Hughes Hubbard Defends Judgment Upholding Court’s Jurisdiction to Enforce $34M Arbitration Award for Ukrainian Gas Companies

Highlights

• Hughes Hubbard submitted a brief in the DC Circuit urging the Court to deny Russia’s motion to stay the Court’s mandate after its decision upholding the District Court’s jurisdiction over a suit to enforce a $34 million arbitral award on behalf of 11 Ukrainian petrol companies.
• The brief argues Russia’s Supreme Court petition raises no substantial question, and that a genuine circuit split doesn’t exist.

March 26, 2026

Law360 reported on a brief submitted by Hughes Hubbard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, urging the Court to deny Russia’s motion to stay its mandate after the Court’s decision upholding the District Court’s jurisdiction over a suit to enforce an arbitral award on behalf of a group of 11 Ukrainian petrol companies, led by Stabil LLC, against the Russian Federation.

Russia had simultaneously filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review the Feb. 13 decision in which the DC Circuit affirmed the District Court’s decision that the District Court had jurisdiction to enforce the $34 million award against Russia.

In the brief, the firm argues that Russia’s certiorari petition will fail because Russia is seeing a circuit split “where there is none.”

“Because the Supreme Court has already declined to review Russia’s materially overlapping question in Hulley, and no genuine circuit split exists, Russia’s motion to stay thus fails to raise a ‘substantial question’ under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 41(d)(1),” the brief stated.

The Ukrainian companies, which owned and operated chains of gas stations that were seized by Russia after its 2014 invasion of Crimea, have been fighting for compensation since 2015. They have prevailed at the jurisdiction and merits stages before an international arbitration tribunal and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court and are now seeking enforcement of the resulting final award.

The Hughes Hubbard team representing Stabil and the other Ukrainian gas companies includes John Townsend, Eleanor Erney, Shayda Vance, Carter Rosekrans and Winthrop Jordan.