The richest Ukrainian and owner of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Rinat Akhmetov, today filed a lawsuit against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights, seeking damages for what he said were billions of dollars in business losses due to the Russian invasion.

Akhmetov, in whose steel plant Ukrainian fighters have been resisting Russian shelling for weeks, is suing Russia for "grave violations of his property rights," his holding company System Capital Management (SCM) said.

The SCM statement said Akhmetov was also seeking a court order to "prevent Russia from continuing to carry out blockades, looting, diversions and the destruction of grain and steel" produced by his companies.

"Evil must not go unpunished. "Russia's crimes against Ukraine and our people are blatant and those responsible for them must be held accountable," Akhmetov was quoted as saying by the company.

He added that "the looting of Ukrainian export goods, including grain and steel, has already resulted in rising prices and starvation of people around the world," and that, as he put it, "these barbaric actions must stop and Russia must pay everything. "

Asked about Akhmetov's lawsuit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today that Russia was no longer under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.

"We have left (the competence) of the relevant documents. "So the answer to that is absolutely obvious," he told Reuters.

According to Forbes magazine, Akhmetov's net worth was $ 15,4 billion in 2013, but his business empire has since suffered from years of fighting between pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and the aftermath of Moscow's military action in that country. on February 24 this year.

Akhmetov announced last month that his company Metinvest, Ukraine's largest steelmaker, had suffered a $ 17 billion to $ 20 billion loss due to the Russian bombing of its Mariupol steel plant. The final amount will be determined in the lawsuit, he said.