New Delhi: Russia has appointed former Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud as its arbitrator in a new investment treaty arbitration brought by Ukraine’s state-owned Oschadbank over assets and operations it says it lost in parts of the country occupied by Russia.According to Global Arbitration Review (GAR), Chandrachud will sit on a three-member arbitral tribunal that will hear Oschadbank’s claim under the 1998 Ukraine-Russia bilateral investment treaty.Costa Rican arbitrator Dyalá Jiménez is the tribunal’s president, having been jointly appointed by the two sides, while Greek arbitrator and National University of Singapore professor Stavros Brekoulakis has been appointed by Oschadbank.The appointment is notable because, GAR reported, Russia had approached Chandrachud last year to serve as its arbitrator in two other investment treaty cases involving the war in Ukraine. Those cases were brought by German energy company Wintershall Dea and Ukrainian energy company Ukrenergo. Chandrachud declined to act in either case.GAR reported that Chandrachud was approached by Russia on the same day that the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) appointed him as the appointing authority in the Wintershall arbitration. Among his responsibilities was selecting a successor to Russia’s arbitrator Hamid Gharavi, who had resigned from the tribunal. Chandrachud later stepped down from the PCA role after disclosing his communications with Russia.Gharavi had resigned from the Wintershall and Ukrenergo tribunals after Russia launched anti-arbitration proceedings in Moscow seeking to restrain the arbitrators from continuing with the cases. In the Wintershall case, Russia sought a €7.5 billion penalty if the arbitrators disobeyed the Moscow proceedings, GAR reported.Also read: ‘Too Harvard-Oriented’: CJI Surya Kant Orders ‘Fine-Tuning’ of Chandrachud’s Gender Stereotypes HandbookThe new Oschadbank arbitration concerns what the bank says are “substantial assets and operations” it lost in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. GAR said the claim is understood to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.The four regions, which together account for roughly 15% of Ukraine’s territory, have been declared Russian territory following referendums that Ukraine and its Western allies have denounced as sham.The new claim could involve hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. GAR reported that Oschadbank CEO Sergii Naumov had estimated last year that the total negative impact of Russia’s invasion on the bank was around $460 million, including about $379 million in distinguishable direct losses.The new arbitration is Oschadbank’s second investment treaty case against Russia. The bank won a $1.1 billion award against Russia in 2018 over losses in Crimea, which rose to $1.3 billion with interest. Russia did not participate in that arbitration and was unrepresented at the hearing.India’s position on the Ukraine war has been to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to dialogue and diplomacy, but has avoided explicitly condemning Russia and has abstained on several UN resolutions criticising Moscow.After Russia announced the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in September 2022, India told the UN Security Council that it abstained on a US-Albanian resolution condemning Russia’s attempted annexation, saying it had taken the decision “keeping in view the totality of the evolving situation”.