Alexei Panich, a lawyer at the Moscow office of Herbert Smith Freehills, a law firm, is convinced that the process will not be difficult and the result is quite predictable.
"Ukraine has no chance to win,” he said in an interview with the Austrian national daily Der Standard.
“The process is not very difficult in terms of the evidence of the money transfer and no timely repayment and it is easy to predict the final decision, which, without any doubt, will be made in favor of Russia,” said Panich, who is a partner in the dispute resolution practice in Moscow and a specialist in litigation and arbitration.
Nevertheless, he suggested, Ukraine will refuse to recognize the court decision and will not pay its debt.
“We will work on proving that it was actually a bribe in both form and meaning. The fact that the London court will consider it gives us more opportunities for that,” a Ukrainian news agency quotes him as saying.
Ukrainian President Poroshenko also claimed that “Russia's loan to Yanukovich was a reward for abandoning plans to sign the cooperation agreement with the European Union.”
Kiev’s position however remains quite weak: as in December 2015, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund has recognized Ukraine’s debt to Russia as official and sovereign.
Therefore Ukraine is in a deadlock: last year it reached a debt restructuring deal with private lenders who agreed to accept a 20-percent principal write-down.
Under the proposal, bondholders, including the California-based Franklin Templeton fund, Ukraine’s largest lender, would accept an immediate loss on the principal. The deal would allow Ukraine to delay repayments for four years, though interest rates would rise slightly. The creditors might recoup some losses after 2021 if the country’s economy returns to faster than expected growth.
The painful talks lasted for five months and saw the International Monetary Fund and the United Sates putting immense pressure on the bondholders to accept short-term losses in return for preventing Ukraine's pro-Western leaders from being forced into resuming their reliance on Russia.
In return, Kiev undertook an obligation not to provide more favorable conditions to any of its creditors.
Russia however has not accepted the suggested terms of restructuring.
