The Arbitration Tribunal has adopted a final decision in the case of Ukraine against Russia regarding the violation of the rights of a coastal state. The court rejected Moscow’s claims to Ukrainian waters and officially recognized that Russia violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. This is stated in a comment by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, according to the PromPolitInform portal.
The decision was adopted on April 22, 2026. Ukraine initiated the case on September 14, 2016, in connection with Russia’s violation of its obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in the waters off the coast of Crimea since 2014.
The tribunal confirmed that the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait are internal waters of two states — Ukraine and Russia, and not a “Russian lake.” Thus, Ukraine remains a coastal state in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Kerch Strait, and no unilateral actions by Russia after 2022 have changed this.
Separately, the tribunal found that Russia violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea during the construction of the Kerch Bridge, the laying of submarine cables, and the gas pipeline — in particular, it failed to conduct a proper environmental impact assessment.
“The decision of the Arbitration Tribunal is yet another confirmation that the Russian Federation systematically disregards the norms of international law, and its attempts to impose the consequences of criminal aggression on the world as a “new reality” do not have and will not have international legal recognition,” the Foreign Ministry stressed.
