Ukraine branded Russia a "terrorist state" at the UN's top court on Tuesday, accusing Moscow of blowing up a major dam as part of a campaign to wipe it off the map.
The two sides faced off at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case brought by Kyiv alleging that Moscow backed rebels for eight years before last year's invasion.
Russia's support for separatist fighters from 2014 made a mockery of international law and was a harbinger of the February 2022 invasion, Ukrainian officials told the court.
"Russia cannot defeat us on the battlefield, so it targets civilian iinfrastructure to try to freeze us into submission. Just today, Russia blew up a major dam located in Nova Kakhovka," Ukrainian diplomat Anton Korynevych said.
"Russia's actions are the actions of a terrorist state, an aggressor. But such actions did not appear out of the blue," he added in his opening remarks.
"They are the tragic but logical outcome of the situation we brought to this court's attention back in 2017" when it originally filed the case.
Russia denies funding or supporting the rebels. Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame for the destruction of the dam in southern Ukraine, which has unleashed a torrent of flooding.
- 'Cultural erasure' -
Ukraine alleges that Russia breached UN conventions on financing terrorism and on racial discrimination, and is seeking damages for attacks by pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
Fighting broke out after pro-EU protests overthrew Ukraine's Moscow-allied government, and Russia then annexed Crimea.
About 13,000 people died in the violence including 298 who were killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine with a Russian-made missile in July 2014.
Ukraine has filed a separate case related to Russia's February 2022 invasion, accusing Moscow of planning genocide. The ICJ in that case ordered Russia to suspend the invasion.
But Korynevych, an ambassador-at-large in Ukraine's foreign ministry, said that "Russia's contempt for international law didn't start in 2022."
"Beginning in 2014, Russia illegally occupied Crimea and then engaged in a campaign of cultural erasure, taking aim at ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars," he said.
Russia's invasion was now "trying to wipe us from the map" completely, said Korynevych.
"The lesson this case teaches is simple: the past is prologue."
Moscow's lawyers will present their arguments on Thursday. Ukraine will then reply on June 12 and Russia on June 14.
- 'Reign of terror' -
Ukraine's lawyers pointed to a Dutch court verdict last year, which sentenced two Russians and a Ukrainian to life in absentia over the shooting of MH17.
Russian officials were "guilty of terrorism financing" as they had supplied the missile in the knowledge that rebels would use it to shoot down an aircraft, they said.
"The destruction of flight MH17 is another tragic exmaple of the consequences of Russia's total non cooperation" with the UN terrorism convention, lawyer David Zionts told the court.
Russia had also supplied rebels with rocket systems that were used in a "reign of terror" on civilians in eastern Ukrainian cities in 2015, lawyer Marney Cheek said.
"What did Russia do to prevent and suppress this financing of terrorism? Nothing," she said.
A verdict in the case could take years to come from the ICJ, which was created after World War II to deal with disputes between UN member states.
Moscow meanwhile faces a wider campaign of "lawfare" -- the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimise an opponent -- over the situation in Ukraine.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) -- a separate war crimes tribunal which like the ICJ is also based in The Hague -- issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March.
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