You're reading: Ukraine takes Russia to Hague to pay for war

On Jan. 16 the government of Ukraine filed a lawsuit in the United Nations International Court of Justice in Hague against Russia for terrorism and discrimination during its military occupation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

The degree of reparation will be determined as the case proceeds, foreign ministry spokesperson Mariana Betsa told the Kyiv Post. But she said that Ukraine expects significant compensation considering the grand scale of violations by Russia.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko urged Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to take Russia to The Hague, saying that “the aggressor must pay the price.”

The case was brought almost three years after the war began because the Ukrainian government was collecting evidence and had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with Russia for two years as required by the UN conventions pre-trial regulation

Ukraine accuses the Kremlin of violating two UN conventions: The suppression of the financing terrorism and the elimination of racial discrimination.

Ukraine wants to hold the Russian government accountable for supplying weapons to illegal armed groups that committed hostilities in occupied Ukrainian territories against civilians in Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Volnovakhna, and Kharkiv and shot down a Malaysian passenger plane in July 2014 killing all 298 onboard.

Ukraine also wants Russia held responsible for its discrimination of Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians who still live in Russia-annexed Crimea and they say, suffer from ill-treatment. The Russia-appointed authorities shut down the Mejlis, the only representative body of Crimean Tatars. They have also been accused by human rights groups of carrying out forced disappearances of Tatars and arbitrary detentions, as well as torture. Journalists and pro-Ukrainian activists have also been imprisoned and suffered beating at the hands of the Russian authorities.

The abuses and persecution of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in occupied territories were documented by Human Right Watch and presented in its latest report last week.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Jan. 16 that Russia has “contempt for the basic human rights of the Ukrainian people.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has hired a U.S. law firm Covington & Burling which is also representing Ukraine in Naftogaz and the Ukrainian government in its claims against Russia over Crimean property.

According to the UN, the war in eastern Ukraine has killed nearly 10,000 people and wounded 21,000. An estimated 1.7 million people have been displaced.