For the first time in history, Russia has appealed to the ECHR with a complaint against another country

In what are the features of the claim against Ukraine and what explains its filing, Russia in its first interstate complaint to the ECHR put forward ten claims against Ukraine-from discrimination of the Russian-speaking population to the crash of flight MH17 in July 2014. Consideration of the case may take years

 For the first time in history, Russia has appealed to the ECHR with a complaint against another country

Russia has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights with an interstate complaint against Ukraine, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, which has been representing Russia in the ECHR instead of the Ministry of Justice since July . The complaint & laquo;Russia v. Ukraine» & mdash; is the first in the history of a state complaint that has been filed by Moscow with the European Court of Justice,.

What Moscow complained about

There are ten points in the list of claims that Moscow makes to Kiev:

  • the death of people during the Euromaidan in 2014, during a fire in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa in the same year and during the ongoing operation in the Donbass;
  • “the practice of suppressing freedom of speech and persecuting dissidents” by banning the work of mass media and journalists;
  • discrimination of the Russian-speaking population and the displacement of the Russian language from the public sphere;
  • discrimination against Russian business;
  • loss of life and destruction of property as a result of shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine of the adjacent Russian territory;
  • depriving residents of Donbass of the opportunity to participate in elections to the central authorities;
  • blocking of the North Crimean Canal as the main source of fresh water for residents of the Crimean Peninsula
  • attacks on Russian diplomatic missions;
  • the crash of a Malaysian Airlines plane on July 17, 2014 due to the failure of the Ukrainian authorities to close the airspace over the combat zone
  • “refusal to provide the necessary legal assistance to the Russian investigative authorities in the investigation of crimes committed”.

According to the press release, the filing of the complaint is intended to “draw the attention of the European Court of Justice and the entire world community to the gross and systematic violations of human rights by the Ukrainian authorities”.

Russia is facing an imminent defeat in the lawsuit with Ukraine in the ECHR, said the head of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine Denismalyuska. Since 2014, Ukraine has filed nine interstate complaints against Russia. The last one-in February of this year; in it, Kiev indicates that Moscow continues the “administrative practice of targeted killings of alleged opponents of the Russian Federation” on the territory of the country and abroad, and they are “sanctioned by the state”.

How did Russia support its arguments

According to prosecutors, Ukraine violated the rights and freedoms of citizens, both Ukrainians and Russians. The authorities of the country for seven years “encouraged and covered up” the actions of nationalists and “nationalist terror”that turned into a war in the Donbass, the Prosecutor General’s Office points out. The military actions themselves, Moscow claims, are also accompanied by numerous violations: abductions of citizens, attacks on humanitarian convoys, “indiscriminate shelling” of civilian infrastructure, torture.

Kiev’s actions violate a number of articles of the Convention on Human Rights, the Russian agency claims. It also notes that as a result of shelling from Ukraine, a significant number of Russian citizens were killed,including on the territory of Russia, the victims were residents of Donetsk (the Ukrainian-Russian city of the same name in the Rostov region), Kuibyshevo and other settlements, as well as employees of the Russian checkpoint Gukovo. But the number of victims and their names, as well as other circumstances, are not given.

The European Convention on Human Rights, on the basis of which the ECHR operates, was adopted in 1950. Russia ratified it in 1998. The Convention protects the right to life, prohibits torture, inhuman treatment and slave labor, guarantees the right to freedom and personal integrity, to a fair trial, etc. In accordance with the amendments made to the Constitution in the summer of 2020, decisions of interstate bodies, including courts, if they contradict the Basic Law, are not subject to execution in Russia.

In the part concerning the crash of flight MH17, the Prosecutor General’s Office claims that Kiev bears all responsibility for what happened. «…A serious violation of Article 2 of the Convention (right to life) has been committed…& gt; Article 3 of the Convention (prohibition of torture) in connection with the failure to take measures to close its airspace»,— is indicated in the explanation. Ukraine also did not conduct an independent andan effective investigation of the circumstances of the failure of responsible officials to close the airspace, while Kiev presents fabricated evidence in order to shift its blame for this plane crash to Russia, the annex says. (An international investigation team was investigating the circumstances of the crash, and the trial continues in the Netherlands.)

