Ukraine on Tuesday said the International Court of Justice should impose reparations on Russia for its “war of annihilation”, arguing that international law itself was at stake.
“Russia is not above the law. It must be held accountable,” Ukraine’s lead speaker, Anton Korynevych, told the court, sitting just a few metres from his Russian opponents in the Peace Palace in The Hague.
“You have the power to declare that Russia’s actions are unlawful, that its continued abuses must stop, that your orders must be followed and that Russia must make reparations,” he told the judges.
Ukraine dragged Russia before the ICJ only a few days after the February 24, 2022, invasion, seeking to battle its belligerent neighbour on all fronts, legal as well as diplomatic and military.
Kyiv’s argument is that Russian President Vladimir Putin invoked a supposed “genocide” against pro-Russian people in eastern Ukraine as one of the reasons for Moscow invading its neighbour.
This, according to Ukraine, is a misuse of the United Nations Genocide Convention, set up in 1948 and signed by both Kyiv and Moscow.
“At our moment of greatest peril, Ukraine turned to this court. Your court has broad jurisdiction over disputes relating to the Genocide Convention,” argued Korynevych.
“Can it truly be the case that a state can abuse the Genocide Convention to justify a war of conquest?” asked Korynevych.
“It must be ‘no’ for the sake of the world, to prevent international law from being twisted into a tool for human right abuses and destruction,” he added.
In a preliminary ruling in March last year, the ICJ sided with Ukraine and ordered Russia to halt its invasion immediately.
But Russia objected to this judgement, saying the ICJ had no legal right to decide in this case.
“Russia’s defiance is also an attack on this court’s authority. Every missile that Russia fires at our cities, it fires in defiance of this court,” said Korynevych.
