THE HAGUE, February 9. /TASS corr./. Russia highly appreciates the ruling by the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a dispute with Ukraine under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Vladimir Tarabrin said in an interview with TASS.

According to him, the Russian side viewed the court's jurisdictional ruling positively. "We highly appreciate the court's conclusion, based on its rulings on Serbia's disputes with a number of NATO member states, according to which the issues of the use of force are not regulated by the convention, which ultimately denied Kiev's attempts to question the legality of the special military operation and, thereby, make it necessary for the court to assess its legality," the diplomat said.

"Thus, the only question that remains before the court in this case is whether Ukraine [itself] committed genocide in Donbass," Tarabrin stated. "In other words, Ukraine, which itself initiated these proceedings, now finds itself in the position of the accused party, effectively putting itself in the dock. There is a Russian proverb that warns about what will happen if you dig a hole for someone else..."

On February 2, the UN International Court of Justice ruled that it has jurisdiction in the proceedings between Ukraine and Russia on the application of the Genocide Convention and that the lawsuit is admissible, but it significantly limited the range of issues under consideration. In particular, the ICJ concluded that its jurisdiction does not extend to consideration of the issues of whether the use of force by Russia against Ukraine and the recognition by Moscow of the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) violate the Genocide Convention. The court found admissible only the part of the lawsuit in which the Ukrainian side demanded that the court "declare that there is no credible evidence that Ukraine is responsible for committing genocide" in Donbass.