In a landmark ruling, the Dutch Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Russia’s final appeal against a $50 billion arbitration award to former shareholders of Yukos, the once-mighty Russian oil giant. The court declared the decision as the conclusive end to a protracted legal battle that has spanned over two decades. The former shareholders allege that the Kremlin orchestrated the company’s bankruptcy in 2003 to neutralize its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin. The ruling upheld a 2023 decision by Amsterdam judges, which rejected Russia’s last legal argument in a case stemming from a 2014 arbitration panel’s verdict. The panel, based in The Hague, had found that Moscow deliberately crippled Yukos with exorbitant tax claims to seize control of its assets and remove Khodorkovsky from the political arena. Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 and spent over a decade in prison while Yukos’s primary assets were sold to a state-owned entity, leading to the company’s eventual bankruptcy. Tim Osborne, CEO of GML, a holding company representing the former majority shareholders, hailed the ruling as a historic victory, emphasizing that it reaffirms the principle that no state is above the law. Osborne vowed to focus on enforcing the award against Russian state assets globally, noting that the total amount, including interest, now exceeds $65 billion.