THE HAGUE: Leaders including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in The Hague on Tuesday to launch an International Claims Commission to compensate Kyiv for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russian attacks and alleged war crimes. Dozens of senior figures from Europe and beyond, including European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, were attending a one-day conference co-hosted by the Netherlands and the 46-nation Council of Europe, the continent’s largest rights group.
The gathering coincided with a US-orchestrated diplomatic push to end the war in Ukraine that was triggered by Russia’s full-scale attack in February 2022. Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel stressed the importance of reparations for Ukrainian victims. “Without accountability, a conflict cannot be fully resolved. And part of that accountability is also paying damages that have been done,” he told reporters. “So I think it’s a big step today that we now are establishing a claims commission, that we’re signing a treaty on that.”
Details on how any damages awarded by the commission, to be based in the Netherlands, would be paid still need to be worked out. But early discussions have touched on using Russian assets frozen by the EU, supplemented by member contributions. “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia. It will really have to be paid by Russia, this commission offers no guarantee for the damages,” Van Weel said. The two-year-old Register of Damage, which will become part of the claims commission, has received more than 80,000 claims submitted by individuals, organisations and public bodies in Ukraine under a wide range of categories. “That’s exactly where the real path to peace begins,” President Zelensky said. “It’s not enough to force Russia into a deal. It’s not enough to make it stop killing. We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world.”
Russian officials were not immediately reachable to comment on the commission. The Kremlin denies accusations of war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine. It has also described the EU’s proposal to use immobilised Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s defence and budget needs as illegal and threatened retaliation.
Plans to compensate victims of abuses in Ukraine, ranging from physical violence and child deportations to the destruction of religious sites, could be complicated by the inclusion of an amnesty for wartime atrocities in any peace deal, earlier proposed by US President Donald Trump’s administration. More than 50 states and the EU have drafted a Council of Europe convention to establish the commission, which will take force after it has been ratified by 25 signatories, as long as sufficient funds have been secured to finance its activity.
Over 35 nations have already indicated support for the commission and were expected to sign the convention at Tuesday’s meeting, a source familiar with the discussions said. The commission — the second part of an international compensation mechanism for Ukraine — will review, assess and decide on claims submitted to the Register of Damage for Ukraine, which was created by the Council of Europe in 2023, and determine compensation awards on a case-by-case basis. Claims can be filed for damage, loss or injury caused by Russian acts committed in or against Ukraine upon or after the February 24, 2022 attack. The claims, which cover violations of international law, can be brought by affected individuals, companies or the Ukrainian state, a draft of the proposal said.
The World Bank has estimated the cost of reconstruction in the coming decade at $524 billion, or nearly three times Ukraine’s economic output in 2024. But that figure is through December 2024 only and does not include damage caused this year, when Russian drone and missile strikes escalated in a campaign targeting utilities, transport and civilian infrastructure. The Council of Europe was founded in 1949, four years after the end of World War Two, to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law across the continent and is its oldest intergovernmental organisation. — Reuters
