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Svitlana Romanko is used to blackouts. For the last three years, Kyiv has been subject to regular power cuts from Russian strikes. At the start of this month, Moscow launched a major attack on the Ukrainian capital that killed four people, injured 25 and cut off the power in half the city’s apartment buildings.
“This is a very tough winter. One of the toughest. It’s not good, especially if Russian attacks continue,” the environmental lawyer explained from her home in the city.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Romanko founded Razom We Stand, a Ukraine-based international advocacy group that aims to eliminate Russian fossil fuels from the market.
“Our country is drained by war. Going into its fourth full year, it’s been extremely damaging. It’s been horrific in terms of its effects on the civil population, but also on the battlefield,” she said.
The devastation Ukraine has suffered under Russian invasion has been documented and observed worldwide, but an accompanying threat has largely gone unnoticed; the rise of secretive legal challenges from foreign corporations known as Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS).
ISDS are a mechanism built into many bilateral and multilateral treaties that enables governments to be sued by foreign investors if their investment in that country is threatened. New reporting by Land and Climate Review and The Observer has now revealed that at least eight ISDS claims have been brought against Ukraine since the 2022 invasion. There may be more, as some treaties do not require cases to be publicly listed.
Critics of ISDS say it is exploited by multinational corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals to exert undue influence over sovereign governments, effectively prioritising foreign business interests over other concerns in policy decisions.
Jude Kirton-Darling, a former British Labour MEP and now Deputy General Secretary of the trade union industriAll Europe, described it as “an abomination in a democratic state that you have private courts for wealthy individuals and companies to get some kind of private justice.”
The former MEP said there is “a whole infrastructure of completely secretive courts where you can challenge public policy decisions made by democratically elected governments.”
The claims against Ukraine have been brought by a large range of investors in various jurisdictions, from drinks producer CTF Holdings S.A. based in Luxembourg, to UK oil and gas company Enwell Energy.
Bart-Jaap Verbeek, senior researcher at the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, said it is “outrageous” that companies can bring cases against a conflict-ravaged state:
“Ukraine is a country at war. The economy is totally destroyed. It is totally reliant on foreign aid to be able to defend itself. And now we have all of these shady investors suing Ukraine for such significant amounts of money that it’s undermining European aid,” he said.
At least five of the eight cases have been brought by companies with ties to Russian sanctioned oligarchs.
In June 2025, German cement company AEROC Investment Deutschland brought an ISDS claim against Ukraine through the Germany-Ukraine bilateral investment treaty. AEROC is tied to oligarch Andrey Molchanov, who pays taxes in Russia and has contributed to wartime programmes providing houses to Russian military personnel. He has been subject to Ukrainian sanctions since May 2023. AEROC’s claim relates to the seizure of two of its plants by Ukrainian authorities in June 2023.
“That Ukraine’s economic response to Russia’s neo-imperial aggression can be challenged by secretive corporate courts should illuminate a fundamentally unjust system,” said Cleodie Rickard, policy and campaign manager at Global Justice Now.
“These special rights for investors in trade deals bring the risk of huge financial penalties – and particular economic harm to a war-torn country like Ukraine,” she added.
The claims are not limited to companies with physical assets in the country. In July 2023, the Ukrainian government nationalised one of the nation’s largest banks, Sense Bank, which was previously owned by ABH Financial Limited and ABH Ukraine Limited.
Less than six months later, a Russian-Israeli billionaire, Mikhail Fridman, used a Luxembourg subsidiary of ABH Holdings to sue Ukraine for US$1 billion, accusing its government of “illegal expropriation”. The claim is equivalent to almost half of the sum the EU released to Ukraine in its latest funding round.
Companies linked to Fridman have filed a total of three ISDS cases against Ukraine, as well as a number against its allies. He has also been linked to a claim against Luxembourg worth $16 billion (equivalent to around half the Grand Duchy’s annual revenue) as well as a case against the UK.
The UK claim was revealed in November through a parliamentary question tabled by Martin Rhodes. The Labour MP for Glasgow North said “ISDS is increasingly being used to undermine democratic decision-making”, arguing that ending a system that “costs taxpayers millions and can take years to resolve” is essential to “restore democratic control”.
Fridman has previously been sanctioned in the UK, US and EU due to his perceived ties to the Russian state. The Security Service of Ukraine indicted him in 2023 for allegedly pouring billions of roubles into weapons and ammunition for the Russian military, as well as for charges of money laundering, fraud, and tax evasion – allegations that Fridman denies.
Judith Kirton-Darling described it as “abhorrent” that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, wealthy individuals could be “using ISDS courts to threaten countries that are acting in solidarity with the invaded country.”
Bart-Jaap Verbeek calls claims such as those brought by Fridman and AEROC “a big problem for Europe’s defence, security and geopolitical interests.”
“It’s scandalous that we are held hostage by these private investors suing us and making these legal threats for crazy amounts.”
In its reasoning for its case against Ukraine, Fridman’s ABH Holdings notes that in April 2024 the EU Court of Justice ruled that it had been mistaken in previously placing Fridman on a list of sanctioned people.
Despite there being “a degree of proximity between … Mikhail Fridman and Vladimir Putin or his entourage,” there is no evidence that Fridman supported policies undermining Ukraine or that he provided support to Russia’s war effort, the ruling stated.
Meanwhile, ABH Holdings has attempted to have the arbitrator appointed in defence of Ukraine, Sean Murphy, struck off the case, due to his condemnation of Russia’s invasion.
Land and Climate Review has attempted to contact AEROC, ABH Holdings and Mikhail Fridman directly over email and through legal representatives for comment but received no response.
In contrast to public litigation cases, where judges are independently appointed, ISDS are administered by a global system of elite law firms and arbitrators who are appointed by either the claimant or respondent. Research conducted by Land and Climate Review and first reported in The Observer revealed that a number of these are based in the UK.
Last summer, the EU attempted to curb ISDS claims through its 18th sanctions package, which included provisions intended to limit the ability of investors to sue over to the impacts of sanctions.
Campaigners are unconvinced this will work. “I really doubt whether this particular provision is enough to shield the EU or EU member states against these ISDS threats,” said Verbeek.
“As long as there are these investment treaties still in place and enforced, there’s no legal security or certain way to prevent ISDS challenges from the sanctioned entities. It remains very uncertain how effective these rules are,” he added.
“As long as those bilateral investment treaties exist, they’re kind of outside the remit of everything else.”
Nathalie Bernasconi, managing director for Europe at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), argued that ISDS claims brought by oligarchs constitute “a misuse of treaties.”
“When these treaties were negotiated, nobody thought they would be used like this,” she explained. “This was not what the drafters expected. It’s a crazy way to continue to do national policy, just leaving these instruments in with no idea how they’re going to be used.”
For Svitlana Romanko, the claims brought against Ukraine represent a deep injustice: “Ukraine is not some abstract respondent state. It’s a country resisting an illegal invasion, with millions forcibly displaced.
“There is a deep asymmetry in the aggressor destroying infrastructure and taking lives while the defender faces multibillion claims for sanctioning suspicious investors. We are not guilty in this war. We are just defending ourselves because Russia invaded us. They bear all responsibility; we should not forget it.
Camille Corcoran is a freelance investigative journalist working in France and the UK. She has published stories with outlets including The Guardian, The Observer, The Times and Sunday Times, and The Independent.