The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan reported that the Swedish court had completely rejected the claims of the Russian telecommunications company MTS against the Turkmen side.
As noted in the message of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Turkmenistan, as a responsible member of the world community, carries out activities in the international space in accordance with multilateral and bilateral documents regulating the behavior of participants in international relations.
“Over the past few years, biased and untrue reports have repeatedly appeared in the media about the so-called “claims” of the public joint-stock company Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) against the Turkmen side.
In order to resolve the disputed situation artificially created by MTS, the relevant economic and state structures of Turkmenistan made every effort to resolve it peacefully, pre-trial and constructively.
However, despite this, in 2018 MTS initiated international arbitration proceedings.
Ultimately, the tribunal, constituted under the rules of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), dismissed all of MTS’s claims against Turkmenistan on the merits and awarded Turkmenistan over 11 million USD in legal and arbitration costs. The tribunal found that the operating contract was a valid commercial contract under Turkmen law that had expired according to its terms, and therefore MTS had no right or legitimate expectation of an extension of the contract.The Tribunal also found that Turkmenistan had not committed any wrongdoing with respect to MTS's operations and dismissed all remaining claims by MTS regarding allegedly unlawful actions.
Three months after the tribunal issued its arbitration award, MTS attempted to challenge it in Swedish courts, as Stockholm had been designated as the venue for arbitration. As a result of the proceedings, the Svea Court of Appeal (Sweden) by its decision of June 27, 2025 rejected all of MTS's claims and ruled in favour of Turkmenistan. The court also ordered MTS to compensate Turkmenistan for costs associated with the proceedings in the total amount of 589 thousand euros, which must be paid in addition to the 11 million in costs awarded by the tribunal’s earlier decision.
It should be emphasized that the decision of the Court of Appeal cannot be appealed further and the court expressly stated that “there are no grounds for filing an appeal against this decision.”
Thus, the above-mentioned decisions, adopted by authoritative arbitration and judicial bodies, fully confirmed the legitimacy of the actions of the Turkmen side, which strictly follows the generally recognized norms and rules governing international economic relations,” the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan says.
