Klimkin: Ukraine Submits Memo Against Russia to ICJ

Photo from Ukrinform

Ukraine has submitted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a memorandum on the violation by Russia of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said.

Klimkin stated that the memorandum consists of 17.5 thousand pages of text and 29 volumes.

“Today Russia will receive from us a peculiar ‘gift’ at the ICJ. It weighs about 90 kilograms, consists of 17,500 pages of text and is contained in 29 volumes. We are submitting our memorandum on the financing of terrorism and racial discrimination,” Klimkin wrote on Twitter.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that submitting the memorandum is an important step to bring Russia to justice.

“It is very symbolic that the International Court of Justice selected June 12, Russia Day, to file a memorandum on the case of Ukraine against Russia on the violation of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook today. “The presentation of the memorandum in the case against Russia is an important stage in proving that the Russian Federation will bear responsibility for all its illegal actions. The whole world is trying to convince Russia to recognize the illegality of its actions and get out of the occupied regions of Donbas and Crimea.”

“Meanwhile, Russia still stubbornly laments that they did not occupy Ukrainian lands. Officials of the Russian Federation are stubbornly lying that they did not recruit terrorists who carried out explosions in Odesa, Kharkiv and Kyiv. They also deny that Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars do not survive in Crimea because of discrimination under occupation,” Poroshenko continued. “We can overcome this lie only with truth and evidence. In order to do this, we need the position of the International Court of Justice, which will give an appropriate assessment of the actions of the Russian Federation and will not leave them the opportunity to hide from responsibility behind the next manipulations and shouting “it’s not us” and “we are not there.”

Poroshenko elaborated that “the memorandum contains an extraordinary number of evidence.”

“It is done so that nobody doubts that Russia has committed illegal actions and should bear responsibility for it. There is still a lot of work to bring the truth out in the open, but the truth is on our side, and that’s why we will advocate and defend it with all the proper means,” Poroshenko concluded.