Guest editorial: Insolvency‐related judgments and war‐related claims—Recent court practice in Ukraine

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Olha Stakheyeva‐Bogovyk
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/iir.1506

EDITORIAL

Guest editorial: Insolvency-related judgments

and war-related claims—Recent court practice

in Ukraine

1|INTRODUCTION

This Guest Editorial aims to share some thoughts, potentially triggering further debate,

around a topic of recognition and enforcement of insolvency-related judgments, which has

been widely discussed recently by the international insolvency community. It is common

ground that, while the United States is a welcoming jurisdiction in part for the recognition

of foreign insolvency-related judgments as a form of relief under Chapter 15 of the US

Bankruptcy Code, the United Kingdom with its more protective approach and the “rule in

Gibbs”generally resists such recognition due to its restrictive interpretation of the scope of

“relief”available to the foreign insolvency representative, which could be granted in the

United Kingdom in aid of a foreign insolvency proceeding under Schedule 1 of the Cross-

Border Insolvency Regulation, 2006 (“CBIR”), by limiting it exclusively to procedural

relief.

No wonder then, that to respond to such legal gaps that have been created by

different implementations and applications of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-

Border Insolvency 1997 in various jurisdictions, UNCITRAL has developed and

introduced its new Model Law on Recognition and Enforcement of Insolvency-Related

Judgements 2019 (“MLIRJ”) to further promote the improvement of domestic cross-

border insolvency frameworks, so as to enable recognition and enforcement of

foreign insolvency-related judgments in the jurisdictions, which currently lack a

framework.

By contrast, this editorial narrowly focuses on the analysis of some of the provisions of the

MLIRJ in the context of recent landmark court practice in insolvency cases in Ukraine, which

was triggered by the Russian aggression against Ukraine since February 24, 2022. The initial

topic for discussion is, thus, centered around a landmark court decision, which pushed the

envelope by giving the green light to consider a debtor's claim for compensation of damages

caused by Russia's war/aggression against Ukraine within that debtor's pending insolvency

case in Ukraine.

This case provides food for thought as to the prospects of qualifying such a court decision as

“an insolvency-related judgment”for the purposes of further recognition and enforcement

thereof abroad in the future.

Received: 31 July 2023 Accepted: 2 August 2023

DOI: 10.1002/iir.1506

© 2023 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Int Insolv Rev. 2023;32:391–396. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/iir 391