Pointing to violations of the principles of freedom of speech, the Prosecutor General’s Office pointed out that since 2014, opposition politicians and journalists have been physically eliminated in Ukraine. The agency points out that independent investigations were not conducted into the deaths in 2014 of the operator of the Russian “First Channel” Anatoly Klyan and the correspondent of VGTRK Anton Voloshin and others. The Russian side did not ignore the closure of both Ukrainian TV channels (112 Ukraine, NewsOne and ZiK), as well as Russian-language resources of Channel One, VGTRK and others.

Russia explains the illegality of the water blockade of the Crimea imposed by Ukraine along the North Crimean Canal by the fact that the Dnieper River feeding the canal is cross-border, and takes its source in the Smolensk region. The closure of the channel violates at least three articles of the Convention, the Prosecutor General’s Office claims.

Why did Russia decide to file this complaint

The complaint was sent to the ECHR ten days after Vladimir Putin published an article about the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians. As explained by the press secretary of the president Dmitry Peskov, in this article Putin spoke “about very, very negative processes that are currently taking place in Ukraine”. “Russia has the right to expect the reaction of the ECHR to these negative processes,” Peskov noted. The interstate complaint has become an extreme measure, but “all patience comes to an end,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.

There may be different versions of why the lawsuit was filed now, says Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council: “This may also be due to Moscow’s fatigue from expecting positive progress from Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, it may be a consequence of Putin’s meeting with US President Joe Biden and the promotion of human rights by Western countries.” However,he notes that filing a complaint is an interesting attempt at a counteroffensive, because many Russian officials used to say that Russia has nothing to do in the ECHR and should not pay compensation for cases already considered. If the complaint is rejected, Kortunov points out, the position of those who call for withdrawal from the work of the ECHR and the Council of Europe as a whole will strengthen in the country.

How long can the trial take

“This will be an interesting process,” Dmitry Dedov, a Russian judge of the ECHR, commented to Interfax. In his opinion, the consideration can be quite lengthy.

Consideration of the claim in the ECHR begins with the determination of its admissibility. One of the few formal differences between an interstate complaint and a citizen’s complaint against the state is that the first ones are immediately distributed for consideration in the chamber, they cannot be declared unacceptable by a single judge or a committee of three judges, Kirill Koroteev, head of the international practice of Agora, explained to RBC. The admissibility criteria for interstate complaints are the same as for individual ones, explains Koroteev, including “the applicant State must show the exhaustion of legal remedies in the respondent State”.

This means that the victim of a violation of the rights under the Convention must undergo several judicial instances in the respondent country, which the ECHR considers effective. To file a complaint against Ukraine, a cassation decision of one of the cassation courts within the Supreme Court is almost always required, Koroteev added.

Here we are not necessarily talking about the fact that Russia as a state should be sued in a Ukrainian court. The applicant country can rely on the already existing judicial practice of administrative or criminal lawsuits of its citizens with the authorities of the respondent country. For example, Ukraine, when filing complaints against Russia, referred to the sentences of Russian courts against the Crimean Tatars, the lawyer explained.

There are very few interstate cases in the ECHR, the expert continues, about 30 in the 70-year history, but the last 10 & ndash;12 & mdash; are quite recent cases concerning the Russian-Georgian and Russian-Ukrainian conflicts, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh. Slovenia filed a complaint against Croatia, but it was declared inadmissible. The consideration of interstate complaints, according to Koroteev, takes a very long time. To make the last decision on the second claim of Georgia againstIt took Russia 12 years. Having considered this claim, the ECHR ruled in January of this year that Russia cannot be held responsible under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for the incidents that occurred when Russian servicemen repelled an attack by the Georgian army on a peacekeeping contingent and local civilians in South Ossetia in the period from 8 to 12 August 2008. Instagram Live broadcasts and instant news on our Instagram.

Источник rbc.ru

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