Page:Order of 16 March 2022.pdf/11

- 9 -

while the address of President Putin “to the citizens of Russia” that was appended to the notification may in certain contexts have referred to genocide, this reference is not the same as the invocation of the Convention as a legal justification for its operation, nor does it indicate that the Russian Federation recognizes the existence of a dispute under the Convention. The Russian Federation emphasizes that there are no references to the Genocide Convention in the address made by its President on 24 February 2022.

34. The Russian Federation therefore concludes that Ukraine’s “Application and Request manifestly fall beyond the scope of the Convention and thus the jurisdiction of the Court”; it asks the Court to remove the case from its List.

**

35. The Court recalls that, for the purposes of deciding whether there was a dispute between the Parties at the time of the filing of the Application, it takes into account in particular any statements or documents exchanged between the Parties, as well as any exchanges made in multilateral settings. In so doing, it pays special attention to the author of the statement or document, their intended or actual addressee, and their content. The existence of a dispute is a matter for objective determination by the Court; it is a matter of substance, and not a question of form or procedure (see Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar), Provisional Measures, Order of 23 January 2020, I.C.J. Reports 2020, p. 12, para. 26).

36. The Court notes that the Applicant disputes the Russian Federation’s allegation that Ukraine has committed or is committing genocide in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine. Ukraine also asserts that nothing in the Convention authorizes the Russian Federation to use force against Ukraine as a means to fulfil its obligation under Article I thereof to prevent and punish genocide.

37. In this regard the Court observes that, since 2014, various State organs and senior representatives of the Russian Federation have referred, in official statements, to the commission of acts of genocide by Ukraine in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The Court observes, in particular, that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation — an official State organ — has, since 2014, instituted criminal proceedings against high-ranking Ukrainian officials regarding the alleged commission of acts of genocide against the Russian-speaking population living in the above-mentioned regions “in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

38. The Court recalls that, in an address made on 21 February 2022, the President of the Russian Federation, Mr. Vladimir Putin, described the situation in Donbass as a “horror and genocide, which almost 4 million people are facing”.

39. By a letter dated 24 February 2022 (see paragraph 33 above), the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations requested the Secretary-General to circulate, as a document of the Security Council, the “text of the address of the President