"It’s fantastic. It reads like they threw everything at it and they’re hoping something will stick," Mitu Gulati, a law professor at Duke University, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
Ukraine "welcomes the opportunity" to lay out the full facts about the period leading up to and following the bond issue because they are "critical to a proper understanding" of Russia’s claim, Alex Gerbi, a lawyer representing Ukraine, told Bloomberg.
The authors of the article made a breakdown of the arguments included in the document.
First, Russia can’t insist on repayment if "it has breached obligations toward Ukraine under international law," the defense says.
It is highly unlikely that an English judge will rule whether Moscow has violated international laws, Gulati said. Nevertheless, it may play in the hands of Kiev because the proceedings may be delayed until a higher body such as the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled on the legality of Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
This argument is "purely technical," Mark Weidemaier, a professor at the University of North Carolina, wrote in a note. What is more, a judge may decide that it is not Russia’s fault that Ukraine broke its domestic laws, he added.
Third, the defense claims that Russia pressured Ukraine into signing the debt deal. In 2013, Moscow applied "economic and political pressure" to prevent Yanukovych from signing an association deal with the European Union. As a result, the financial situation in Ukraine deteriorated so that Kiev had to sell its debt to Moscow, according to the defense.
Moscow can counter this argument by saying that the debt deal was negotiated between sophisticated legal representatives and advisers, so "Ukraine couldn’t have been coerced," Shane Gleghorn, a lawyer at Taylor Wessing in London, told Bloomberg.
The final argument says the debt contract implied that Kiev is entitled not to repay if "Russia hinders its ability to do so." The "annexation of Crimea" and "Russia’s involvement in Donbass conflict" destabilized the economy and pushed Kiev to ask aid from the International Monetary Fund, the defense claims.
Both Gulati and Weidemaier agreed this argument is most likely to prevail in the proceedings.
In February, Russia filed a lawsuit against Ukraine at London's High Court over the $3-billion sovereign debt following unsuccessful attempts to agree on a debt restructuring as Ukraine announced in December 2015 that it would not make the repayment on current conditions.
Russia has postponed several times the hearing at London’s High Court over the debt repayment. In late-April, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov called on Kiev to start talks on the debt settlement.
On May 27, Ukraine protested Russia’s appeals, saying the debt is invalid.
According to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, as of late-April, the country’s sovereign debt reached $67 billion.
