KIEV, Aug. 29 - Ukraine is preparing another lawsuit against Russia in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Ukraine’s Justice Minister Pavel Petrenko said on the 112 television on Saturday.
“This is a separate case from the one already in existence. It is now in the pipeline and we are working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in preparing it for the International Court of Justice,” Petrenko said, quoted by Forbes.
Petrenko did not provide further details on the charges against the Russians.
Russia and Ukraine have been locking horns in the Stockholm courts over natural gas contract disputes between Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant, and Naftogaz.
Ukaine also filed a lawsuit against Russia regarding its claims over the Crimean peninsula. Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.
That move later led to sanctions from the West and was followed by an armed conflict between the governemnt’s forces and pro-Russian Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Russia first denied supporting the separatists with anything beyond humanitarian aid, but Vladimir Putin later admitted that he was providing military support to the ethnic Russians fighting Ukraine’s official military.
Petrenko noted in the interview that his country was going after Russia hard, and not only on the gas despite.
“We have a second claim on the (war damage) in east Ukraine and in the control of Crimea. We have filed complaints in The Hague and elsewhere,” he said, adding “including five inter-state complaints to the European Court of Human Rights.”
To date, Ukraine has filed four lawsuits in the Human Rights Court against Russia. It is the single biggest country with the highest percentage of cases filed, accounting for roughly 25% of the 71,050 pending laws suits sitting with the court as of June 30, 2016. (fo/ez)
|