Legal Consequences of Economic and Environmental Damage Caused to Ukraine by Russia

Abstract

"The article discusses the issues of holding the Russian Federation accountable for violating international humanitarian law in the context of economic and environmental damage caused to Ukraine during the military invasion. The authors trace historical parallels, from Germany’s payment of reparations after World War II to compensation for damages after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It is emphasized that due to the specifics of modern international law, its norms, for example, the norms of the UN Charter, the charters of other international organizations, the norms of international customs, do not contain specific instructions on the scope and forms of responsibility, but provide for the right to coercion, regulating the conditions and procedure for the application of international law legal sanctions. In other words, in public international law, the concept of “sanctions of a legal norm” is associated not with forms of responsibility, but with coercive measures themselves. The attribution of sanctions to forms of responsibility can be used by the state-offender to justify the refusal to fulfill the obligations arising from its responsibility, citing the fact that it has already incurred responsibility, since sanctioned coercive measures were applied against it. Recognizing that international legal sanctions are the quality of coercive measures themselves, and not forms of responsibility, deprives the offending state of the opportunity to invoke the principle of non bis in idem and clearly assumes that, in addition to the deprivations caused by these measures, the Russian Federation, as an offending state, must bear responsibility in volume, types, and forms commensurate with the nature of the offense and its harmful consequences."