Svitlana Voiteshenko’s brother was killed on 5 March 2022 in an attack attributed to a Russian pilot, by Russian pilot Oleksandr Krasnoyartsev. The pilot was captured, indicted and then exchanged. A trial was held in absentia in a court in Chernihiv.
During the hearing, as she seemed confused, the defendant’s lawyer advised her to seek support from the free legal aid. “That’s how I got a lawyer. He recommended that we file a civil lawsuit against Krasnoyartsev to claim two million hryvnias [38,500 euros] in compensation for moral damages. The investigators said it wouldn’t lead to anything, but we decided to try anyway,” Voiteshenko recalls.
In October 2023, Krasnoyartsev was found guilty of murder, sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered by the court to pay two million hryvnias. The sentence came into force in January 2024. But two years and a half later, Voiteshenko had still not approached any authorities to seek compensation for her brother’s death, because she did not know which steps to take next to receive the compensation.
Currently, not a single Ukrainian affected by the war has received compensation from Russia or its representatives for either moral or material damage. But Ukraine and its international partners are working to establish mechanisms for reparations. Victims are submitting claims to the Register of Damage for Ukraine, and some of them are filing civil lawsuits against Russian military personnel accused of war crimes, while others are pursuing legal actions against the sponsors of the war.
What should the victims do today to ensure they are entitled to reparations in the future? Where will the funds for these payments come from, and will they have to wait until the war is over to receive them?
A compensation commission in the making
On 14 November 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution confirming that Russia must be held legally responsible for the war in Ukraine and must compensate for the damage caused. In May 2023, the Council of Europe established the Register of Damage for Ukraine. So far, the European Union (EU) and 44 states have joined it.
The Register is an electronic database to which, since April 2024, victims have been submitting their claims regarding anything from property damage or loss to deaths, injuries, torture, or captivity. Since spring this year, businesses and the state are also able to submit such claims.
As of June 2026, the EU and 39 states have also signed the convention to establish an international compensation commission meant to review the claims submitted to the Register and determine the amount of reparations. But to be enforced, the convention must still be ratified by at least 25 parties. So far only the EU and six states have ratified it.
The Register’s executive director, Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, believes the required number of ratifications could be achieved this year, for the Commission to start working in 2027. Then, once the Commission is set up, a compensation Fund must be created to pay the victims.
166,000 claims submitted to the Register
Victims can submit their claims through an app called “Diia”, accompanied by evidence of the crime, such as photographs, medical records, certificates, extracts from registers or court decisions. “You can submit a claim to the Register even if you have not reported the incident to the police and do not have the status of a victim in criminal proceedings, and even if you do not have all the documents or evidence. The necessary documents can be added later,” Kliuchkovskyi says.
Dmytro Dzhyma, a lawyer and head of the Ukrainian NGO Dynamic Association of People, has already helped over 200 people submit their claims. “Submitting a claim isn’t difficult when you do it all the time. But for someone doing it for the first time, there can be challenges: documents won’t upload, and the system can display errors,” Dzhyma explains.
Once the claim has been submitted and checked, it is officially registered and awaits consideration by the upcoming compensation commission. So far, around 166,000 claims have been submitted, Kliuchkovskyi says. More than 58,000 have already been verified and recorded. The rest is still being processed and more may come.
“Over the next 6 to 12 months, we will partially automate our work. We will use AI during the technical verification stage,” Kliuchkovskyi says, adding that new categories of claims are also being created, such as loss of paid employment, access to education and healthcare, as well as loss of access to business assets in temporarily occupied territories, damage to cultural, historical and religious heritage and the environment, costs of demining and humanitarian aid.
The Register is also hoping to spread information and launch a wider media campaign, including for people who are currently abroad, and set up an offline application process to get claims from elderly people.
Who will fund the reparations?
The mechanism for financing a compensation fund has not yet been fully determined. One of the most widely discussed potential sources of future payments are Russian assets frozen in other countries. But accessing them remains complex from both legal and political perspectives.
For Liudmyla Suhak, deputy minister for European Integration at the Ukrainian ministry of Justice, it is not even possible to determine their total amount, as states do not usually disclose the exact numbers. The European Commission estimated the “immobilised” Russian Central Bank assets worth of nearly 260 billion euros, including 210 billion euros located in EU countries.
Among other hypothetical funding sources, Kliuchkovskyi mentions a ‘reparations loan’, where the EU and other partners would advance funds ahead of future reparations. A system similar to the one used in Kuwait is also discussed: following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the UN established a compensation commission funded through deductions from Iraqi oil exports. But it would require complex international cooperation and, most importantly, Russia’s consent.
