Russia files a complaint to the ECHR against Ukraine

Russia, has filed an interstate complaint to the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) against Ukraine, ranging from discrimination against the Russian-speaking population to the crash of flight MH17 in July 2014.

The complaint "Russia against Ukraine" is the first ever interstate complaint filed by Moscow in a European court.

The complaint has been filed through the Prosecutor General's Office, which since July has been representing Russia at the ECHR instead of the Ministry of Justice.

What is Moscow’s complain?

There are 10 points in the list of claims that Moscow is making against Kiev which include: the deaths of people during the Euromaidan in 2014, in a fire in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa in the same year and during an ongoing operation in Donbass.

The practice of suppressing freedom of speech and persecuting dissidents ”by prohibiting the work of media and journalists; discrimination against 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 on adjacent Russian territory.

Moscow is also complaining about deprivation of residents of Donbass of the opportunity to participate in elections to the central authorities; blocking the North Crimean Canal which is the main source of fresh water for the inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula; attacks on Russian diplomatic missions; the crash of the Malaysian Airlines plane on July 17, 2014 which was due to the failure of the Ukrainian authorities to close the airspace over the war zone.

Refusal to provide the necessary legal assistance to the Russian investigating authorities in the investigation of the crimes committed is also part of the cliams.

According to the press release, the filing of the complaint is intended "to draw the attention of the European Court and the international community to the gross and systematic violations of human rights by the Ukrainian authorities.

How Russia has backed up its arguments?

According to prosecutors, Ukraine violated the rights and freedoms of citizens, both in Ukraine and Russia.

 For seven years, the country's authorities "encouraged and covered" the actions of nationalists and the "nationalist terror" that turned into a war in Donbass, the Prosecutor General's Office points out.

The military actions themselves, according to Moscow, 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 department claims.

 It also notes that as a result of shelling from Ukraine, "a significant number of Russian citizens were killed", including in Russia - residents of Donetsk, Kuibyshevo and other settlements, as well as employees of the Russian checkpoint "Gukovo".

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 liberty and security of person, to a fair trial, etc. In accordance with the amendments made to the Constitution in the summer of 2020, decisions of intergovernmental bodies, including courts, if they contradict the Basic Law, are not enforceable in Russia.

As regards the crash of flight MH17, the Prosecutor General's Office claims that Kiev bears full responsibility for the incident.

Ukraine also did not conduct an independent and effective investigation into the circumstances of the non-closure of the airspace by the responsible officials, while Kiev presents fabricated evidence in order to shift the blame for this plane crash onto Russia, the appendix says.

Pointing at the violations of the principles of freedom of speech, the Prosecutor General's Office indicated that since 2014, the physical elimination of opposition politicians and journalists has been carried out in Ukraine.

The agency points out that no independent investigations were carried out in 2014 of the death of the Russian Channel One operator Anatoly Klyan and the VGTRK correspondent Anton Voloshin and others.

The Russian side did not disregard the closure of both Ukrainian TV channels and the Russian-language resources of Channel One, VGTRK and others.

The illegality of the water blockade of Crimea along the North Crimean Canal, introduced by Ukraine, is explained by Russia by the fact that the Dnieper River feeding the canal is transboundary, 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 Russia decided to file the complaint

A complaint to the ECHR was sent ten days after Vladimir Putin published an article on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.

As the press secretary of the president Dmitry Peskov explained, in this article Putin spoke "about very, very negative processes that are now taking place in Ukraine."

“Russia has the right to expect the ECHR's reaction to these negative processes,” Peskov said.

 The interstate complaint was an extreme measure, but "all patience is coming to an end," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.

How long a lawsuit can take?

Consideration of a claim in the ECHR starts with determining its admissibility. One of the few formal differences between an interstate complaint and a citizen's complaint against the state is that the former are immediately allocated for consideration in the chamber; they cannot be declared inadmissible by a single judge or by a committee of three judges.

The admissibility criteria for inter-State applications are the same as for individuals, including “the applicant State must show that it has exhausted its remedies in the respondent State.

There are very few interstate cases in the ECHR, about 30 in its 70-year history, but the last 10-12 are very 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. Consideration of interstate complaints takes a very long time. It took 12 years to make the last decision - on Georgia's second lawsuit against Russia.

Having considered this claim, the ECHR ruled in January this year that Russia cannot be held accountable under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for incidents that occurred when Russian servicemen repulsed an attack by the Georgian army on the peacekeeping contingent and the local civilian population in South Ossetia in period from 8 to 12 August 2008.