THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Russia on Thursday denied Ukrainian accusations that it backed pro-Russian separatists in japanese Ukraine in 2014 and discriminates towards ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea, accusing Kyiv as a substitute of “blatant lies” on the U.N.’s high courtroom.
Ukraine has requested the Hague-based Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) to order Russia to halt alleged discrimination towards the Tatar ethnic group in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014.
“Ukraine is continually turning to blatant lies and false accusations leveled towards the Russian federation,” the Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, Alexander Shulgin, mentioned on the second day of hearings on the ICJ.
“Nothing could possibly be additional faraway from the reality,” he mentioned.
In the identical case, a panel of 16 judges on the ICJ this week started listening to Ukraine’s assertion that Moscow violated a U.N. anti-terrorism treaty by equipping and funding pro-Russian forces, together with militias who shot down Malaysian Airways Flight MH17, killing all 298 passengers and crew in 2014.
Final November, a Dutch courtroom convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist in absentia for his or her function and sentenced them to life in jail. It discovered that Russia had “general management” over the separatist forces.
Russia rejected what it referred to as the “scandalous” resolution by the Dutch courtroom.
The hearings within the case on the ICJ, which stems from 2017, marked the primary time attorneys for Ukraine and Russia met on the ICJ since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia denies systematic human rights abuses in Ukrainian territory that it occupies.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, Modifying by William Maclean)