On 20 April 2010, the Supreme Commercial Court issued a notable decision in Edimax Ltd v Chigirinsky, ruling that Russian commercial courts are competent to grant interim measures in support of arbitrations taking place abroad (see Legal update, The Russian Federation's Supreme Commercial Court ruled in favour of interim measures to support foreign arbitration).

On 4 May 2010, the Supreme Commercial Court went even further and extended its earlier decision to include foreign court proceedings, suggesting that foreign litigation can also be supported by Russian courts by way of interim measures.

In the latest decision, several bondholders had filed a claim against a Russian debtor in the District Court of Limassol, Cyprus, and had requested the state commercial court of Saint Petersburg to grant interim measures in support of litigation in Cyprus. The court rejected the motion, ruling that it had no jurisdiction to grant the request. It found that there was no legislative basis for such a request as Article 90(3) of the Code of Arbtirazh (Commercial) only empowers the court to grant interim measures in support of arbitration and does not contain an analogous provision with regard to foreign litigation. The Supreme Commercial Court disagreed and returned the case for reconsideration, for reasons including the decision in Edimax.

Another reason given for returning the case for reconsideration to the cassation level was that the case had not been heard at cassation level prior to the filing of an appeal with the Supreme Commercial Court. Although, in our view, this seems to be a primary reason for the ruling, the reasoning which the Supreme Commercial Court applied when extending the Edimax decision to foreign litigation suggests the emergence of a generally positive attitude of the Russian courts to providing support to foreign proceedings, whether it be arbitration or litigation. Yet, in the absence of a clear legislative stipulation in this regard, it is too early to make any definite conclusions as to the availability of interim relief in Russia for parties to foreign litigation.