Russia says top UN court should dismiss Ukraine’s case over Crimea and terrorism funding

By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Russia is urging judges at the United Nations’ highest court to throw out a case brought by Ukraine against Moscow focused on the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the arming of rebels in eastern Ukraine in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin told judges at the International Court of Justice on Thursday that Ukraine’s case “must be dismissed because it is without any legal foundation. Nor does it have any factual evidence to back it.” Lawyers for Ukraine told the court’s judges that Russia bankrolled a “campaign of intimidation and terror” by rebels in eastern Ukraine starting in 2014 and sought to replace Crimea’s multiethnic community with “discriminatory Russian nationalism.”