Russia urges UN’s top court to toss out Ukrainian case

The Hague: Russia on Monday called a Ukrainian case alleging that Moscow abused the Genocide Convention to justify its invasion last year an “abuse of process,” as lawyers for Moscow sought to have judges at the United Nation’s highest court throw it out.

As a series of lawyers laid out Moscow’s objections to the case, the leader of Russia’s legal team at the International Court of Justice, Gennady Kuzmin, told the 16-judge panel that Ukraine’s case that seeks to halt the invasion “is, hopelessly flawed and at odds with the longstanding jurisprudence of this court.”

He said Ukraine’s filing is “a manifest disregard of the proper administration of justice and constitutes an abuse of process.”

Kyiv’s case filed shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, argues that the attack was based on false claims of acts of genocide in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine and alleges that Moscow was planning genocidal acts in Ukraine.

Ukraine claimed that “Russia has turned the Genocide Convention on its head making a false claim of genocide as a basis for actions on its part that constitute grave violations of the human rights of millions of people across Ukraine.”

Lawyers for Russia insist that the court does not have jurisdiction.