The question troubling thousands of Ukrainian entrepreneurs today — whether it’s possible to obtain real compensation for property destroyed by the aggressor — is not theoretical. The world has walked this path before, and the most instructive precedent is the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC), created after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The scale of this mechanism is striking even today. The Commission was established in 1991 as a subsidiary body of the UN Security Council to process claims and pay compensation for losses caused by Iraq’s unlawful invasion. It received around 2.7 million claims for a total claimed sum of $352.5 billion. Over the course of its work, the Commission paid out $52.4 billion to approximately 1.5 million claimants — individuals, corporations, and governments. Most important is the funding mechanism itself: payments were made by force, drawn from the aggressor’s key export resource. The funds came from a UN Special Fund that received a percentage of the revenues from export sales of Iraqi oil. The aggressor state paid for the damage it caused with its own petrodollars — regardless of whether it wanted to. And the money went only to those individuals, companies, and governments that could document their losses.
Most importantly for Ukrainian business: an analogous mechanism is already being built — and it already works. The Register of Damages for Ukraine (RD4U) was created in 2023 under the auspices of the Council of Europe; it unites 44 states and the EU and is the first step of an international compensation mechanism. As of April 2026, categories for business and the state are open: damage or destruction of critical and non-critical infrastructure (B1.1, B1.2, C1.1, C1.2) and, separately, damage, destruction, or loss of a company’s assets (C3.1) — any property or resource of a legal entity that is not infrastructure or housing. Claims are submitted through the Diia web portal, under the section “Reparations: International Register of Damages” — on behalf of a legal entity this can be done by its head (for example, the director) or an appointed representative; ownership is confirmed through contracts, financial statements, and invoices. It’s important to understand: submitting a claim does not mean automatic payment — the Register conducts an initial review and enters properly completed claims into the evidence base for the future mechanism. The next step is already institutionally underway: in December 2025, 35 states and the EU signed the Convention establishing the International Claims Commission, which will review claims submitted to the Register, determine compensation amounts, and issue final decisions.
For Ukrainian business, the takeaway is direct and practical. The UNCC story proved the essential point: the aggressor pays not out of goodwill, but because a mechanism exists that forces it to — and it pays only those who have documented their losses. Today Ukraine has its own version of this mechanism in action. That’s why three steps matter right now: first, record all damages and asset losses to international standards, ideally with a professional appraiser’s report that gives the claim legal weight; second, submit a claim to the Register of Damages through the relevant business category, without waiting for the war to end; third, be in the system from the very beginning — because, as the Kuwait experience showed, the first to receive compensation are those whose cases are already processed and documented. Compensation is not a matter of luck, but of preparation.
For more detail, see: https://rd4u.coe.int/en/submit-a-claim
