Ukraine battles Russia in legal front

Ukraine was in the offensive against Russia on Tuesday in both battle and legal fronts claiming its forces broke enemy defense lines and telling the International Court of Justice that Moscow's aggression is a threat to international law.

Ukraine's ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi announced Monday they have broke through Russian defense line in the area of Bakhmut.

Ukraine's defence ministry also said Monday its troops had recaptured a total of seven square kilometers last week near Bakhmut and also along the southern front.

The air force said it had brought down 18 out of 24 Russian attack drones over the Black Sea regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv overnight Sunday.

Russia, however, said that with the strikes it had hit storage facilities for British Storm Shadow cruise missiles and ammunition with depleted uranium — a controversial weapon supplied by the United States to Kyiv.

Twisting international law

At the ICJ in The Hague, Netherlands, Ukraine's lead speaker Anton Korynevych told the court, sitting just a few metres from his Russian opponents in the Peace Palace, that "Russia is not above the law. It must be held accountable," for attacking Ukraine.

"You have the power to declare that Russia's actions are unlawful, that its continued abuses must stop, that your orders must be followed and that Russia must make reparations," he told the judges.

Korynevych said Russia's use of the Genocide Convention to justify a war of conquest twists international law into a tool for human right abuses and destruction."

"Russia's defiance is also an attack on this court's authority. Every missile that Russia fires at our cities, it fires in defiance of this court," he added.

On Monday, Russia's legal team argued that ICJ has no jurisdiction over the case.

The team said that if Kyiv denies Moscow's accusation of genocide of pro-Russian Ukrainians,"why is the court even considering a case under the Genocide Convention."

Thanking US

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is in the United States on Monday to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York and meet with President Joe Biden.

"I will thank the US for its leadership in supporting our struggle for freedom and independence," Zelensky said on X, formerly Twitter.

"I'm… pleased to announce that the M1 Abrams tanks that the United States had previously committed to will be entering Ukraine soon," US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday at the opening of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany.

The tanks are part of more than $43 billion in security assistance pledged by the US since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

WITH AFP