Russia demands UN court dismiss Ukraine war case

• Ukraine has accused Russia of misusing genocide law to justify its invasion.
• Russia claims it intervened in Ukraine to stop a genocide against ethnic Russians.
• Ukraine has taken Russia to the International Court of Justice, the highest court within the UN.
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Russia has urged the International Court of Justice to dismiss the case brought against it by Ukraine.

The accusation from Kyiv is that Moscow has wrongly invoked genocide law as a justification for its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia, on the other hand, argues that its intervention in Ukraine was aimed at preventing what it claims to be a genocidal threat against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

The court proceedings in The Hague do not intend to assess the legality of Russia’s invasion.

Instead, they will focus on determining whether the International Court has the authority to examine Ukraine’s allegations.

Ukraine asserts that there was no genuine risk of genocide in the eastern part of the country, where it has been engaged in conflict with Russian-backed forces since 2014.

Ukraine further contends that the genocide treaty does not permit military intervention to halt an alleged genocide.

Russia, in response, characterizes Ukraine’s case as fundamentally flawed and suggests that Kyiv’s true objective is to obtain a judgment on the merits and ethics of Russia’s military actions.

Ukraine initiated this legal action shortly after Russia’s invasion on February 24th of the previous year.

In mid-March, the International Court of Justice, which is the highest court within the United Nations, called upon Russia to halt its military operations in Ukraine.

However, Russia refused to comply with this directive, objecting to the court’s jurisdiction and asserting that Ukraine’s application was inadmissible.

During the court proceedings on Monday, Russia’s legal representative, Gennady Kuzmin, argued that since Ukraine maintained that no genocide had taken place, there could not have been a violation of the United Nations Genocide Convention.

Over the next few days, the court will hear arguments from 32 other nations, all of which support Ukraine’s position that the court possesses the appropriate jurisdiction to handle this case.

These hearings are expected to continue until September 27th.

The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.”

Russian officials persist in accusing Ukraine of perpetrating genocide.

In a separate case that dates back to 2017 and is also before the International Court of Justice, Ukraine accuses Russia of the unlawful annexation of Crimea and the unlawful support of separatist rebels.

This case is based on United Nations conventions related to counter-terrorism and anti-discrimination and is still ongoing.