During the second day of hearings on the Ukraine vs. Russia case, the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands, considered Kyiv`s request to introduce provisional measures against Russia to protect Ukrainian citizens` rights to life.
The case is being considered as an urgent matter.
See also: Hague Court to begin hearing of Ukraine case against Russia on March 6
On the second day, the Russian side presented its position, which, as was expected before, denied all the accusations brought by Kyiv.
”Russia has fully been fulfilling its obligations under both conventions [the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination]. We do not see either legislative or factual grounds for such [provisional] measures,” Russian representative at the public hearing in The Hague Roman Kolodkin said on Tuesday.
Representatives of the Russian Federation used well-known rhetoric about the ”coup,” ”extremists,” ”rebels” and other terms used by Russian propagandists in foreign policy vis-a-vis Ukraine since 2014.
See also: Russian aggression against Ukraine, international law and global security: 25 key theses
Moscow rejected accusations of sponsoring terrorism in the east of Ukraine and supplying weapons to fighters of the self-proclaimed republics in Donbas, explaining that the weapons had been seized from the Ukrainian army and from former Soviet army storage sites built in coal mines in Ukrainian territory.
Another agent of Russia Ilya Rogachev designated the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) conducted by the Ukrainian authorities in Donbas as a ”conflict unleased by the Ukrainian government, its armed forces and irregular battalions against people in the east of Ukraine who self-organized as the `LPR` [the self-proclaimed Luhansk People`s Republic] and `DPR` [the self-proclaimed Luhansk People`s Republic] while seeking protection against those who seized power during the [alleged] coup [in Kyiv in 2014].”
Another Russian representative Samuel Wordsworth went in his counterarguments as far as accusing Ukraine of being a terrorist itself.
Earlier, Ukraine instituted proceedings against the Russian Federation on January 16, 2017, with regard to alleged violations of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of December 9, 1999, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of December 21, 1965. Both states are parties to these two instruments.
The provisional measures Ukraine requests include a freeze on providing money, weapons, vehicles, equipment, training or personnel to the separatists.
