The ECHR decision is also an important step toward unlocking thousands of individual claims against Russia submitted to the ECHR as a result of Russian aggression in Ukraine. These offenses will be very familiar to the many Ukrainian human rights activists who are currently attempting to document alleged Russian war crimes in recently liberated parts of Ukraine such as Bucha, Kherson, and Izyum. The list of crimes is extensive and includes summary executions, torture, sexual violence, and the abduction of children. Looking ahead, the ECHR will now consider numerous human rights violations that have allegedly been committed by Russia in eastern Ukraine since 2014. This exposes the absurdity of later Russian efforts to portray the current full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a response to appeals from their own puppet regimes.
It also debunks Russian attempts to depict the so-called separatist republics as legitimate representatives of the local population in eastern Ukraine. It confirms that the invasion of February 24, 2022, was actually a continuation of the war which began eight years earlier in 2014. In political terms, the ECHR ruling is undoubtedly a victory for Ukraine. Evidence was also provided to highlight the extensive provision of Russian weapons along with comprehensive political and economic support. The court cited extensive evidence to support this conclusion including the presence of Russian military personnel in eastern Ukraine from April 2014 and the large-scale deployment of Russian troops from August 2014 at the very latest. One of the ECHR’s main conclusions was that Russia exercised effective control over the regions of eastern Ukraine nominally held by separatist forces. The Ukrainian claims were brought against Russia in 2014, while later claims by the Netherlands are in connection with the shooting down of civilian airliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine, which resulted in the deaths of 298 people including 196 Dutch nationals. The case in question at the ECHR relates to claims from both Ukraine and the Netherlands.
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It now paves the way for a series of international cases that had been put on hold pending a ruling over jurisdiction. The recent ECHR decision will have potentially wide-ranging implications in this context.
Russia’s blanket denials complicated the numerous international court proceedings initiated over alleged crimes committed in Ukraine following the outbreak of hostilities in 2014. Nevertheless, Moscow continued to officially deny any direct involvement in eastern Ukraine until the launch of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Ever since the appearance of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in spring 2014, it was apparent that these nominally independent entities were in fact closely tied to Russia. This ruling confirms what had long been the world’s worst-kept secret. “The Court found that areas in eastern Ukraine in separatist hands were from May 11, 2014, and up to at least January 26, 2022, under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation,” the court stated. This intermediate decision is a significant legal milestone in the quest for justice over Russian aggression against Ukraine, as it recognizes that parts of eastern Ukraine seized by so-called separatists in spring 2014 were in fact controlled by Russia. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on January 25 that cases brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia were admissible.
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