ECHR Ombudsperson tells how long to wait for decision in case of Ukraine and Netherlands v. Russia

She shared her forecasts in an exclusive commentary to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"We expect that the decision will be announced not in many years, but in the more visible future. A year and a half, a year - but this is my best hope," Sokorenko said.

"Immediately after our hearing, the court should start preparatory work on what the decision should be. I know the entire volume of material that was submitted, all the details, so I understand that the judges will have to spend a lot of time weighing everything and working on it. The previous decision on the admissibility of the case alone was more than 200 pages long," she explained.

Sokorenko believes that in this case, compared to other interstate cases that involved a much smaller range of violations, there is a "very fast process".

"This is probably the only case in the experience of the European Court that concerns constant ongoing aggression and constant human rights violations on such a scale, both in time and in territory," the Commissioner concluded.

As a reminder, on Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg concluded oral hearings in the inter-state case Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia, which concerns human rights violations in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 and during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Photo provided by Margarita Sokorenko