The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg has begun consideration of Abramovich's lawsuit against the EU filed in May 2022 to lift sanctions and compensate for moral damages, which he seeks to send to a fund to help war victims

According to his lawyer, Abramovich was sanctioned because he is a well-known Russian oligarch, and in fact, he was a passive investor in the Russian steel company Evraz and did not provide significant revenues to the government.

The EU Council, which is taking the lead on sanctions, rejects such arguments and urges us not to believe for a second that Evraz is irrelevant to the war effort.

This is the first precedent of a judicial challenge to European sanctions by Russians, which proves once again that Ukrainian officials, diplomats, and the public must persuade them to use Russian money for compensation and reconstruction. The international community must be persuaded to create an effective mechanism for confiscating Russian assets and channeling them to rebuild Ukraine.

Read more about Abramovich's case, the confiscation of assets in Ukraine and abroad, and steps to bring such confiscation closer in Tetiana Khutor's column on "Економічна правда".