This year marks three years since Russia withdrew from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and jurisdiction of European Court of Human Rights. What impact did this have, and are European standards still implemented in the national legislation?
The impact has been devastating for individual rights protection. For over two decades, the ECHR served as the ultimate avenue of redress when domestic courts failed. Between 1998 and 2022, Russia was found to have violated the Convention in thousands of cases, and the Court’s judgments drove significant reforms in detention conditions, prison healthcare, and judicial procedures.
Since March 2022, Russian citizens have lost this final mechanism for justice. For cases filed before Russia’s withdrawal, the Court continues to issue judgments, but Russia has declared it will not comply with them. New violations occurring after the withdrawal date cannot be brought before the Court at all. This creates a situation of complete impunity for human rights violations.
As for European standards in national legislation, the picture is mixed. Some provisions that were incorporated into Russian law following ECHR judgments remain formally in place, but their implementation has deteriorated sharply. Legal protections against torture remain in the Criminal Code, but prosecutions for torture have become exceptionally rare, and when they occur, sentences are minimal. At the same time, the amounts of the compensations for torture recently have grown up after expulsion from the Council of Europe.
More significantly, new legislation adopted since 2022 directly contradicts European human rights standards. Laws criminalizing “discrediting” the military, expanded definitions of treason and extremism, and restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly would certainly have been found incompatible with the Convention had Russia remained subject to the Court’s jurisdiction. The government now openly promotes the concept that Russia follows its own “traditional values” rather than universal human rights standards, effectively rejecting the entire European human rights framework.