Kremlin: International Court of Justice has no jurisdiction in Ukraine's case against Russia
The Russian Foreign Ministry has promised to prove that the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague does not have jurisdiction in the “Ukraine versus the Russian Federation” case.
“In particular, we deny the existence of a dispute between our two countries according to the mentioned conventions in principle, and we intend to prove that Ukraine is unscrupulously trying to use their dispute resolution mechanisms in order to achieve political goals,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Russian foreign policy department claims that the allegations against Russia in these disputes cannot be linked to any of the relevant conventions.
The ministry also alleged that Ukraine has not tried to resolve the disputes through negotiations or arbitration “in good faith”, or appealed to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which was established in accordance with the convention.
In April 2017, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling on Ukraine’s lawsuit against Russia in connection with the Terrorist Financing Convention, finding no grounds to impose additional restrictions on Russia. However, in a second case where Ukraine accused Russia of violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the court partially satisfied Ukraine’s demand, and ordered Russia to refrain from infringing the rights of Crimean Tatars and to provide opportunities for education in the Ukrainian language in Crimea.
Ukraine has filed lawsuits against Russia in connection with the conventions on financing terrorism and on racial discrimination. Ukraine claims that Russia has violated the former by providing material assistance to the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine, and the latter by infringing the rights of Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea after its unrecognized annexation by Russia.