Only a handful civil lawsuits
In the meantime, some victims are trying to secure their right to compensation by civil lawsuits. Either there is already a defendant in a criminal case regarding a war crime, so the victim in the proceedings can file a civil lawsuit against the defendant and claim compensation for material and moral damages. Or the victim can file a separate civil lawsuit against Russia and the so-called ‘sponsors of the war’, meaning individuals or companies who have allegedly contributed to the Russian aggression.
So far, such legal actions are rare. According to Anna Stakhanova from the EU project “Pravo – Justice”, which monitors the court proceedings relating to war crimes, only 2.4% of criminal cases involve victims who claim compensation for material or moral damages.
For Andrii Yakovlev, a lawyer and expert on international humanitarian law at the NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights, civil lawsuits in war crimes are rare due to a lack of information among victims and their scepticism about the possibility of receiving compensation. “There simply hasn’t been a precedent yet. Once the first plaintiff actually receives the money, such lawsuits may become more widespread,” he notes.
For Yakovlev, civil lawsuits against specific individuals – perpetrators, commanders and officials – are one of the most effective means of legal defence currently available. Some Russian military personnel or officials may own property in Ukraine, in the liberated territories or abroad. Should such property be identified, it is theoretically possible to obtain an enforcement order after the court’s ruling. If assets are discovered in another country, a procedure for recognising and enforcing the court decision abroad would have to be initiated. Yakovlev emphasises that this procedure is complex and often difficult to undertake without legal support.
Yakovlev recalls attempts to enforce Ukrainian court decisions to recover funds from Russia in the Netherlands. In one case, the decision was not enforced due to the principle of jurisdictional immunity, which means a foreign state cannot be sued in the courts of another state without its consent. As long as there is no final international decision on Russia’s jurisdictional immunity, it is difficult to seek compensation from its assets even if they are located abroad.
Legal action against “the sponsors of war”
Ukrainian lawyers are therefore exploring other ways to help victims obtain compensation – in particular, through legal action against Russia and the “sponsors of the war”, meaning individuals and companies believed to be involved in financing or otherwise supporting the war. Such lawsuits can be filed in national courts by individuals, as well as by businesses and local communities represented by local authorities.
In a case, currently being heard by a court in Chernihiv, a married couple of farmers is seeking compensation for financial loss (36.1 million hryvnias or 700,000 euros)) and moral damage (600,000 euros) resulting from the destruction of their farm. The defendants are Russia, represented by the ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, the fugitive president Viktor Yanukovych, the businessman Yevgen Giner, his wife Marina Yaroslavskaya, and Russian companies belonging to the Gazprom group.
According to the couple’s lawyer, Natalia Tselovalnichenko – head of the charitable foundation International Movement for the Rights of Victims of Russian Aggression and the Legal Forces of Ukraine project - the purpose of such cases is to establish a legal precedent for holding accountable those who contributed to the aggression, and to prove a cause-and-effect link between their actions and the harm caused by the war. “We believe that Ukraine has already identified them as persons subject to sanctions – that is, those involved in supporting the aggression – and we consider them to be jointly liable in such cases,” Tselovalnichenko says.
According to the lawyer, this approach increases the chances of receiving compensation from co-defendants whom Russia will be unable to protect under its international jurisdictional immunity. Compensation can be collected directly from their assets. Anyone who was affected by Russia’s armed aggression since 2014 may become a plaintiff in these proceedings.
In 2023, the Obolon District Court of Kyiv has upheld a lawsuit filed by 12 plaintiffs against Viktor Yanukovych and the Russian Federation. The court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs and ordered the defendants to jointly pay a total of 2 million euros in compensation for moral damages as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014. Lawyers are now working to enforce this ruling in EU countries and in Switzerland, where, Yanukovych’s assets may be located.
Among other possible enforcement tools, Tselovalnichenko also mentions the transfer of the right to claim, as decided by a court, to international debt collection agencies who are specialized in tracing assets and recovering debts. “We want to launch this mechanism so that it becomes financially advantageous to pursue Russian assets. Then international companies will be in a position to have a vested interest in the enforcement of such court decisions,” the lawyer says.
Simultaneous legal actions to get compensation
Individuals, businesses and the state of Ukraine itself use all means available to protect their rights, since the Constitution of Ukraine does not forbid the simultaneous use of different legal protection mechanisms.
“Submitting a claim to the Register of Damage does not deny a person the right to seek other legal means. They may be granted the status of a victim in criminal proceedings and file a civil lawsuit. This is particularly important at present, as the international compensation mechanism has not yet become fully operational. A victim may also simultaneously file claims against various defendants if all of them may be liable for the damage caused,” Tselovalnichenko explains.
“Submitting claims to other bodies or programmes does not prevent a person or organisation from applying to the Register of Damage,” Kliuchkovskyi adds. As for how this will affect future compensation, that will be decided by the compensation commission, whose rules are still being drafted.
This is an edited version of a longer article published on Pechera.info. This article was made through a grant by Fondation Hirondelle / Justice Info.
