ECHR rejects case over alleged Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk apartment
The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a case brought by a resident of Russian-occupied Donetsk who alleged that Ukrainian forces destroyed her apartment in an artillery strike in 2014.
The court did not determine who was responsible for the shelling. Instead, it unanimously declared the application inadmissible because the woman had not exhausted the legal remedies available to her in Ukraine.
The applicant, identified as Maslova, said her apartment in Donetsk was destroyed by Ukrainian government forces on Aug. 9, 2014. She argued that she had been unable to exercise her rights because courts and other Ukrainian state institutions had been relocated from territories that fell outside Kyiv's control.
The ECHR found, however, that the relocated Ukrainian courts remained effective and accessible. Maslova had made no attempt to bring her case before them, despite regularly traveling from Donetsk to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The court also noted that Ukrainian authorities had opened a criminal investigation into the shelling in 2018 on their own initiative. Maslova did not cooperate with investigators or provide potentially useful evidence.
The ECHR therefore found that the alleged ineffectiveness of the investigation could not be attributed to Ukraine and resulted primarily from the applicant's own lack of due diligence.
Her claim that the destruction of the apartment had forced her to relocate was also rejected as unsubstantiated because she did not say where she had moved or provide evidence of displacement.
The ruling follows previous ECHR decisions finding that courts relocated from occupied Donetsk remained functioning and accessible legal remedies for residents of the occupied territories.
The court also reiterated its earlier finding in the interstate case Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia that the relevant Russian-occupied areas of Donetsk Oblast had been under Russia's effective control since May 2014.
That finding provided context for the case but did not establish responsibility for the Aug. 9, 2014 shelling.