Over the past year, Ukrainians have fought the Russians on the ground, at sea, in the air, in cyberspace and in the halls of power around the globe.
Now the country’s richest man is pursuing yet another front in the clash with the Kremlin: Oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, whose holdings included the famed Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant that last year became a symbol of his country’s resistance to the invaders, is pressing a lawsuit against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights, saying he’s out $18 billion since the war started and he wants his money back.
Evil cannot go unpunished. Russia’s crimes against Ukraine and our people are egregious, and those guilty of them must be held liable,” Mr. Akhmetov said in a statement released by the company when first filing the lawsuit last year. “The looting of Ukraine’s export commodities, including grain and steel, has already resulted in higher prices and people dying of hunger worldwide. These barbaric actions must be stopped, and Russia must pay in full.
His group is seeking more than $18 billion in compensation from the Kremlin. But his representatives insist the legal campaign is not just about money. The Kremlin says it no longer participated in the human right court and so the filing is moot. President Voldymyr Zelenskyy, a onetime comedic actor and political novice, was widely seen before the war as no match for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a wily former KGB agent who has spent the past two decades as the unchallenged leader of one of the world’s two nuclear superpowers.
Ms. Yemchenko, the SCM spokeswoman, said that the company is under few illusions it will ever getting compensation directly from Mr. Putin’s government. But she said there is great potential to impact various Russian assets frozen in financial institutions and countries around the Western world since the fighting began.
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