Ukraine puts $90 billion price tag on Crimea
No international court has the authority to handle Ukraine’s monetary claims. Ukraine has said it would try international arbitration in Stockholm to litigate against Russia’s seizure of the oil and gas company Chernomorneftegaz, but the Stockholm tribunal’s jurisdiction in this case is not obvious. When the European Court for Human Rights ruled last month that Turkey should pay $124 million in damages to victims of its 1974 invasion of Northern Cyprus, the ruling concerned damages to specific people — the families of Greeks who disappeared during the invasion and the residents of the Karpas peninsula, cut off from the rest of the island by the Turkish forces. Even so, Turkey refuses to pay.
Because Ukraine has named a specific price, some people in Moscow think it is haggling. “If they want to sell Crimea to us, they should say so directly,” Russian parliament member Yevgeny Tarlo told the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Money is probably not Kyiv’s primary goal. By throwing large numbers around, threatening to sue and even filing suit with whatever courts agree to look at the case, the Ukrainian government is keeping the issue alive. In this age of short memories, a string of reminders that the annexation of Crimea was illegal and that all the Ukrainian property on the peninsula has, in effect, been stolen is a way for Kyiv to ensure continuing international support. It is also part of President-elect Petro Poroshenko’s strategy to remind Crimeans that Ukraine remembers them and wants them back.
It’s probably too late for Kyiv to win back Crimea: The West has clearly decided the annexation did not merit effective economic sanctions against Russia. To that extent, Putin’s mind trick has worked. Ukraine, however, can get substantial economic and security benefits from its status as a victim of aggression, and Poroshenko is not going to pass up that opportunity.
Bloomberg View contributor Leonid Bershidsky is a a Moscow-based writer.
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