The case of Russian Tatneft recovering $112 million in compensation from Ukraine, and the interest for the loss of a stake in Ukrtatnafta, by the decision of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), is being used as an instrument of hybrid warfare, Ukrainian Justice Minister Denys Maliuska has said.

"With a high degree of probability, Russia will use this decision as a weapon, that is, Tatneft does not aim to recover a hundred and something millions. They are rather interested in the process of inflicting various losses on us," he said in an interview with Interfax -Ukraine.

The minister said that there are several difficult moments in this case, in particular, that the dispute itself was lost a long time ago – in 2014.

"What happens next is an attempt by the Russians to collect these funds. And then, the attempts are very strange, because they are trying to recognize this arbitration decision and the funds in several jurisdictions, but at the same time they did not apply in Ukraine, they did not try to recognize it here," the minister of justice said.

According to him, Tatneft, which is very seriously tied to the state-owned Rosneft, missed the deadlines for recognizing and implementing the arbitration award on the territory of Ukraine.

"In principle, if they immediately came, recognized and declared for execution, I think that it would have already been executed. We don't even have a procedure now for us to comply with the arbitration award without its recognition on the territory of Ukraine," Maliuska said.

He believes that this story has ceased to be economic for a considerable period of time and has become political, because many of the steps of the Russians in this case cannot be explained by commercial interest.

"This can also be a geopolitical story. If this is a commercial story, then we admit it, we go to Ukraine, we pay and close this issue. And here is a completely different story and requirements," the head of the Ministry of Justice said, without revealing possible risks for Ukraine.

Ukrtatnafta was established in 1994 in accordance with the decrees of the Presidents of Ukraine and Tatarstan on the basis of the Kremenchuk Oil Refinery. Previously, 18.296% of the shares of the refinery belonged to structures close to Tatneft, another 28.7788% to the Ministry of Land Property of Tatarstan.

Tatneft lost operational control over the Kremenchuk refinery in October 2007, when Pavlo Ovcharenko headed Ukrtatnafta in 2003-2004 by the decision of the Ukrainian court on reinstatement, again took over the management of the enterprise, while the removed head Serhiy Hlushko announced the forcible seizure of the refinery. Tatneft, which was the main supplier of crude oil to the enterprise, stopped oil supplies.

Then the enterprise acquired new shareholders close to the Ukrainian Privat group of Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov and Oleksandr Yaroslavsky. As a result of litigation, the share of Tatarstan shareholders in CJSC was practically zeroed out, and a new major shareholder associated with the Privat group, Korsan LLC, appeared.

Tatneft sued Ukraine in May 2008 under the 1998 Russian-Ukrainian investment protection agreement in connection with the takeover of Ukrtatnafta in October 2007 and the expropriation of Tatneft's shares in Ukrtatnafta. The Russian company won the case: in July 2014, international arbitration tribunal ordered Ukraine to pay compensation in the amount of $112 million and the interest.

In 2017, Tatneft applied to the courts of the United States, the U.K. and the Russian Federation to recover $144 million from Ukraine. Later, the Federal District Court in Washington confirmed the decision and added interest: the total amount to be recovered reached $173 million.

The other day, Bloomberg reported that Ukraine is asking the U.S. court to block Tatneft's petition to subpoena representatives of 52 banks as part of the consideration of this case. According to the Ukrainian side, the agendas initiated by Tatneft "are a pretext for demanding confidential information at a time when Russia is gathering troops along the border."

The subpoenas were sent, in particular, to Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank and the Reserve Bank of Australia. According to Ukrainian officials who testified in court, Tatneft's subpoenas contain requests for information that is irrelevant to the case, including "about the assets and financial transactions of Ukraine and third parties that play a key role in strategic industries such as defense, energy, transport and connection."