Judges at the top U.N. court on Wednesday found that Russia violated elements of a U.N. anti-terrorism treaty, but declined to rule on allegations brought by Kyiv that Moscow was responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
In the same ruling, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Russia had breached an anti-discrimination treaty by failing to support Ukrainian language education in Crimea after its 2014 annexation of the peninsula.
The court declined to rule on the downing of MH17, saying violations of funding terrorism only applied to monetary and financial support, not to supplying weapons or training as alleged by Ukraine.
Ukraine had argued that Russia supplied the missile system that shot down the aircraft, but it had not alleged financial support in that instance.
In a hearing at the court in The Hague last June, Russia dismissed Ukraine’s allegations that it funded and controlled pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as fiction and “blatant lies”.
In the case, which has taken almost seven years, Kyiv had accused Russia of equipping and funding pro-Russian forces, including rebels who shot down MH17 in July 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.
In November 2022, a Dutch court sentenced two Russians and a Ukrainian in absentia to life imprisonment for their role in the disaster.
