SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 9 February 2025, Sunday |

Ukraine’s Naftogaz takes Crimea compensation battle against Russia to US

The $5 billion awarded in the Hague as compensation for damages and lost property in Crimea was sought by the Ukrainian state-owned energy company Naftogaz, which announced on Friday that it has filed legal action against Russia in the United States.

It claimed to have done so legally because the United States is one of the nations hosting Russian assets and that it had submitted a motion to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, seized Crimea in 2014 and annexed the peninsula, triggering sanctions from Western governments.

Naftogaz’s assets in Crimea included Chornomornaftogaz, which produced significant amounts of gas from the Black Sea.

Naftogaz said in April that an arbitration court in The Hague had ordered Russia to pay $5 billion in compensation for unlawfully expropriating the Ukrainian company’s assets in Crimea.

“Since Russia has not voluntarily paid the funds to Naftogaz as provided for by the award, we intend to leverage all available mechanisms to recover these funds,” Naftogaz CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov said.

Chernyshov said the company was working on this in the United States and other target jurisdictions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia would look at all possible ways to protect its legal rights in the case.

    Source:
  • Reuters