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The European Court of Human Rights has said that the case brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia over human rights violations in Ukraine’s breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and the shooting down of flight MH17, is admissible.
The decision did not rule on the merits of the case, but showed the Strasbourg-based court held Russia liable for rights violations in the separatist region.
“Among other things, the Court finds that the territory of eastern Ukraine in the hands of the separatists is, from May 11, 2014 and at least January 26, 2022, under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation,” the court said in its decision on Wednesday.
The case will now proceed to the merits stage, expected to take another one to two years before a final decision is issued.
Open the door to more cases
The ECHR decision opens the door to at least three more cases by the Ukrainian state against Russia, as well as thousands of individual cases, which have been held pending a decision in the jurisdiction.
“This is a clear signal to Russia,” Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra tweeted, saying the court’s decision to declare the case acceptable was an “important milestone.”
The impact of any decision will be political as Russia’s parliament voted in June to end the ECHR’s jurisdiction in the country and previously ignored ECHR rulings it disagreed with.
The court said it had jurisdiction over cases that had started before Moscow withdrew from the ECHR writ, and that Russia could be ordered to pay reparations, but the court had no way of enforcing its decision.
Russian control
The court’s finding that Moscow controls pro-Russian forces in Ukraine mirrors a Dutch court ruling last November that Moscow had “total control” over forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine since mid-May 2014.
A Dutch judge handed down life sentences in absentia to two Russians and a Ukrainian for their role in the downing of Flight MH17, with the loss of 298 passengers and crew.
A Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam was headed to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over separatist-held eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, amid fighting between pro-Russian and Ukrainian government forces.
The Netherlands submitted its case to the ECHR in 2020, arguing that the downing of flight MH17 violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
Moscow has repeatedly denied involvement in the destruction of the plane.
The two Ukrainian cases, which date back to 2014, are related to what Kyiv says are administrative practices by Russia in Eastern Ukraine that violate the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as the abduction, and transfer to Russia, of three groups of Ukrainian orphans. children and children without parental care, and some accompanying adults.
All were returned to Ukraine a day or, in the third case, five days after their abduction, the ECHR said.
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