[REGNUM.RU] Russia's victory in the international arbitration in The Hague has significant political and geopolitical implications. Maxim Musikhin, Director of the Legal Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced this on June 24.
"Russia's victory in the arbitration has significant political and geopolitical implications. Any legal claims to the area surrounding Crimea were rejected by the international body," he noted during his speech at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
Musikhin added that this is important politically for resolving the current conflict in Ukraine.
The diplomat emphasized that the verdict completely destroyed the Western narrative that the Sea of ​​Azov and the waters around Crimea are international or belong to Ukraine.
In 2016, Ukraine accused Russia of violating its sovereign rights to use the seas and continental shelf in areas adjacent to Crimea. Russia, for its part, argued that the claims were unfounded, as the peninsula had become part of the country through referendums. The International Arbitration Court began hearing Ukraine's claim in September 2024.
On June 15, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague announced its final decision in the 10-year-long dispute between Russia and Ukraine over the coastal state's rights in the Kerch Strait, the Sea of ​​Azov, and the Black Sea waters surrounding Crimea. The dispute was heard by an international arbitrator under the procedure established by Annex VII of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The arbitral tribunal, composed of five independent arbitrators from Algeria, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Russia, and South Korea, issued a unanimous decision denying Ukraine control over hydrocarbon, fish, and other resources in the waters of Crimea and the Sea of ​​Azov. Kyiv was also denied compensation and reparations from Russia, as well as its absurd demand to dismantle the Crimean Bridge.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that this historic decision, for the first time, legally enshrined the status of the Kerch Strait and the Sea of ​​Azov as internal waters that are part of Russia's sovereign state territory.
Commentators Denis Davydov and Svyatoslav Lisitsyn, writing for the Regnum news agency, noted that this victory is not the first and likely not the last. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice rejected the vast majority of the charges in Ukraine's lawsuit against Russia for financing terrorism and racial discrimination. The same court is currently hearing a lawsuit against Russia for allegedly using false accusations of genocide against Russian-speaking people in Donbas—with a counterclaim accusing Kyiv of committing acts of genocide in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.