In a Grand Chamber judgment delivered on Wednesday 9 July, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Russia for “widespread and flagrant” human rights violations in Ukraine.
These inter-state cases involving Ukraine and the Netherlands versus Russia cover Russian operations in the Donbass region from 2014, the war of aggression against Ukraine launched in February 2022 and the destruction, in July 2014, of Malaysian Air Lines flight MH17, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Found guilty of executing Ukrainian civilians and military personnel hors de combat, acts of torture, unjustified displacement of civilians, destruction, looting and expropriation, Russia has violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, denounced the President of the Court, Mattias Guyomar, in his deliberations.
In “none of the conflicts previously referred to the Court has there been such almost universal condemnation of the respondent State’s flagrant disregard for the foundations of the international legal order established after the Second World War”, he added, seeing the Russian attitude as “a threat to peace in Europe”.
Held responsible for human rights violations committed before its withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights in September 2022, Russia nevertheless no longer considers the Court’s decisions to be binding.
This is borne out by the statement issued by Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, on 9 July, describing them as “null and void”.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/hs9 (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)