Ilyashev & Partners Law Firm has successfully represented a state-owned enterprise subordinated to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in arbitration against a military equipment seller from the Slovak Republic.

The Ukrainian state enterprise entered into a supply agreement with the Slovak seller to meet the needs of Ukrainian defenders to repel the armed aggression of the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian state enterprise fulfilled its contract obligations in a timely manner by transferring an advance payment in full. However, the foreign counterparty delivered only half of the contractually agreed quantity of goods, which turned out to be defective at the time of their acceptance by the end-user. Unfortunately, the seller refused to rectify the defects.

For the protection of the Ukrainian state enterprise, Ilyashev & Partners filed a claim with the Vienna International Arbitration Centre (VIAC). In the course of the arbitration proceeding, Ilyashev & Partners’ international arbitration team proved that the foreign seller had fundamentally breached the contract by failing to deliver the military equipment that would conform to the contractual quality terms. That entitled the Ukrainian state enterprise to validly terminate the contract under the 1980 United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

A VIAC sole arbitrator has found arguments advanced by Ilyashev & Partners’ international arbitration team justifiable and made an award in favour of the Ukrainian state enterprise. The VIAC sole arbitrator has ordered the Slovak company to pay to the Ukrainian state enterprise over EUR 2 million, including:

Roman Protsyshyn, Counsel at Ilyashev and Partners, led the case under the supervision of Roman Marchenko, Senior Partner, with the assistance of lawyers Kateryna Solodovnyk and Mykhailo Churakov.