On January 13, the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv held a hearing in the case of establishing the fact of armed aggression against Ukraine. This time, the court granted human rights activist Stanislav Batryn’s motion asking it to summon concerned third parties, namely the Russian Federation through its embassy in Ukraine and the president of Ukraine through officials of his administration. Batryn seeks legal recognition of the existence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and legal assessment of this fact to be framed in a single judgment which would list Russian soldiers involved, detail the chronology of this invasion and damages caused by the aggression to the nation and individual Ukrainian citizens. The plaintiff reports that the Defense Ministry, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Foreign Ministry have already been summoned by the court. The court, in turn, has requested that the prosecutor general of Ukraine provide information about criminal proceedings started due to hostilities waged by Russia and its army in Ukraine. Batryn stressed that the parliament’s decision recognizing that a state of Russian aggression exists was required, but it was only a political move. The Verkhovna Rada’s declaration “does not provide evidence of the actual presence of Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine or of them committing criminal acts against Ukraine and crimes against humanity.
Indeed, the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine is almost two years old, there is abundant evidence of the Russian forces’ invasion and their crimes against the Ukrainian people, but it is still unclear whether anything is done for systematic recording and proper legal treatment of these facts. It seems that the initiative in this matter comes more from regular citizens than the government.
Human rights activist Batryn argues that it is only through the mechanism of legal recognition of this fact that Ukraine would qualify for compensations to be imposed by international courts on Russia rather than so-called “terrorists.” “Otherwise, we will face tremendous disappointments, because even now, we are still conducting an anti-terrorist operation (ATO) rather than repelling the aggressor,” he warned. The abovementioned crimes brought specific losses in the whole range of sectors. They include territorial, political, economic and, most importantly, human life losses. All these egregious offenses are legally linked to the fact of aggression, which Russia itself denies and uses distorted information to make it stick.
Let us recall that Batryn first requested the Shevchenkivsky District Court to establish the fact of armed aggression against Ukraine in summer 2014. Then, however, the judge surprisingly denied his motion to open the proceedings in the case. The Kyiv Court of Appeal quashed the lower court judge’s decision. Then, instead of hearing the case on the merits, the judge effectively sabotaged the case which dragged on for a year and a half. However, this matter has to do not only with the judiciary, but also with the entire power vertical, which lacks political will to pursue the issue.
Andrii SENCHENKO, MP of the 7th convocation:
“Holding a trial regarding the aggression of Russia against Ukraine faces many obstacles. First of all, there is a very uncertain policy of the president regarding the aggressor nation. The obstacles involve also our government sticking to the fiction of this war as an ATO instead of calling a spade a spade. Since our judiciary is quite opportunistic and very susceptible to executive influence, all those who now scream more than others about the need to reboot the judiciary (I mean the president and the Cabinet) are most interested in maintaining control over it. The judges realize that they are hostages of these power plays. All this talk of re-qualification may result in removals of those judges who are seen as unsafe by the executive. Thus, judges are trying to anticipate the president and the Cabinet’s wishes. I am not denying that there are more hopeful cases as well. Human rights activists have broken through this blockade to some extent. I work on trials targeting Russia as the aggressor nation along with a team of the Power of Law civic movement.”
We already have early decisions coming from the Holosiivsky District Court of Kyiv, Suvorovsky District Court and the Court of Appeals of Kherson, where Russia is named the aggressor on request of refugees from Crimea and the Donbas. These decisions have clearly established facts that particular plaintiffs have become refugees as a result of the Russian military aggression and occupation of the territory of Ukraine. I fully support what Stanislav Batryn’s team is doing. They try to force the judiciary and government bodies as parties to the case to call a spade a spade. This is not easy because, again, the government’s stance on this is unclear. This government’s guidelines can be seen in the Minsk Agreements and separate negotiations it holds with representative of the aggressor Boris Gryzlov behind Europe and the US’s backs.”
