UN International Court of Justice rejects Ukraine’s accusations that Russia violated the Genocide Convention   |29 February 2024

On February 2, 2024, the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague issued a judgment in the case “Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation).” For the time being, the judgment is limited by the procedural issue of the court’s jurisdiction. However, even at that preliminary stage, the case concocted by Ukraine has already fallen apart. The court totally rejected all Ukraine’s claims that Russia has violated and “abused” the convention to justify starting its special military operation.

The court accepted Russia’s preliminary objections and agreed that Kiev’s accusations have nothing to do with the convention. The issue is not even about Russia committing genocide or failing to fulfil its commitments to prevent it; on the contrary, Kiev claims that Russia was too zealous in fulfilling the convention by initiating the special military operation to protect Donbass from genocide without sufficient grounds. However, the special military operation is based on the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, about which the UN Security Council was notified. It was the military escalation – armed attacks on the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic by the Armed Forces of Ukraine – that prompted Moscow to respond.

The collective West’s unprecedented interference in the case did not help Ukraine. As many as 47 countries (mostly NATO and EU members) declared their intention to support Ukraine by joining the process. Out of this number, 33 countries have already filed relevant applications at the jurisdiction stage. We blocked the US application – the United States itself does not recognise the ICJ’s jurisdiction under said convention. Thus, thirty-two teams of lawyers spoke in turn at the hearings in The Hague in September 2023, turning them into a total farce. They represented the following countries – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Finland, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia. It is worth noting that these same NATO countries, when earlier accused by Serbia of violating the Genocide Convention by bombing Yugoslavia, argued to the same court that the convention did not regulate the use of force and that the military campaign “in defence” of the Kosovo Albanians was justified. At that time, the court listened to these arguments and refused to review all Serbian-filed cases. Naturally, we reminded the court about these precedents. Russia long warned the West that Kosovo will backfire, as it has again.

So now the court will review only one issue – whether Ukraine committed genocide in Donbass. In other words, Kiev has put itself in the dock as part of its own claims. We can only applaud Kiev and its Western patrons for so deftly shooting themselves in the foot.

ContributedbyEmbassyof Russia

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this article are those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Seychelles NATION newspaper.