Former Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud has been named by Russia as its appointed arbitrator in an international investment dispute brought by Ukraine's state-backed Oschadbank. The legal conflict is set to be decided by a three-member tribunal convened under the 1998 bilateral investment treaty between Kyiv and Moscow.
Costa Rican arbitrator and former trade minister Dyalá Jiménez will serve as tribunal president after receiving joint approval from both sides, while Greek arbitrator and National University of Singapore professor Stavros Brekoulakis was selected by Oschadbank.
At the center of the dispute are claims by Oschadbank over lost banking assets and operational infrastructure across Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia following Russian military actions and the 2022 invasion. Seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, the Ukrainian institution initiated the arbitration after a formal notice of dispute served to Moscow in mid-2025 went unanswered.
This case remains distinct from a previous proceeding regarding Crimean assets, where a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration ordered Russia to pay roughly 1.1 billion dollars for unlawful expropriation. Justice Chandrachud's inclusion places a prominent Indian legal figure at the center of a high-profile international treaty case during a period of ongoing geopolitical friction in Eastern Europe.