Pallade Veneta - Ukraine slams 'terrorist state' Russia at top UN court

The two sides faced off at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in a case brought by Kyiv alleging that Moscow has backed rebels in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Ukraine said Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 was the "tragic but logical outcome" of Moscow's alleged support for the separatists and showed that aggressors should not be allowed to breach international law.

"Just today, Russia blew up a major dam located in Nova Kakhovka, causing significant civilian evacuations, harsh ecological damages, and threatening the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant," Ukraine's representative Anton Korynevych told the court.

"Russia's actions are the actions of a terrorist state, an aggressor," he added.

"But such actions did not appear out of the blue. They are the tragic but logical outcome of the situation we brought to this court's attention back in 2017" when it originally filed the case.

Ukraine alleges that Russia breached UN conventions on financing terrorism and on racial discrimination, and is seeking damages for attacks by pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

About 13,000 people died in the eight years of violence before the 2022 invasion, including 298 who were killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine has since filed a separate case related to Russia's February 2022 invasion, accusing Moscow of planning genocide. The ICJ in that case ordered Russia to suspend the invasion.

- 'Cultural erasure' -

But Korynevych said that "Russia's contempt for international law didn't start in 2022."

"Beginning in 2014, Russia illegally occupied Crimea and then engaged in a campaign of cultural erasure, taking aim at ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars," he said.

"In Donbas, in Kharkiv... we've endured a Russian-fuelled campaign of intimidation and terror."

He added: "The lesson this case teaches is simple: the past is prologue. If the world doesn't stand up to serious violations of international law, the violators are emboldened."

Lawyers for Ukraine are presenting their arguments to ICJ judges on Tuesday, while Russia's will address the court on Thursday. Ukraine will then reply on June 12 and Russia on June 14.

The ICJ was created after World War II to deal with disputes between UN member states. Its decisions are binding although it has no means to enforce them.

Russia has denied all links to the rebels. Since the invasion, it now holds much of the territory where the violence took place and where the separatists were in charge.

Moscow however now faces a wider campaign of "lawfare" over the situation in Ukraine, much of which is happening at courts in the Netherlands.

A Dutch court ruled last year that Moscow had directly controlled the rebels, as it sentenced two Russians and a Ukrainian to life sentences in absentia over the shooting of MH17 with a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine.

International investigators said separately in February this year that there were "strong indications" that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved the supply of the missile.

Meanwhile the International Criminal Court (ICC) -- an independent war crimes tribunal which like the ICJ is also based in The Hague -- issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March.

Putin is accused by the ICC of the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

S.Urciuoli--PV