The Enforcement Catch-22: Luiza Movsisyan and Anastasiya Petrova on Obstacles to Enforcing Foreign Arbitral Awards
The award is in hand, and the debtor’s assets have been found in Russia but the debtor is a foreign company. Could the debtor’s address abroad be an obstacle to enforcing a foreign arbitral award or court judgment? And would a Russian court be prepared to take into account any type of asset owned by the debtor when establishing its jurisdiction?
Luiza Movsisyan, Senior Associate at KK&P Trial Lawyers, and Anastasiya Petrova, Associate, explore these questions in their article Challenges in Establishing the Jurisdiction of Russian Commercial Courts in the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, published in Arbitration Panorama (edited by R.O. Zykov, Russian Arbitration Association, 2026).
Drawing on Russian case law and comparing approaches adopted in other jurisdictions, the authors address the following questions:
- What circumstances can establish the jurisdiction of a Russian court to recognise and enforce a foreign arbitral award?
- How do courts interpret the concept of a debtor’s assets?
- Does Russian case law align with the New York Convention and the approach adopted in other countries?
- What procedural tools are available to creditors seeking to obtain the necessary evidence of those assets?
Read the full article (in Russian): http://kkplaw.ru/files/enforcement.pdf