Cross-Border
Legal Counsel in Russia

Russia is a civil-law jurisdiction with codified private and procedural law, with commercial disputes heard by the state commercial (arbitrazh) courts. For foreign parties, the most consequential practical reality is that the enforceability of foreign decisions and the recovery of assets connected to Russian principals depend heavily on where those assets are located and how the matter is structured.
Given the current international environment and the practical complexities involved, our work focuses on the cross-border recovery dimension — reaching assets in accessible jurisdictions and coordinating the overall strategy — rather than on litigation within Russia.

For arbitral awards, Russia is a party to the New York Convention, and recognition and enforcement of foreign awards proceed under the Convention's framework. In our experience, a New York Convention award is generally a more reliable basis for enforcement against assets in the region than reliance on a foreign court judgment, whose recognition depends on treaty relationships or reciprocity and can be less predictable.
For foreign court judgments, recognition in Russia depends on applicable bilateral or multilateral treaty arrangements and on reciprocity, and is assessed against local public-policy requirements. This makes a well-structured arbitration clause, providing for a Convention award, the more enforceable choice in most cross-border contracts with a Russia counterparty.
The practical work is choosing the enforceable route, identifying assets, and — critically for the region — coordinating the Russia element with parallel action in the other jurisdictions, frequently EU holding jurisdictions such as Cyprus or the Baltics, where a debtor's assets are often layered. This coordination is the core of our CIS Region practice.

Russia is a New York Convention party, and historically international arbitration in neutral seats — Stockholm being especially prominent for Russia-connected disputes — has been the preferred mechanism for cross-border commercial matters. The choice of a neutral seat and an enforceable award remains central to how such matters are structured.
Our focus is on the enforcement and recovery strategy across the jurisdictions where assets sit, coordinating any arbitration or foreign proceeding with action in the relevant EU and offshore jurisdictions.

Matters in the region are coordinated through our CIS Region desk, which works in Russian and understands the layered holding structures — frequently routed through EU jurisdictions such as Cyprus and the Baltics — that internationally mobile principals from the region commonly use. We treat the local element as one node in a coordinated recovery map rather than a standalone proceeding.

Russia-connected recovery is, in practice, a cross-border exercise that succeeds or fails on reaching assets in accessible jurisdictions and coordinating the strategy across them. VLO's CIS Region desk combines Russian-language capacity with deep familiarity with the layered holding structures — Cyprus, the Baltics, offshore — through which such assets are commonly routed.
For creditors, this means a recovery strategy focused on where assets can actually be reached, run by one partner who coordinates the whole multi-jurisdiction map, with the discretion sensitive recovery work demands.