Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Russia

  • Júlia Miklasová

Mamasakhlisi and Others v. Georgia and Russia: Russia’s Effective Control over Abkhazia Before the 2008 War: Peacekeepers, Passportisation and Other Hybrid Elements

June 13, 2023

By Dr. Júlia Miklasová Introduction The judgment rendered by the Second Section of the Court in Mamasakhlisi and Others v. Georgia and Russia relates to the allegations of human rights violations by the de facto Abkhaz authorities in Abkhazia before the 2008 Russia-Georgia War and Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia. In this case, filed against Russia […]

  • Ausra Padskocimaite

Execution of the ECtHR’s judgments against Russia: Some legal (and political) aspects

May 15, 2023

by Ausra Padskocimaite Russia’s departure from the Council of Europe (CoE) on 16 March 2022 raised several complex legal questions, not the least regarding how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) should handle the many pending applications against Russia (currently around 16,000). While these questions received considerable attention from legal scholars, the issue of […]

  • Dmitry Kurnosov

No easy way out: the Strasbourg Court and legacy Russian cases

March 24, 2023

Dmitry Kurnosov Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe (‘CoE’) and, consequently, from the European Convention system has left almost 17 thousand cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’, ‘the Court’). That number will rise further as the Court has declared that it will accept applications concerning acts and omissions under Russian […]

  • Dmitry Kurnosov

Russia without Strasbourg and Strasbourg without Russia: A Preliminary Outlook

September 20, 2022

by Dmitry Kurnosov On September 16, 2022 Russia ceased to be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This event is bound to have serious repercussions both for Russia and for the Strasbourg institutions. In this contribution, I chart some of the potential implications both for Russian domestic law and for the […]

  • Jessica Gavron

The ECtHR and the Russian Foreign Agents’ Law – a devastating case of judicial passivity  

April 28, 2022

By Jessica Gavron The traumatic saga of the liquidation of International Memorial and Memorial Human Rights Centre (MHRC), has been subsumed by the even more shocking events that have followed. However, the liquidation of these two renowned and revered human rights institutions was a momentous event for civil society in Russia. For many, the elimination […]

  • Dirk Voorhoof

OOO Memo v. Russia: ECtHR prevents defamation claims by executive bodies

April 01, 2022

By Dirk Voorhoof, Human Rights Centre UGent and Legal Human Academy The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has recently delivered a judgment in which, for the first time, it refers to the notion of SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation). In its judgment of 15 March 2022 in the case of OOO Memo v. […]

  • Aurélie Van Baelen

Interim measures by the European Court of Human Rights in the Ukrainian conflict: United against the Russian aggression

March 22, 2022

By Aurélie Van Baelen On the early morning of 24 February 2022, when Russian tanks crossed the border into Ukraine, brutally invading sovereign territory, Europe entered a new era. After weeks of build-up tensions alongside the Russian-Ukrainian border, and the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, the Russian President dared to do what many feared, but hoped he would […]

  • Philip Leach

A Time of Reckoning? Russia and the Council of Europe

March 17, 2022

By Philip Leach [i] The brutal, unprovoked and illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on 24 February 2022, has resulted in the swift utilisation of the machinery of international law. Ukraine itself instigated proceedings at the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. On 28 February, Karim Khan QC, the […]

  • Guest Blogger

They did it again: Russia’s continued presence in the PACE

February 23, 2021

By Lize R. Glas, Assistant Professor of European Law, Radboud University, the Netherlands In a previous blog, I recalled how the Russian delegation managed to return to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Assembly) without sanctions in June 2019. The return of these members meant the end of their refusal to submit their credentials […]

  • Guest Blogger

Russia left, threatened and won: Its return to the Assembly without sanctions

July 02, 2019

By Lize R. Glas, Assistant Professor of European law, Radboud University, the Netherlands The background story: The Assembly takes action As has been recounted on this blog and on other blogs already (see here and here as well), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Assembly) and Russia have been in a row ever […]