While democratic leaders debate the best way to use $260bn-plus in frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine, a far easier route is available and unused.
G7 leaders meeting in Italy from June 13-15 will consider a US-led proposal to use the assets as collateral for loans of as much as $50bn. But there are considerable legal and political hurdles to overcome.
Some €210bn ($226bn) of Russian Central Bank assets have been frozen in Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. European Union (EU) officials have said there are no lawful options to seize it. In fact, one such option exists but remains overlooked. Russian state assets should be used to pay compensation awarded by the European Court of Human Rights, the court of the Council of Europe.
Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in March 2022 following its all-out invasion of Ukraine. However, it remained a party to the European Convention on Human Rights until 16 September 2022 and the Court can still adjudicate on any violations that occurred up to that date.
On 12 June, the Court will hold a major hearing in a case brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia. It covers hostilities in eastern Ukraine since 2014, including the downing of Flight MH17, as well as Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. There are three more Ukraine v. Russia inter-state applications and about 7,500 individual other applications about Russia’s aggression pending before the court.
While those cases are inevitably limited in time and subject matter, the European Court is currently the only international body on track to rule on Ukraine war damage, and potentially make a substantial award spanning years of armed conflict.
Russia’s current outstanding debt on European Court judgments, including default interest, exceeds €2.9bn ($3.1bn) in almost 1,500 cases. Those include two inter-state cases brought by Georgia, one of them about its 2008 war with Russia, as well as about 2,000 Moldovan applicants harmed by the Russian puppet regime known as the Republic of Transnistria. There is also a long list of awards in favor of Russian victims for extrajudicial killings, torture, religious persecution, crackdowns on peaceful protests, and many other human rights violations.
In March 2022, Russia ceased all communication with the Court and then passed a domestic law that said it would no longer comply with Strasbourg judgments. Yet, the Council of Europe’s response has been mostly limited to stocktaking of Russia’s outstanding obligations.
This is all quite extraordinary. Hundreds of judgments worth billions of euros rendered by the world’s most prominent human rights court have become a dead letter. They will remain so — and the forthcoming Ukrainian judgments will simply add to the pile — unless European countries step in to close this enforcement gap.
Member states of the Council of Europe holding Russian state assets should establish in their domestic laws a dedicated process for the enforcement of European Court judgments against Russia. Such a process would enable successful Strasbourg applicants to claim those funds before national courts or designated executive agencies. The Council of Europe should endorse this proposal and oversee its implementation.
There is a clear legal basis for seizing Russian state assets to collect its European Court debt. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, Russia not only accepted the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court but also undertook “to abide by the final judgment of the Court in any case” to which it is a party.
Moreover, as per its preamble, the Convention is premised on the idea of “collective enforcement” of rights. For the first time in its history, the Council of Europe faces an openly defiant expellee state that refuses to comply with any and all outstanding judgments. If other member states could not do anything about it, what would be left of that idea? In addition, other low-performing states would be tempted to defy the court, too
The most likely objection to this proposal is sovereign immunity. However, the rationale of sovereign immunity is to ensure that states do not sit in judgment against each other.
This concept cannot obstruct the enforcement of the binding decision of an international court. Here, domestic authorities would act solely as agents of international justice. Relevant international instruments such as the 2004 UN Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property only cover the execution of domestic court judgments or arbitral awards.
Their drafters did not contemplate domestic enforcement of international court judgments and therefore this scenario is beyond their scope. There is no applicable rule of customary international law either — for lack of precedent, be it positive or negative. Now is the time to set that precedent.
Moreover, sovereign immunity rests on an assumption that there are alternative means of obtaining redress, either by diplomatic negotiation or through the respondent state’s own courts. That is clearly not the case for Russia. The Council of Europe has no leverage over a non-member. Contempt proceedings before the European Court would also be meaningless for that same reason. And Russian courts, in addition to lacking any independence, are bound by domestic law to deny enforcement.
Seizure of Russian state assets remains the only viable option to secure compliance with Strasbourg judgments.
In their 2023 Reykjavik Declaration, leaders of the Council of Europe’s member states affirmed: “The need to make every effort to ensure the execution of the Court’s judgments by the Russian Federation.”
The proposal outlined above is certainly unorthodox and unprecedented, but so is Russia’s non-compliance. It is time for radical new measures to compensate all victims of the Russian state’s crimes, in Ukraine and beyond.
Grigory Vaypan is a Russian human rights lawyer and scholar. He is a Senior Lawyer at the Russian human rights group, Memorial and a Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.)
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
