UK lawyer explains why Ukrainians should seek compensation from Russia in British courts

12.09.2024 22:20

Ukrinform

Compensation claims filed by war-affected Ukrainians against Russia should be brought before British courts, where there is a practical opportunity to hunt for the assets of the Russian private sector feeding the Kremlin’s war machine.

British lawyer Jason McCue, who promotes the idea of "domestication" of Ukrainian civil lawsuits in UK courts and other foreign jurisdictions, stated this in an interview with Ukrinform.

"The initiative is really promising, to put it simply. What’s important for Ukrainians is that there are accountability gaps. The first accountability gap is that certain members of the Russian war machine, the private sector that keeps the kleptocracy alive and keeps their war economy going through sanction busting, is getting away, scot-free. It's not being prosecuted, it's not being sued in any format. We've got to try and find litigation and prosecutions around the world to start holding them accountable," McCue explained.

In the context of reparations, no one from the Russian private sector war machine is going to be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. The crimes don't cover those actors, they're not leadership of the Russian state, the lawyer added, explaining the importance of prosecuting all elements of the Russian war machine.

While Ukrainian courts can also hand down decision on satisfy damages claims filed against the Russian private sector in Ukraine, the problem is that there are virtually no Russian assets left in Ukraine to recover in favor of claimants, McCue said. "So it’s an ornament on the shelf, a pyrrhic victory. You can't enforce this justice," believes the British lawyer.

"Now, domestication initiative is going to take sampled Ukrainian cases and use the jurisdictional hub of the UK. We're going to convert it into a UK judgment and use that to enforce against defendants’ assets, not just in the UK, but in the EU and the US. Hence, those hundreds of billions of sanctioned private sector assets in the West, which are vulnerable, and the idea is that we will set a road map for Ukrainians to be able to follow," explained Jason McCue.

As reported, President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking at the high-level international conference "United for Justice. Accountability for Attacks on Civilian Facilities," said that since the full-scale invasion, Russian invaders have committed 137,000 war crimes, and there should be no fewer sentences for them.