Press release on the adoption of procedural documents by interstate arbitration on the dispute between Ukraine and Russia regarding the “seizing of Ukrainian warships.”

On November 22, the Interstate Arbitral Tribunal established at Ukraine’s initiative based on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea for reviewing Ukraine’s dispute with Russia over the Kerch incident, adopted its first document that endorsed the order of work and arbitral procedural rules.

The Russian Federation is fully content with this decision that takes into account all of its provisions of principle, which it voiced during the arbitral session in The Hague.

Ukraine’s demands on the renunciation of the jurisdictional process and the ultimate reduction of the investigation timeframe were ignored. The tribunal accepted Russia’s demands and decided to divide the process into two independent parts – the jurisdiction stage and a trial on merit. Each side was given six months to prepare its memorandum (Ukraine insisted on two months), which conforms to the practice of interstate courts of arbitration established under the 1982 convention.

The tribunal supported Russia’s approaches to other important aspects, which eliminated Kiev’s attempts to complicate Russia’s procedural position in this case as much as possible.