In a legal dispute with Ukraine's Naftogaz, Russia contests the seizure of Finnish assets.

The Kremlin announced on Tuesday that Russia would file a lawsuit against the confiscation of Russian state assets by the Ukrainian oil and natural gas company Naftogaz.

Naftogaz's lawyers announced on Sunday that they had frozen Russian state-owned assets and real estate in Finland, worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Naftogaz has pursued legal action against Russia to seek compensation for Moscow expropriating Naftogaz's property during the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

"We will certainly contest this in court." We will protect our property rights, as the Russian Federation is bound to do.

The Hague tribunal ordered Russia to pay Naftogaz in April 2023 $4.22 billion, plus interest and costs of litigation to compensate for assets seized in Crimea. However, Moscow hasn't done this.

Oleksiy Chernyshov, CEO of Naftogaz, said in a press release: "Since Russia has refused to pay the amounts due under the award we will continue to use all available mechanisms in order to recover these funds in jurisdictions that host Russian assets."

David Pinsky, partner at Covington and counsel to Naftogaz said that the asset freeze in Finland was only one part of a global strategy for compensation. This included actions in the United States as well as Britain. (Reporting from Dmitry Antonov, Moscow; Mark Trevelyan, London; Editing by William Maclean.)

(source: Reuters)