SSRS okupacijos žalos atlyginimo įstatymas ir Rusijos Federacijos atsakomybės tarptautiniai teisiniai pagrindai
The Law on Compensation of Damage Resulting from the USSR Occupation and the International Legal Grounds for Responsibility of the Russian Fedration

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the provisions of the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Compensation of Damage Resulting from the USSR Occupation (hereinafter – the Law), which was adopted on 13 June 2000 in the light of customary rules of international law on state responsibility, as codified in the 2001 the UN International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. The main aim of the article is to deal with the international legal grounds of the responsibility of the Russian Federation for the Soviet occupation of the Republic of Lithuania and, against this background, to identify the role of the Law. The Law is a unilateral act of the State of Lithuania which formulates and concretises the claim for Russia’s responsibility. The form of this act was determined by Lithuanian national rather than international law as the former requires that any compulsory rules or instructions for the Government can be laid down by the Seimas (the Parliament) only in the form of (statutory) law. As it is clear from the preamble of the Law, in continuing and consolidating the previous Lithuanian acts invoking Russia’s responsibility the Law demonstrates that the claim for responsibility has been raised without any unreasonable delay a long time ago (the first time Lithuania declared about its claim for reparation in 1991) and Russia is aware of that claim from the very beginning. In such a manner the Law also proves a consistent and unchanging position of Lithuania with regard to Russia’s responsibility. Therefore the Law evidences that the claim of Lithuania remains admissible although still being unresolved and notwithstanding that Russia is rejecting it.

• Details
• Contents