Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: Ukraine’s Emerging Compensation Architecture and Its Systemic Challenges

Illia Chernohorenko served as Director-General for the Rule of Law Directorate at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, consulted the President of Ukraine on legal reform, and worked at the Supreme Court, representing it in the ECtHR’s Superior Courts Network. He is currently pursuing a DPhil on repurposing state assets as redress for human rights violations. In recent years, he has advised international organisations on justice sector reforms in Europe and Asia and served as a Visiting Professional in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court.

The question of reparations for Ukraine is often framed in legal or political terms. Yet at its core lies a more fundamental challenge: scale. The magnitude of damage caused by Russia’s aggression exceeds the capacity of any single mechanism—national or international—to respond comprehensively. As a result, a multi-layered compensation architecture is emerging, combining domestic and international mechanisms. While significant progress has been made, the emerging system continues to face important structural challenges. Questions relating to temporal coverage, institutional coordination, and funding will likely shape its overall effectiveness as the architecture continues to develop.

Scale and the Structural Limits of National Mechanisms

The scale of harm provides the starting point. The latest Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5), prepared by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the United Nations, estimates that damage to physical assets exceeds $200 billion, while total losses reach approximately $660 billion. Reconstruction needs are projected at around $588 billion over the next decade. These figures capture the economic and material dimensions of the war, although they cannot fully reflect the broader human harm suffered by millions of individuals, including displacement, injury, trauma, and loss of life.

Housing alone illustrates the scale of the challenge: approximately $81 billion in damage, $110 billion in losses, and around $200 billion in reconstruction needs. Against this backdrop, Ukraine’s domestic compensation mechanisms—most notably the eRecovery programme—have delivered tangible results. As of April 2026, over 188,085 households have received compensation, with total payments amounting to roughly $2 billion.

This is a considerable achievement, particularly in wartime conditions. Yet it also reveals a structural limitation. Compensation delivered to date represents only a small fraction—approximately 2–3%—of total housing damage. The gap between harm and redress is therefore not simply a matter of implementation, but a function of scale. Even an efficient national system cannot absorb losses of this magnitude. The need for an international compensation mechanism follows directly from this mismatch.

The Register of Damage and the European Court of Human Rights: Structured Fragmentation 

The international compensation mechanism is centred on three key components: the Register of Damage, the Claims Commission, and the Compensation Fund. The Register, established under the auspices of the Council of Europe, is already operational and is mandated to receive, process, and record claims and associated evidence relating to damage, loss, and injury caused by Russia’s internationally wrongful acts. Since it became operational for the submission of claims in April 2024, the Register has received over 145,000 claims as of April 2026. Set against an anticipated total caseload of between 6 and 10 million claims, this represents roughly 1–2% of the expected volume. This proportion should not be framed as a shortcoming of the institution. Rather, it reflects the early stage of a mechanism designed to operate at an unprecedented scale, as well as the logistical and evidentiary challenges inherent in documenting mass harm in an ongoing conflict.

The next stage is the establishment of the Claims Commission. On 16 December 2025, 35 states and the European Union signed the Convention Establishing an International Claims Commission for Ukraine (Convention) creating the Commission. On 11 May 2026, Canada became the first non-European state to sign the Convention. Its entry into force requires 25 ratifications representing at least 50% of the Register’s assessed budget (approximately EUR 3.5 million). If these conditions are met, operationalisation in 2026 is realistic. The Convention has already been ratified by Estonia, Latvia, Iceland, and Ukraine. The Commission will be mandated to determine the admissibility of claims, establish liability, and assess the quantum of compensation. While the Commission’s institutional design and mandate differ significantly from those of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)—the former functioning as a specialised mass claims mechanism rather than a human rights court—its subject-matter jurisdiction in certain respects is broader than that of the ECtHR, extending beyond violations of the European Convention to include damage resulting from the act of aggression and breaches of international humanitarian law. At the same time, this emerging architecture is characterised by only partial overlap with existing judicial mechanisms. Temporal limitations create a fragmented remedial landscape. The Register records claims relating to damage occurring from 24 February 2022 onwards, while the ECtHR’s jurisdiction over Russia ceased on 16 September 2022.

