and Ukraine: A Legal Perspective,” an interview by Alexander J. Motyl with Thomas D. Grant, senior research fellow of Wolfson College and senior associate of the Lauterpacht Center for International Law, both at the University of Cambridge, on the blog “Ukraine’s Orange Blues,” World Affairs website (see http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/russia-and-ukraine-legal-perspective):
MOTYL: What can the international community – the United Nations, the European Union, the West – do to repair the damage Russia did to international law?
GRANT: A range of options exists for repairing the damage. Many of the options, or most, can be pursued together; they are not mutually exclusive. Ukraine, for example, already has brought inter-state claims against Russia under the European Convention on Human Rights. How the Strasbourg court decides will depend on the application of the convention to the facts of the case, but the Cyprus v. Turkey case suggests one of the possibilities: the court there held the occupying power responsible for payment of substantial compensation. I have suggested elsewhere some of the other procedural mechanisms that Ukraine might invoke in its resistance against Russia’s attack. (See for example the Chicago Journal of International Law, Volume 16.1.)
A core principle of international law is that no state shall recognize, or imply the recognition, of a situation that has resulted from a serious breach of international law. A corollary to that principle is that all states shall cooperate to bring an end to the situation. Applied to Russia, this means that all states must refrain from recognizing Russia’s unlawful annexation of Crimea; must refrain from recognizing Russia’s unlawful attempt to separate Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukraine by force; and must cooperate to bring an end to the situation in Ukraine that has resulted from Russia’s armed attack. How exactly states shall engage in this cooperation is not specified under international law. Sanctions against Russia, in my view, are consistent with states’ obligation to cooperate. There is also the right of Ukraine, under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, to self-defense. This is an inherent right; it does not depend upon its embodiment in Article 51; and no procedural step by the U.N. is needed for Ukraine to invoke the right. Moreover, the right also involves the right of collective self-defense. It is within Ukraine’s right to call upon other states to assist it with its defense. Now, states inevitably will enter into prudential calculations about involving themselves in Ukraine’s defense. It would not, however, be convincing for them to say that international law compels them to refrain from involving themselves. International law compels nothing of the sort. To the contrary, international law envisages collective response to aggression.