The United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) has rejected that Moscow should compensate Ukraine for the attacks by pro-Russian separatists in Donbas between 2014 and 2017, and compensate the families of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 shot down over that region.
Kiev accused the Kremlin of failing to comply with international regulations on the prevention of terrorism, which indirectly allowed the downing of the plane on July 17, 2014, which was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile launched from the area controlled by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
All its occupants perished: 298 people.
The judges avoid talking about Russian responsibility in the attack, but they did address the alleged violation of some sections of the Convention on the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (adopted in 1999 and promulgated in 2005).
They consider that the Kremlin violated this treaty because it did not investigate the funds received by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014. The institution considers, however, that there is no evidence that it has financially supported these militias.
Ukraine filed a lawsuit in this regard in 2017, alleging that Moscow paid these groups.
Judges have ordered Russian authorities to investigate the Ukrainian allegations.
The victims of the MH17 plane belonged to 10 nationalities, but the majority were Dutch (196), so the Dutch courts took over the criminal case.
In November 2022, Dutch judges sentenced two Russian citizens, Sergei Dubinsky and Igor Girkin, and the Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko to life imprisonment for the events.
Another defendant, Oleg Pulatov, also Russian, was acquitted.
He was represented by an attorney.
The others did not appear and were tried in absentia.
Discrimination against Tatars yes, but not racial
The lawsuit also denounced the situation of the Tatars “and the communities of Ukrainian origin in Crimea.”
In this section, Ukraine appealed to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965).
The country wants to prevent the eradication of the Tatar language and culture, and that of the ethnically Ukrainian community of the peninsula, under Russian occupation since 2014. The ruling notes “a violation of the rights of those affected, who do not see education protected in Ukrainian language”, and asks that appropriate measures be applied to reverse the situation.
However, the judges also point out that there is no evidence that the rights of this ethnic group "have been violated by Russia for racial reasons."
Discrimination against Tatar political leaders has been reported "because of their ideas, including the ban on parties and activities, but not because of their ethnicity."
According to Joan E. Donoghue, president of the TIJ, Tatars have the right to be protected, but it has not been proven that they are being discriminated against on racial grounds.
The discrimination is for political reasons, but not for their ethnicity, according to the ruling.
Russia denies that it violated the anti-terrorism convention and that it has perpetrated systematic human rights abuses in the Ukrainian territory it then occupied.
This ruling, of a binding nature, is the first of the two decisions in the hands of the ICJ regarding the conflict that has pitted Russia and Ukraine against each other for a decade and which has led to a war that has now lasted two years.
This Friday, the same court is expected to rule on Russia's preliminary objections to the ICJ's jurisdiction over the lawsuit filed by Kiev shortly after the invasion on February 24, 2022. In this case, Russia is alleged to have attacked Ukraine with the pretext that a genocide was being committed against the Russian-speaking inhabitants and that, by using the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (1948) as an excuse for aggression, it abused this treaty.
Two years ago, the ICJ issued provisional measures demanding Russia stop the invasion, but it was ignored.
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