Ukraine will on December 16 move closer to getting compensation for the damage caused by Russia since its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Senior politicians -- likely including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen -- will go to the Hague to adopt a new convention that will set up an International Claims Commission for Ukraine.
In a sense, this is the second of three steps that Kyiv needs to take in order to get compensation down the line. The first such step was taken in 2023 when the Council of Europe set up a Register of Damage for Ukraine, which records compensation claims for damage, loss, or injury caused by Russia's aggression against Ukraine. So far the register has received well over 60,000 claims from countries, organizations, and individuals.
The third and final step is to set up a compensation fund. Such a fund would likely be administered by the Council of Europe or one of its member states and contain money, most likely from frozen Russian assets, to be channeled to Kyiv.
European officials have told RFE/RL that the register and claims commission will certainly play a part in future Russian reparations in one way or another and will likely will be a part of any peace deal.
What Will The International Claims Commission Actually Do?
While the register has so far collected and recorded claims and gathered evidence for compensation, the future commission will go further by determining the type and amount of compensation due, if any. They will be looking at events from the outbreak of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
The claims apply to the entirety of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including land Russia has held since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent outbreak of fighting in the Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
It also includes Ukraine's airspace, inland waterways, and territorial seas, as well as aircrafts and vessels under the jurisdiction of Kyiv.
Once up and running, three panels will be created to assess all the claims, and member countries are expected to send their national experts in areas such as international law, dispute resolution, insurance, and damage assessment.
The convention on setting up the claims commission will enter into force once the 25 participating states have ratified it. That is something that should happen relatively quickly given the register was backed by 41 countries, including all EU member states bar Hungary. Diplomats have told RFE/RL that a similar number of states are expected to ratify.
The Netherlands has been the driving force on compensation for Ukraine, playing a key role on drafting the convention and getting it approved by various Council of Europe bodies in the last year.
And while both the register and commission have a strong European character and are set up within the institutional framework of the Council of Europe, the initiative is open to countries around the world. In fact, it was a resolution dealing with future reparations to Ukraine passed in the United Nations General Assembly back in 2022 that got the ball rolling.
Curiously, Russia is also free to join both as a fully fledged member and as an "observer" even though European officials RFE/RL has spoken to see this as highly unlikely. If Moscow were to become a member in the future, it would have to foot the bill for the entire commission, which now is likely to be carried out by in-kind contributions from participating states.