This results in a situation in which identical harms may fall into different legal tracks depending solely on timing. Violations occurring before February 2022 fall outside the scope of the Register; violations occurring after September 2022 fall outside the ECtHR’s jurisdiction. Only a certain temporal window, from 24 February 2022 to 16 September 2022, allows for potential overlap between the two systems. The relationship between them is therefore one of structured fragmentation shaped by jurisdictional limits and political compromise.

Various proposals have been advanced to manage this interaction. One suggestion is that the ECtHR could assess the effectiveness of the international compensation mechanism for Ukraine and, where appropriate, strike out cases under Article 37 of the Convention, allowing applicants to pursue their claims through the international compensation mechanism. This approach reflects the practical reality that enforcement through Strasbourg is currently limited, with awards unpaid by Russia already exceeding €2.8 billion.

However, such an approach must be treated with caution. At present—and potentially in future procedural developments within the ECtHR inter-State proceedings—reliance on the emerging international compensation mechanism may lead to the postponement of consideration of just satisfaction for pre-2022 violations. This is particularly sensitive given that the two bodies serve distinct functions. The ECtHR is a human rights court whose primary role is to determine violations of the Convention, with compensation forming part of its remedial framework under Article 41, whereas the Claims Commission is a specialised mass claims mechanism principally concerned with assessing and administering compensation for conflict-related harm. The interaction between systems therefore requires careful calibration to avoid both duplication and exclusion.

From Determination to Payment: Sequencing and Strategy

Even if institutional coordination challenges are addressed, a more fundamental issue remains: how to translate determinations of liability into actual payment. The Claims Commission will be empowered to adjudicate claims and quantify compensation, but it will not itself generate the financial resources required to satisfy awards.

Existing financial instruments, including EU macro-financial assistance to Ukraine, are designed to support economic stabilisation and recovery. They are not structured as reparations mechanisms and are already heavily committed.

The question is therefore not simply one of funding, but of sequencing. This sequencing is strategically significant. Preserving immobilised Russian central bank assets keeps open the possibility that they can be used to support reparations once a comprehensive legal and institutional framework is in place. At the same time, borrowing on financial markets, as the EU recently decided to do, provides immediate liquidity for urgent reconstruction and recovery needs. A further implication follows. Findings by the Claims Commission linking specific harm to Russia’s internationally wrongful acts would strengthen the legal and political basis for mobilising such assets at a later stage. Decisions taken now about institutional design and financial strategy will shape the long-term viability and credibility of the compensation system. 

Put simply, the next few years will be decisive not only for Ukraine, but also for the future configuration of Europe’s security architecture. In this context, recourse to market-based financing—through the issuance of bonds to support Ukraine—may represent the most strategically sound approach to meet Ukraine’s immediate needs. Such an approach enables the mobilisation of resources (which is deeply justified by the EU’s own security interest) in the short term while preserving immobilised Russian assets as a potential basis for a future Compensation Fund and for legally grounded reparations once an appropriate framework for their use is established.

Conclusion

The emerging compensation architecture for Ukraine represents a significant institutional innovation, but it remains incomplete. The scale of harm, the fragmentation of jurisdiction, and the unresolved question of funding together create a complex and evolving landscape.

The central challenge is to ensure coherence across the different components of the emerging architecture—domestic compensation schemes, the ECtHR, and the international compensation mechanism. Without careful alignment, these parallel processes risk producing inconsistent outcomes, duplicative claims, or leaving certain categories of victims without effective redress. Conversely, a coordinated and strategically sequenced approach across these interacting systems offers the possibility of a more effective, coherent, and credible response to mass harm.

The next few years will be decisive—not only for Ukraine, but for the development of international practice in addressing large-scale violations and organising reparations at scale.

Photo attribution: by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash