The International Claims Commission for Ukraine (ICCU): What Claimants Need to Know

The ICCU is poised to become one of the most significant international compensation mechanisms of this generation. Crowell & Moring has the experience to help with your claim.

What Is the ICCU and Why Does It Matter?

The ICCU is a Council of Europe-backed international body established to compensate individuals, businesses, and other entities for the nearly US$600 billion of reconstruction and recovery costs needed to address damage, loss, and injury caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It builds on the Register of Damage for Ukraine (RD4U), which has received over 150,000 claims since April 2024.

An important new development occurred on 29 April 2026:  RD4U officially launched claims categories enabling the recording of not only individual losses, but also systemic economic losses sustained by business entities and by the State of Ukraine.

The Commission Is Close to Being Formally Established

The ICCU Convention was signed on 16 December 2025, but has not yet entered into force. It currently has 35 signatories, with Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Iceland, and Ireland having ratified the Convention. The ICCU will become fully operational once 25 countries or regional organizations ratify. Momentum is building: the EU Parliament recently gave it overwhelming approval as a key step toward EU ratification, and the United Kingdom and Norway have presented the Convention to their parliaments. A Council of Europe preparatory committee is working on rules of procedure and budget, with its first meeting expected before summer 2026.

It is expected that the Commission will be fully operational by late 2026 or early 2027. An international compensation fund and a payment mechanism remain to be established.

Unlike some prior mechanisms, the ICCU does not restrict claim eligibility by nationality. Instead, eligibility turns on whether the harm occurred within the territory of Ukraine and was caused by Russia’s internationally wrongful acts.

How Can Crowell & Moring Assist with Your Claim?

Crowell & Moring offers a fully integrated, end-to-end claims processing capability.  For more than 25 years, our team has been a pioneer in international claims, including an international terrorism litigation practice involving claims against sovereign entities and their proxies on behalf of U.S. victims of terrorism. Our experience spans related work in sanctions, international arbitration, public international law, and U.S. litigation.

In our practice, we have represented large cohorts of claimants before government-administered compensation mechanisms, including representing thousands of victims of terrorist attacks spanning the past four decades before the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism (USVSST) Fund, representing victims of Libyan terror before the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, and managing mass claims intake, evidentiary development, and government process navigation at scale.

Crowell has drawn on this extensive experience, as well as our knowledge of other processes like the Iran-US Claims Tribunal and the UN Claims Commission (UNCC), in developing its approach to processing ICCU claims. Crowell also has extensive experience in pursuing claims under investment law treaties and through asset recovery against sovereign states. That experience translates directly to providing potential claimants with the necessary advice and support in successfully accessing and maximizing the benefits of the ICCU claims mechanism.

Eligible Claims: Scope and Criteria

Claims must arise from damage, loss, or injury caused by Russia’s internationally wrongful acts, including violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.

• Temporal scope: Eligible claims must involve harm occurring on or after 24 February 2022, though a future amendment could extend coverage back to 20 February 2014.
• Geographic scope: Claims must relate to harm within Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory, including its airspace, waters, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf, or to aircraft or vessels under Ukraine’s jurisdiction.

Types of Claims

Claims before the ICCU are expected to span a wide range of loss types. Registration of claims under the current RD4U has been broken into over a dozen sub-categories. Broadly, claims that may be registered and ultimately addressed by the Commission include:

• Property damage and destruction: physical damage to or destruction of real estate, commercial or residential property, infrastructure, or business assets and equipment or other personal property located in Ukraine or Russian-occupied territories.
• Expropriation and asset seizure: forced taking of businesses, investments, bank accounts, inventory, or other assets by Russian forces or Russian-affiliated authorities, particularly in Crimea and other occupied regions.
• Business interruption and lost profits: revenue losses, stranded investments, and disrupted operations for companies with activities connected to Ukraine.
• Personal injury: physical harm or loss of life resulting directly from Russia’s unlawful actions.

Key Structural Features of the ICCU

• Integrated three-step architecture: The combination of a live digital register, an independent adjudicatory body, and a future compensation fund represents a more structured and technology-enabled process than prior mass claims mechanisms.
• Double-counting prevention: The ICCU architecture includes mechanisms to avoid double-counting with other forms of compensation, including political risk insurance payments and recoveries through litigation judgments or arbitration awards.
• Required representation for certain claimants: Individuals may submit claims themselves or through a representative. Businesses and other entities, as well as the State of Ukraine, must submit claims through a representative.

How Does the ICCU Compare to Other International Claims Commissions?

The ICCU’s claim process will likely draw on lessons from prior mass claims processes, including:

• United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC): The most comparable model to the ICCU is the mass-claims “war compensation” undertaken by the UNCC. Established after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the UNCC processed approximately 2.7 million claims from governments, corporations, and individuals and awarded approximately US$52 billion, funded by a levy on Iraqi oil revenues. The ICCU shares the UNCC’s mass-claims, multi-category administrative framework, though the ICCU’s funding mechanism remains under negotiation. A source of ICCU funds may include sanctioned Russian assets or a similar revenue-based levy.
• Iran-US Claims Tribunal: Established in 1981 following the Iranian revolution, the Tribunal adjudicated claims by US nationals against Iran and vice versa. It has processed thousands of claims over four decades and remains a foundational precedent for state-backed international claims adjudication.
• US Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism (USVSST) Fund: Created by the US Congress in 2015 to compensate victims of state-sponsored terrorism, the Fund has paid out over US$10 billion to individuals holding final US district court judgments under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).

Potential Investment Treaty Claims

Foreign investors may have independent rights to compensation under bilateral investment treaties in addition to, or alongside, ICCU claims. BIT claims have already been filed as a consequence of the start of the war in 2022, both in relation to assets located in Ukraine and in relation to assets located in Russia.

What Can Claimants Do Right Now?

• Register of damage: The RD4U is live and accepting submissions now. Registering creates a formal record of losses and ensures claimants are well-positioned once the ICCU begins processing claims.
• Preserve your evidence: Financial statements, contracts, property records, photographs, third-party valuations, and communications evidencing loss should be secured and organized immediately. Evidence lost or degraded now cannot be recovered later.
• Understand the options — the ICCU may not be your only path to recovery: Other potential options include bilateral investment treaty arbitration, international tribunal and court proceedings, and FSIA litigation in U.S. federal courts.

• Obtain an early damages assessment: The rules and process for proving and measuring losses will vary depending on each claimant’s situation. An early assessment, especially for a complex claim, will likely involve working with economic experts to help identify what evidence to prioritize and assess the potential value and scope of a claim.