ECHR to start hear ‘Donbas case’ in September 2021
“A hearing in the case of ‘Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russian Federation’ is preliminarily scheduled for September 15, 2021,” Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine – Government Commissioner for ECHR Ivan Lishchyna posted on Facebook.
He added that the Ukrainian side had answered more than fifty questions put by the Court before the admissibility hearing in the case “Ukraine v. Russian Federation (re Eastern Ukraine)”, i.e. the Donbas case (now called “Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russian Federation”).
According to Lishchyna, this is the most comprehensive file that the Ukrainian side has been collecting for six years of conduct of this case. He noted that all special services provided evidence of the effective control exercised by the Russian Federation over the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
"The Court informed it planned a very ambitious schedule in this case for next year: by September it intends to exchange views between the Netherlands and Russia on MH17, as well as gather responses from all participants, including third parties (the Government of Canada and Human Rights Law Center - University of Nottingham), to additional questions put by ECHR. In fact, the Court uses the Dutch case trying to catch up on the current consideration of the Ukrainian case on Donbas, to which we have been moving for six years, in nine months. Let's see if this works in practice, but the Court is in a serious mood: it has warned the parties that deferrals will be granted only in exceptional cases," Lishchyna said.
On November 30, Lishchyna informed that the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights had announced that it decided to attach the Ukraine v. Russia case No. 43800/14 (regarding children from state institutions who were illegally taken to Russia at the beginning of the war) and the Netherlands v. Russia case No. 28525/20 (the Dutch interstate legal action regarding MH17) to the interstate case Ukraine v. Russia (re Eastern Ukraine) No. 8019/16.
The new title of the case is Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russian Federation nos. 43800/14, 8019/16 and 28525/20.
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