In a significant development within international arbitration, Russia has appointed former Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, as its arbitrator in a high-stakes investment treaty dispute initiated by Oschadbank, a Ukrainian state-owned bank. According to Global Arbitration Review, the arbitration panel will be presided over by Dyalá Jiménez, a Costa Rican arbitrator and former trade minister, who was mutually selected by both parties involved in the dispute.
The tribunal’s third arbitrator will be Stavros Brekoulakis, a seasoned Greek arbitrator and professor at the National University of Singapore, appointed by Oschadbank. This arbitration arises under the framework of the 1998 bilateral investment treaty between Ukraine and Russia. Oschadbank’s claims center around the alleged loss of assets and operations in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, attributed to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, particularly following the full-scale invasion in 2022. The financial implications of the claim are reportedly in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The proceedings were initiated after Oschadbank sent a notice of dispute to Russia in July 2025, which reportedly went unanswered, prompting the bank to seek arbitration. Notably, Justice Chandrachud had previously declined Russian overtures to serve as its arbitrator in other treaty disputes involving Wintershall Dea and Ukrenergo. These approaches coincided with his designation as the appointing authority by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Wintershall proceedings, a role he subsequently relinquished after disclosing these communications.
Representing Oschadbank are Epaminontas Triantafilou and Alex Gerbi, partners at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, along with Asters partners Oleksiy Didkovskiy, Andrii Pozhidayev, and Oksana Legka. Russia’s legal representation is led by Andrea Pinna, partner at Pinna Goldberg, supported by counsel Pratyush Panjwani and senior associate Dimitrios Papageorgiou.
