Ukraine set to sue Russia for Crimea
KYIV. Aug 22 (Interfax) - Claims related to Russia's breach of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea will soon be lodged with international courts, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.
"These are crucial matters which every one of us will support; this is about ways every one of us will use international entities, including international judicial entities, to prove that Russia has breached every fundamental convention," the minister told Ukrainian ambassadors at a conference on Monday.
Ukraine will soon take "a legal action, which pertains to Russia's violation of its commitments under the Convention on the Law of the Sea," at international courts, Klimkin said.
"Within the next few weeks, we will start to prove at arbitration courts upon holding relevant consultations that Russia has violated obligations under the convention banning financing of terrorism. We will certainly prove that what is happening in the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea is actually discrimination," Klimkin said.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in June that Kyiv would appeal to international courts in connection with Russia's breach of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. "This decision aims to protect Ukrainian rights and interests guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 by Russia in the Crimean territorial sea, waters of the Black and Azov seas and the Kerch Strait, including rights to natural resources of the continental shelf," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Klimkin said on August 11 that Ukraine had finalized preparations for an arbitration proceeding against Russia in relation to sovereign rights in Crimean waters.
More than 90% of people in Crimea and Sevastopol voted for the peninsula's unification with Russia on March 16, 2014. Several days later, the accession of the peninsula to Russia was formalized at a ceremony in Moscow.
Ukraine and the West did not recognize results of the referendum and imposed so-called 'Crimea sanctions' on Russia.
The Russian administration has said many times that the question of Crimea's belonging to Russia was solved once and for all.