Photo from UNIAN
The Ukrainian government will not be lodging more claims with the European Court of Human Rights against Russia regarding Moscow’s actions in Crimea and Donbas, instead choosing to submit additions to the ones already filed, that’s according to the governmental commissioner for the ECHR Ivan Lishchyna, an UNIAN correspondent reported from the official’s Kyiv press conference Thursday.
"We decided that we would not be submitting new claims. We will be submitting additions to the already existing suits on human rights violations in Crimea and Donbas," Lischyna told reporters.
According to the Ukrainian government official, this is because Russia is expected to begin to exploit the fact that a large number of cases has been filed and try to dictate its terms in the order of their consideration.
Lishchyna stressed that in order to avoid this situation, Ukraine has appealed to the ECHR to have "all cases concerning Crimea merged into a single one, and all those concerning Donbass – in another," adding that the court is now considering the issue.
Read alsoUkraine submits new evidence to ECHR over Crimea annexationIn turn, Minister of Justice of Ukraine Pavlo Petrenko recalled that Ukraine launched five lawsuits with the ECHR, one of which includes claims of human rights violations during the illegal occupation of Crimea, while another one is about illegal transfer of Ukrainian orphans, their actual abduction, to the Russian territory.
Read alsoCrimean Tatar Mejlis suing Russia in ECHRAccording to the Minister, other cases are related to the chronological events involving mass violations of human rights in the territory of Donbas. He said that "tens of thousands of documents have been accumulated in these cases."