BY AFP

Vladimir Putin

The United Nation’s top court is set to rule Wednesday on Ukraine’s urgent request for Russia to immediately halt its invasion, with Kyiv claiming that Moscow falsely accused its pro-Western neighbour of genocide to justify the war.

The International Court of Justice will hand down its judgement at 1500 GMT in The Hague after Ukraine filed an urgent application shortly after Russia’s attack on February 24.

Ukraine has accused Russia of illegally trying to justify its war by falsely alleging genocide in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

Kyiv wants the court to take provisional measures ordering Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations.”

“Russia must be stopped, and the court has a role to play in stopping that,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told the ICJ.

The hearing on Wednesday comes as the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine topped three million and Russian forces step up strikes on residential buildings in Kyiv.

At the same time, both Ukraine and Russia say progress is being made in talks on ending the fighting.

The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states, based mainly on treaties and conventions.

Although its rulings are binding, it has no real means to enforce them.

Experts said it was unlikely that the judges would turn down Kyiv’s request, at least when it came to its urgent requests, called provisional measures.

A full hearing into the content of the case could still take years, they added.

“I think it is unlikely that the ICJ will not meet Ukraine’s submissions at least to some extent or entirely,” said Marieke de Hoon, an assistant international criminal law professor at the University of Amsterdam.

The ICJ at this stage only needed to determine whether there was a dispute at first sight over the interpretation of the Genocide Convention, she said.

“It won’t be difficult for the ICJ to rule that this low threshold is reached,” she told AFP.